Best practices for managing, measuring and mitigating the benthic impacts of fishing.[Part 2]

Abstract

In a previous paper, Review of habitat dependent impacts of mobile and static fishing gears that interact with the sea bed (2014) we offered definitions for benthic habitat, fishing gear and fisheries management and a way of thinking about the challenge of understanding best practices for measuring, monitoring, managing and mitigating benthic impacts of fishing in the context of the MSC’s certification requirements. These informed our review in the previous paper’s classification of habitats and fishing gears and helped us highlight likely variations in benthic impact depending on habitat and gear used (Grieve, Brady & Polet, 2014). In this paper, we provide an overview of the systems used around the world to classify fisheries management systems. Best practices are related to the MSC Habitats performance indicators, as well as the themes for the original project: monitoring, measuring, managing and mitigating. We conclude the report with observations and recommendations that emerged from our review, with particular reference to defining habitat for MSC purposes and the information needs for certification bodies to make better assessments, e.g. understanding seabed characteristics, estimating fishing distribution, using local knowledge particularly when data are deficient, and the challenge of scaling up results of site-specific, intensive studies to the level of a fishery.