How much fish have we got?

This results in an accommodation of the creeping disappearance of resource species, and the application of inappropriate reference points for the evaluation of economic losses due to over fishing, and the identification of targets for rehabilitation policies.

To resolve this problem, criteria for selecting key aquatic resources (stocks) within particular large marine ecosystems have been developed:

• Examine the patterns of long term change in selected coastal ecosystems and thereby establish targets for the restoration and sustainable use of living marine resources.

• Identification, validation and assembly of historical data (e.g. biomass, mean size, maturity, fecundity) relating to key aquatic resources in selected large marine ecosystems (LMEs)

• Collation, analysis and dissemination of the historical data collected and processed.

• Establish baselines against which the current status of aquatic resources and LMEs can be evaluated and restoration goals can be set.
  
  

Historical data on catch and effort, biomasses, length-frequencies, maximum sizes, size and age at maturity, growth rates, natural mortality, etc. are assessed, collated and analyzed to establish baselines against which the current status and restoration goals of key aquatic resources are assessed.

Likewise, historical data on catch and effort, production, biomasses, predator-prey interactions, flows, and habitat change are mined, assessed, collated and analyzed to establish baselines against which the current status and restoration goals of selected marine ecosystems can be assessed.

The development of this work has now come to its peak by developing the searchable datasets online and the Back flash files that explains and verifies that shifts in baselines have taken place and the causes behind them.

Shifting Baselines research group is the Workpackage 2 of the large scale research project INCOFISH. It is an EU funded project with scientific participants from 35 institutions and private enterprises from 22 nations worldwide.

The objectives of INCOFISH are to conduct specifically targeted strategic research suitable to contribute to the goals set by the World Summit for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, such as restoring healthy fish stocks and ecosystems by 2015.

For more information and images, see: http://www.coml.org/medres/newzealand/nz-images.htm