USA (North-East) - Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries

Ecosystem considerations are directly codified or distincly implied in part of the new Sustainable Fisheries Act, particularly in National Standards 1, 2 & 6, as well as in the plethora of interplay among various pieces of enabling legislation.  Efforts are underway to conduct Integrated Ecosystem Assessments and Coastal and Marine Spatial Planning, which both address the broader issue of multiple ocean use sectors for EBM, of which fisheries is an important part.  Within the fisheries sector, specific efforts are underway to explore production potential for ocean management units, to include predation directly in stock assessments where appropriate, to explore tradeoffs among species and fleets via modeling, to examine quota setting cognizant of environmental and ecological factors, and to examine the effects of climate change on the distribution, growth and mortality of key species.  For further reading, see Link et al. 2011.