We thought we’d join the crowd and start to use the term that seems to be trickling into the vocabulary at most of the marine resource discussions going on all around us.  Many are convinced that this is the way to go for future managing of all our ocean waters.  Ecosystem-Based Management; there we’ve said it and it does sound profound, scientific and perhaps even philosophical.

 The question is, however, what does it mean?  There are some who feel that they have it all figured out and still others who haven’t got a clue.  The truth is there hasn’t been any final judgment on exactly what the term should mean.  Once that debate is finally settled, the next question will be what to do with it.

 The Stellwagen Bank Sanctuary is just one group that has been wrestling with an ecosystem based management concept and has quoted as a guide, the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy’s suggestion as to what it should mean.  It goes like this:

 “Ecosystem-based management looks at all the links among living and non-living resources, rather than considering single issues in isolation.  This system of management considers human activities, their benefits, and their potential impacts within the context of the broader biological and physical environment.  Instead of developing a management plan for one issue (such as a commercial fishery or an individual source of pollution), ecosystem-based management focuses on the multiple activities occurring within specific areas that are defined by ecosystem, rather than political, boundaries.”

 Okay, that sounds pretty good, so now what?

 Taking a look at what is included for an “ecosystem”, we could list such things as fish stocks, habitat, water temperatures, food supply for fish species – plankton etc., water quality, impacts of various commercial projects, fishing operations and the great mystery term, the North Atlantic Oscillation theory.  We won’t go there right now on that last term.  Suffice to say, there might be other considerations but those listed probably cover most of the items.

 Fishermen actually have been discussing these issues for some time but may not have realized it.  An example of this has been the frequently mentioned predator-prey relationship.  Managers and their “Plans” have brought back one fish stock just to find that these recovered stocks tend to devoir another species and so management plans turn to restoring the other affected species and the circle goes ‘round and ‘round.  Bass and cod stocks are growing.  They eat lobsters and a lot of them.  We then work to protect lobsters and raise more food for the cod and bass.  How about the dogfish, that don’t exist, but do and they eat everything?  What about water temperatures, water pollution, habitat disruption and how they affect fish stocks and plankton feed?  Some of these factors, as we’ve seen, drive species away rather actually killing them but they all can affect an ecosystem.

 It all boils down to a balancing act but that hasn’t, so far, been the way Ocean Management has been handled.  It’s been one species or one project at a time and we haven’t been very successful at looking at what one decision made has done to another part of the marine system. 

There are now a number of workshops being planned to discuss this whole concept and here comes another question or two.  How do we settle into one unified definition of ecosystem-based management and then how can this be moved into the fishery management arena? 

The answers to these questions are still floating somewhere amid the waves but are likely to wash ashore soon.  It is perhaps time for those in the fishery management system to figure out how to look at a bigger picture then just always hitting the fishermen over and over again and placing the blame on the fishing side of the equation.  You can’t have a healthy marine ecosystem and healthy fish stocks unless the balancing act is accepted as being necessary and a better job is done to achieve it.

 The buzz is balancing natures marine bounty.

  Bill Adler, Executive Director