Acronym NA
Category
Fisheries
Title Regime shifts in shelf sea ecosystems Programme National Programme
Instrument (FP6)
Contact Type (FP7)
Strand (Interreg)
NA
Theme (FP7)
Activity Area (FP6)
Regional Area (Interreg)
Action (COST)
NA
Specific Programme (FP7)
NA
Funding source National Coordinator Michael Heath Coordinator email m.heath@strath.ac.uk
Coordinator institution
FRS - Fisheries Research Services (United Kingdom)
Institutions involved
NA
Start year 2006 End year 2010 Funding (€) € NA Website NA Summary Fisheries managers require new information if current management approaches are to move away from the annual cycle of single species assessments and take into account wider environmental variability and change.
The objectives of this project are: (1) To explain how regime shifts may be detected, and the consequences they have on the major fish stocks; (2) To advise on how reference points for major commercial species should be changed to reflect regime shifts in the food web caused by either climate or fishing; (3) Consider how management targets should change to move the ecosystem towards the target of healthy, productive and biologically diverse seas.
There may be some reluctance (at EU level) to implement and new management procedures (e.g. reference points) which may be indicated from this research. Public discussion of the need to change reference points may present some difficulties. This will be anticipated by considering likely outcomes at an early stage in the project, to identify the type of potentially sensitive findings might emerge and how these might subsequently be handled by the Executive. The objective will be to have a strategy in place to deal with the range of possible research outcomes. To this end, the key objective will be to provide the Marine Group in SEERAD with: (1) A set of plain language explanations, of the basis for regime shifts in the North Sea, how these may be detected, and the consequences they have for our advice on reference points for the major fish stocks; (2) Specific guidance on how biological reference points for the major commercial species in the North Sea should be changed to reflect regime shifts in the food web caused by either climate or fishing; (3) Advice on how management targets across the range of assessed species should change in order to move the system as a whole towards the ecosystem target of "healthy, productive and biologically diverse seas".
Keywords
Fisheries management;
Stock assessment;
Fish stocks;
Marine Region
6
Central North Sea (27.IVb)
13
Northern North Sea (27.IVa)
26
Northwest Coast of Scotland and North Ireland (27.VIa)
3
Marine Region Map
