Lessons From Fisheries
Gary D. Sharp
Abstract from UBC Fisheries Centre Workshop on Fisheries Oceanography, 1995
The Solar Engine and the Earth’s spin provide the forcing for the continuously varying environment within which the Earth’s ecosystems evolve, and within which humanity’s mere century old ocean sciences have begun to compile records that might help them cope. Among the many pathways taken by would-be resource managers, that leading away from data gathering and observations, toward modeling from numerical parameterizations has nearly driven many aquatic and forest resources into unsustainability, within the last half of this century.
Much of the problem has been described as the result of a "lack of political will", which is to say a failure of government to look after the common properties. I maintain that just as much of the problem lies with the scientific communities whose lack of basic understanding has been codified in ritual methodologies and methods that ignore many factors over which humans have no control, and therefore "assume" into some convenient statistical patterns that serves their mathematical needs, rather than the realities of nature (TrophicPyram.gif). See ref. at Sharp’s Site.
Time and space scales of processes have been explored, from the recent fifty years of instrumental records. The fact that this recent half century has been one of the most stable periods in the climate records of the last three thousand years has had its consequences, as we begin shifting toward another climatic state. Much of what is known about climate forcing, and ecosystem responses, is within the realms of geology and paleoclimatology, far from knowledge bases for most fisheries students. Recent insights into the behaviors of coastal pelagics, oceanic species and related fisheries has shown that there is far more to aquatic resource management than calculating CPUE, aging fish from modal progressions, and formulating VPA each year. (Horta-1991.htm). See ref. at Sharp’s Site.
Climate forcing combines erratic inter-annual patterns with quasi- periodic, time-horizon based events that punctuate environmental properties and processes, setting new system contexts within which aquatic ecosystems naturally respond on daily, seasonal and epochal time scales. There are abundant examples from fisheries that yield insights into the timing, and some short-term research into aquatic ecosystems that help to define the cascades of responses in time and space, yet much of fisheries science over the recent decade has been focused on annual data sets, ritualized data reductions, and "smoothing" procedures that minimize the information contents of the resulting information. The result has been less than satisfactory. Alternate procedures, and better integration of information are not only available, but timely to reconsider.
Avaria, S. 1985: Efectos de El Niño en las pesquerias del Pacifico Sureste. Invest. Pesq. (Chile) 32:101-116.
Belveze, H., and K.Erzini. 1984. The influence of hydroclimatic factors on the availability of the sardine (Sardina pilchardus, Walbaum). pp. 285-327 In: Proceedings of the Expert Consultation to Examine the Changes in Abundance and Species Composition of Neritic Fish Resources, (Sharp, G.D. and J. Csirke, eds.) San Jose, Costa Rica, 18-29 April 1983. FAO Fish Rep. Ser. 291, vol. 2
Crowley, T.J. 1983. The geologic record of climate change. Rev. of Geophys. 21:828-877.
Csirke, J. and G.D.Sharp, eds. (1984) Reports of the Expert Consultation to Examine the Changes in Abundance and Species Composition of Neritic Fish Resources, San Jose, Costa Rica, 18-29 April 1983. FAO Fish. Rep. Ser. No.291 (1). 102pp.
Cushing, D.H. 1982. Climate and Fisheries. 373pp. Academic Press, London.
DeVries, T.J. and W.G. Pearcy. 1982. Fish debris in sediments of the upwelling zone off central Peru: a late quaternary record. Deep-Sea Research 28:(1A):87-109.
Glantz, M.H. and L.E. Feingold. 1990. Climate variability, Climate Change and Fisheries. Study by NCAR Environmenatl and Societal Impacts Group for NOAA/NMFS and EPA. 137pp.
Gregg, M.C. 1980. Microstructure patches in the thermocline. AMS 10: 915-943. June 1980.
Kawasaki, T. (1984) Why do some fishes have wide fluctuations in their number? – A biological basis of fluctuation from the viewpoint of evolutionary ecology. pp 1065-1080 In: Proceedings of the Expert Consultation to Examine Changes in Abundance and Species Composition of N
Lasker, R. 1985. What limits clupeoid production. Can. J. Fish. Aquat. Sci. 42:31-38.
Leggett, W.C. and J.E. Carscadden. 1978. Latitudinal variation in reproductive characteristics of American shad (Alosa sapidissima): evidence for population specific life history stages in fish. J.Fish. Res. Board Can. 35:1469-1478.
Loeb, V. and O.Rojas. 1988. Interannual variation of ichthyo- plankton composition and abundance relations off northern Chile. Fish. Bull., U.S., 86(1):1-24.
Moser, H.G., P.E. Smith and L.E.Eber. 11987. Larval fish assemblages in the California Current region , 1954-1960, a period of dynamic environmental change. CALCOFI Reports XXVII:97-127.
Moum, J.N., D.R. Caldwell and C. A. Paulson. 1989. Mixing in the equatorial surface layer and thermocline. J. Geophys. Res. 94 C2:2005-2021.
Peterman, R.M. and M.J. Bradford. 1987. Wind speed and mortality rate of a marine fish, the northern anchovy, Engraulis mordax. Science. 235:354-356.
