An Overview Of Our Solution
Balanced harvest
Who is this solution impacting?
Ecosystem
Oceans/Coasts
Community Type
Rural
Additional Information
- Population Impacted:
- Continent: Oceania
Problem
Describe the problem
Catch all ecological groups (i.e., species, stocks, sizes and sexes) that can be utilized by humans at a moderate rate proportional to their natural productivity, as long as their abundance and population growth rates are above precautionary sustainable thresholds.
Biodiversity Impact
Fishing is by nature a highly selective process. Fishers intentionally target particular species and specific components of populations during certain times of the year in selected areas to maximize short-term catch rates and profitability. The expected selectivity is commonly intensified by management regulations and environmental policies, such as bycatch reduction and minimum size limit. The traditional and current fishing practices have many adverse impacts on biodiversity, particularly the evenness aspects and the relationship among ecological components. Selective fishing changes life-history of harvested species and ecosystem structure and impairs sustainable fisheries and ecosystem health. To Search Solution, we know there is a problem—loss of marine biodiversity and depletion of many fish stocks. In fact, solid evidences show that while many valuable and vulnerable species are overfished, more species with a low economic value and high natural productivity are increasing at global scale. Such a distorted impact on evenness aspect of biodiversity has resulted in a change of community structure and detrimental effect on fishery production. When we understand that unfair, discriminative fishing practice is the culprit causing environmental and fisheries crises, a solution becomes clear: redistribute a moderate fishing pressure over a wide range of ecological groups in proportion to their natural productivity will obviously increase fishery production while maintaining the community structure, biodiversity, species relationship, and ecosystem stability.
Solution
Biodiversity has three broad measurable aspects: richness, evenness, and phenotypic variation, each of which embraces various biodiversity properties that can be quantified using ecological indicators. For example, richness may include taxonomic and genetic diversity. Evenness may be quantified in several ways including the species evenness index, size spectra curves, sex ratios, K-dominance curves, ratios among ecological components, and age structure. Phenotypic variation refers to variability in aspects such as body size, life span, body form, diet, growth rate, maturity, and behaviour. Conventional fishing has been recognized as the leading threat for biodiversity. It immediately alters the ecosystem by selectively killing and removing certain components, thereby reducing the abundance of certain groups and changing the relative abundance of species, size distributions, and sex ratios, which implies modifications to food web and ecosystem structure, and hence some properties of biodiversity. Altering ecosystem structure in turn results in changes to ecosystem function including energy flow, element recycling, species interactions, productivity and resilience. Changes to ecosystem function then affects sustainability of fisheries. Balanced harvest aims to maintain ecosystem structure by harvesting every component of an ecosystem in proportion to their productivity. This solution will minimize biodiversity loss and fishing induced evolution and ensures all life forms will continue to exist in the community. // This solution can be applied at any spatial scale.
Replicability
How many years has your solution been applied? 50 years // Have others reproduced your solution elsewhere? Yes // The some parts of the world (particularly those developed countries), the proposed solution can only be feasible when it involves people other than fishery scientists and managers, including politicians, green group, media, consumers, and food industry workers. Advance in fishing strategy and gear technology can be adopted toward harvesting ecological components according to their productivity, instead of avoiding bycatch of non-target components. Adding value to current low-valued components is the key step to achieve dual goals of fishery management. Culture exchange and development of seafood processing technique can play an important role in influencing people’s dining habits. Media, educators, and retailers can raise the awareness of selective overfishing and guide consumers for sustainable seafood choice. When the solution is adopted, it will support long-term sustainability and have the ability to adapt to changing demographics, socioeconomic and climate realities.
Human Well Being and Livelihood Impact
The marine environment provides food and many other goods and services to human society. The concept of balanced harvest will increase these goods and services by maintaining a balanced and healthy ecosystem. It is similar to modern taxation system: spread a moderate tax rate to all people as long as their income is above certain threshold to increase total revenue rather than imposing concentrated heavy tax on a selective small group of populations who have little political and military power. This solution will have a positive effect on human wellbeing and livelihoods from community level to global scale when it is adapted. This solution can be applied at any spatial scale. // Balance fishing encourages diversifying fishery catches; hence it may simplify management and governance processes. Strict regulations that demand high manpower and resources, such as zero bycatch policy, gear regulation, size limit, etc., can be relaxed or abandoned. Instead, measuring and monitoring biodiversity indicators become necessary to ensure alleviated structure changes and increased total yields. At local level, the solution can be managed by involving an entire community from fishers to the consumers.