THE PROBLEMS OF UNSTABLE RESOURCES MANAGEMENT1 TABLE OF CONTENTS

by

S. Garcia
Senior Fishery Resources Officer
Fisheries Department - FAO

¹ Lecture given at the DANIDA/FAO/ECAF Workshop on Fishery Management and Development, Santa Cruz, Tenerife, 1–10/6/83

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FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED NATIONS UNITED NATIONS DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME Rome, 1984
© FAO

NOTE FOR THE READER

The DANIDA/FAO/CECAF Workshop on Fisheries Management and Development was held in Santa Cruz de Tenerife from 1 to 10 June 1983. This Workshop (intended for West African fisheries managers-administrators, directors, economists and biologists) was to deal, among other matters, with the problems of instable resources, and the organizers asked me to deliver a lecture summarizing the main conclusions of the FAO Expert Consultation to examine changes in abundance and species composition of neritic fish resources (held in San José, Costa Rica, from 18 to 29 April 1983), centring the lecture as far as possible on West Africa.

The present document therefore contains a summary of these conclusions as well as some personal elaborations on the consequences of this instability on modelization and management.

I hope to have paid justice to everyone through the bibliographic references, and would encourage the reader to refer to the Reports of the San José meeting for more information¹.

S. Garcia

¹ Csirke, J and G.D. Sharp (eds.), 1983 Reports of the expert Consultation to examine changes in abundance and species composition of neritic resources. FAO Fish.Rep., 291 (1):102

Hyperlinks to non-FAO Internet sites do not imply any official endorsement of or responsibility for the opinions, ideas, data or products presented at these locations, or guarantee the validity of the information provided. The sole purpose of links to non-FAO sites is to indicate further information available on related topics.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. INTRODUCTION

2. BIOLOGICAL ASPECTS

2.1 Variations in abundance

2.2 Other biological variations

2.3 Apparent replacement of species

2.4 Mechanisms of variations in abundance

2.5 Climatic variability in the eastern central Atlantic and its effects

3. NATURAL FLUCTUATIONS AND MODELIZATION

3.1 The production model

3.2 Stock-recruitment relation

3.3 The model of yield by recruitment

3.4 Prediction models

3.5 Bio-economic models

4. MECHANISMS OF BIO-ECONOMIC COLLAPSE

4.1 Biological collapse

4.2 Economic collapse

5. MANAGEMENT PROBLEMS

5.1 Interaction between management and environment

5.2 Management strategies (following Csirke, 1984)

5.2.1 Controlled “fluctuating” fishing system

5.2.2 Recourse to foreign fleets

5.2.3 Diversification

5.3 Management and reversibility of phases of collapse

5.4 Regulation methods

5.4.1 Direct regulation of fishing effort

5.4.2 Distribution of the controlled fishing effort

5.4.3 Scientific “approximations” and management

REFERENCES

Annex 1

Annex 2

LIST OF FIGURES