Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
and geographical redistribution occurs (i.e., Parmesan and Yohe 2003, Perry
et al. 2005, Duvly et al. 2008, Last et al. 2011).
In addition to the direct consequences of the natural environmental
changes, the human pressure by overfi shing, habitat destruction and
pollution (among others) is compromising the resilience of the marine
fi sh species (Brander 2010). The overfi shing reduces population's levels,
modifi es the age structure and the geographical distribution, making
the population less resilient to unfavorable environmental conditions
(Brander 2005, Brander 2010, Planque et al. 2010). It simplifi es the general
characteristics of marine populations making them more sensitive to
climate change. The high variability of declining populations resulting from
overfi shing and the growing climate uncertainty, represents a double-edge
issue impending natural communities in marine ecosystems worldwide
(Hsieh et al. 2006).
Combined with environmental changes and human pressure, climate
change will have a large impact on the distribution and magnitude of
maximum catch potential of marine fi sheries (Cheung et al. 2009). The
variability of fi sh stocks has major economic consequences for human
societies and has been increasing over time, though the most vulnerable
will be the small-scale fi sher-folk in the developing world that depend upon
few local populations (Halley and Stergiou 2005, Allison et al. 2009, Brander
et al. 2010). South America is considered to be highly vulnerable to climate
variability and change for presenting a combination of high economical
dependency on primary production, lack of appropriate public polices and
ecosystem based management, weak governance and little institutional
support (i.e., Pitcher et al. 2009, Allison et al. 2010, Brander et al. 2010).
The uncertainty is inherent of fi sheries management (Miller and Fluharty
1992) mainly because there is lack of information about the consequences
of climate change, especially in the southern-hemisphere (McIlgorm et al.
2010). Adaptation has become one of the major issues in planning, and
is based on revising the core functions of fi shing governance, that can be
accomplished by collecting data on stocks and environmental variables,
adjusting fi shing effort, reducing catch and emphasizing management tools
based on fl exibility (Badjeck et al. 2010). Up to now, the fi sheries managers
have tried to distinguish between the impacts due to climate change and
those produced by overfi shing with the objective to predict the fi rst one
and to control the second one. Nowadays, the challenge of the fi sheries
management is to understand the sources of variability in landings and
their interactions with external forcing (Perry et al. 2010b).
It is essential to identify ecological mechanisms capable of stabilizing
marine communities and strengthen their resilience in order to effi ciently
design management policies. It will be necessary to adopt a social-ecological
approach on the fi sheries management, which will require recognizing that
