Fisheries Science Is out of Balance for Sustaining Fisheries

Sustaining fisheries requires a balance of conservation and utilization, and all three ecological, economic and societal components need to be maintained to achieve sustainability.  Many fisheries were historically out of balance, with utilization emphasized over conservation.  However, fisheries management systems in developed countries have generally ended overfishing, and management is now much more conservative.  In the last decade, the scales have shifted so that conservation is the primary focus, and utilization is undervalued.  Systematic biases in fisheries science promote conservation-based research and advocacy while demoting collaboration with fishing stakeholders.  Such professional biases exist in publishing, funding and reputation, in which conservation advocacy is honored, and learning from fishermen is stigmatic.  The desire for precautionary management by scientists has led to a tendency toward precautionary science, which subjectively errs on the side of the fish.  Similar to the historical period overfishing that resulted from an imbalanced management system, an unbalanced emphasis on conservation fails to achieve all of our fishery management objectives (e.g., all ten national standards of the Magnuson Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act). Precautionary approaches to fishery management should consider risks to ecological, economic and societal aspects of sustainability.