The seeds of expansion beyond the modeling approaches were the many aspects of fish and of fisheries that had been left on the sideline over the decades of the development of the three models. Those seeds included that few fisheries were focused on only one species or population, and that, even when they were, fishing affected other organisms in the ecosystem, and indeed the environment itself. Further, fisheries biology had explicitly excluded accounting for fishing being both an economic and a human enterprise. Management advice that did not also account for these factors was at best incomplete and, at worst, left many fisheries by the beginning of the 21st century either collapsed or vulnerable to collapse. The science necessary for the management of fisheries is something much broader than fisheries biology.
Taking a perspective that individual fisheries are in fact the objects of study by fisheries science, we suggested that such autopsies would involve conducting comprehensive examinations of individual fisheries aimed at determining the success (or not) of fisheries science and of fisheries management. |
