DISCOVERY-OEM: Ocean Ecosystems and Management

Maintaining long-term food security in a changing environment is one of the greatest challenges to the sustainable exploitation of the Earth System, including its oceans. The well publicised collapses of commercial fish stocks are one of the most striking examples of the failure to manage natural resources sustainably. All harvesting, however well managed, will have an effect on the ecosystems that support those fish populations. Nevertheless, these effects have had little influence on traditional approaches to managing fisheries. A recognition of the wider consequences of harvesting on the different components of the ecosystem lies at the heart of the scientific and political initiatives to implement ecosystem-based approaches to the management of fisheries.