Interdisciplinary Problem Solving for Today's Fisheries Challenges

 

 

Long-term solutions to today’s most pressing fisheries challenges require an increasing understanding of complex system interactions. For real and lasting solutions, social and economic systems deserve just as much attention and study as natural systems. Here, we share our personal experiences understanding complex problems in marine science and management. In doing so, we illustrate how stepping outside our respective disciplines and thinking about system dynamics at a range of scales in both science and management can shed light on, and offer new solutions to, challenges faced by natural resource practitioners.  Academic and natural resource institutions, in an attempt to generate experts of renown, often require intense focus on specific disciplinary topics while avoiding training that is more interdisciplinary, holistic, and practical (Van Houtan 2006). Spurred on by litigation, management agencies require simple, immediate results for complicated problems. The perhaps ironic result is that the mindset required to understand and manage something as complex as an ecosystem is constrained. So in addition to scientific frontiers, equally important opportunities exist to incorporate systems approaches on the management side—in addressing the organizational, political and economic challenges to sustainable management of fisheries and other aquatic resources.