ACP-EU Fisheries Research Initiative.

Abstract

This report presents the proceedings of a five day scientific conference on “Placing Fisheries in their Ecosystem Context”, held on 4-8 December 2000, at the Charles Darwin Research Station, Puerto Ayora, Galápagos Islands. The conference was hosted by the Charles Darwin Foundation for the Galápagos Islands and co-organized by Instituto de Ecologia Aplicada, Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador; the Charles Darwin Research Station, Ecuador; and the North Sea Centre, Denmark. The conference as made possible through support from the European Commission's INCO-DC Concerted Action programme ERBIC18CT97175. The conference was based on the recognition that the sustainability of fisheries worldwide depends on the maintenance of the ecosystems in which they embedded. The negative impact of fisheries on ecosystems, and thus on the sustainability of both the fisheries and the ecosystems, is becoming more and more obvious and must be addressed. This conference brought together practitioners with experience in a wide variety of exploited marine ecosystems, having in common their use of the Ecopath suite of ecosystem modelling software. There were some 30 presentations at the conference, covering aspects of ecosystem-based management of fisheries; impact of fisheries on ecosystems; comparative ecosystem analysis; and ecosystem structure and dynamics, as well as a series of discussions. The presentations, which investigated marine ecosystems in many parts of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, were based on the Ecopath approach to ecosystem analysis and offered many insights into the nature of and trends in these ecosystems. The presentations also showed the utility of this approach in providing ecosystem-based management options for fisheries in a wide variety of situations.