Pauly, D. and I. Tsukayama, eds. 1987. The Peruvian Anchoveta and its Upwelling Ecosystem: Three Decades of Change. IMARPE;GTZ;ICLARM, 351pp.
Pierrot-Bults, A.C., S. van der Spoel, B.J. Zahuranec and R.K. Johnson, eds. 1986. Pelagic biogeography. Proceedings of an International conference, The Netherlands, 29May-5 June, 1985. Unesco.Tech. Papers in Mar. Sci. 49:295pp.
Ropelewski, C.F., and M.S. Halpert. 1987. Global and regional scale precipitation patterns associated with El Niño/Southern Oscillation, Mon. Wea. Rev. 115:1606-1626.
Semtner, A.J., jr. and R. M. Chervin. 1988. A simulation of the global ocean circulation with resolved eddies. J. Geophys. res. 93(C12):15,502-15522.
Sharp, G.D. 1981. Report of the Workshop on Effects of Environmental Variation on the Survival of Larval Pelagic Fishes. pp 1-47 In: Report and Documentation of the Workshop on the Effects of Environmental Variation on the Survival of Larval Pelagic Fishes. (G.D.Sharp, conv., ed.). IOC Workshop Report Series, No.28, Unesco, Paris. 1981.
_ 1981. Atlas of Living Resources of the Sea. FAO, Rome. edited with J.-P. Troadec
_ 1986. Climate and fisheries: Cause and effect and the quest for elusive time series. pp 180-182 In: The Human Consequences of 1985’s Climate Conference (preprint volume) Held 4-7 August 1986, Asheville, North Carolina. American Meteorological Society.
_ 1987. Climate and Fisheries: Cause and effect, or managing the long and short of it all. Keynote presentation in the session on Harvesting in Complex Systems, of the 86 Symposium, held in Cape Town, South Africa, 8-12 September, 1986. Payne, A.I.L., J.A. Gulland and K.H. Brink, eds. So. Afr. J. Mar. Sci. 5:811-838.
_ 1988. Neritic systems and fisheries: their perturbations, natural and man induced.pp. 155-202 In: Ecosystems of the World: Part 27. Ecosystems of Continental Shelves (H. Postma and J.J.Zijlstra, eds.). Elseviers Scientific Publishing Company, Amsterdam-Oxford-New York.
_ in press. Climate and Fisheries: Cause and Effect: The formulation of an appropriate fisheries modeling context. in press. Presented at Fall 1988 American Fisheries Society meeting in Toronto.
_ in press. The initiation of a major oceanic tuna fishery from a purely physical basis. in review. Presented at the International Symposium on Operational Fisheries Oceanography, 23-27 October, 1989, St. John’s , Newfoundland
_ in press. Climate and Fisheries: Cause and Effect-A system review, presented at the International Symposium on the Long-term Variability of Pelagic Fish Populations and Their Environment, 14-17 November 1989, Sendai, Japan.
_ 1990. Climate Change, The Indian Ocean Tuna Fishery, and Empiricism, (included in a Report to EPA and NOAA from a workshop on the topic of Climate and Fisheries.) (M.H. Glantz and L.Feingold, eds.) NCAR/ESIG. Boulder,.
_ in press . Climate Change, The Indian Ocean Tuna Fishery, and Empiricism,.
In: Climate variability, climate change and fisheries. (M.H. Glantz, ed.) Cambridge University Press,
Sharp, G.D. and J. Csirke., eds. 1984.Proceedings and Report of the Expert Consultation to Examine the Changes in Abundance and Species Composition of Neritic Fish Resources, San Jose, Costa Rica, 18-29 April 1983. FAO Fish Rep. Ser. 291, vols. 2-3. 1294pp.
Shepherd, G. and C.B. Grimes. 1983. Geographic and historic variations in growth of weakfish, Cynoscion regalis, in the middle Atlantic Bight. Fish. Bull. U.S., 81(4):803-813.
Smith, P.E., and H.G. Moser. 1988. CalCOFI time series: an overview of fishes. CALCOFI Reports XXIX:66-80.
Soutar, A. and J.D.Isaacs. 1969. History of fish populations inferred from fish scales in anaerobic sediments off California CalCOFI Rep. XIII:63-70.
Southward, A.J. 1974b. Long term changes in abundance of eggs in the Cornish pilchard (Sardina pilchardus Walbaum) off Plymouth. J.Mar. Biol. Assn. UK NS 47:81-95.
Southward, A.J., E.I. Butler and L. Pennycuick. 1975. Recent cyclic changes in climate and abundance of marine life. Nature, 253:714-717.
Stebbing, A.R.D. 1981. Stress, health and homeostasis. Mar. Poll. Bull. 12(10):326-329.
Ulanowicz, R.E., M.L.Ali, A. Vivian, D.R. Heinle, W.A. Rickus and K.Summers. 1982. Identifying climatic factors influencing commercial fish and shellfish landings in Maryland. Fish. Bull., U.S., 80(3):611619.
Wyatt, T. and M.G. Larrañeta, eds. 1988. Long Term Changes in Marine Fish populations. Symposium held in Vigo, Spain, 18-21 Nov. 1986.