Illusions and realities of the ecosystem approach to the study and management of marine and oceanic biological resources
详细信息   
摘要
The scientific and applied problem of the ecosystem approach to the management of marine biological resources arose during the last quarter of the 20th century as a component of the Rational Nature Use Concept. This occurred mostly because the existing fishery rules and concepts of the optimum yield theory, which were introduced in the practice of fishery regulations, have proven to be insufficiently effective to conserve biological resources and provide stability of the fishery resource base. The ecosystem approach to biological-resource management implies a change of the autecological studies of commercial stock units (populations) and the managerial single-species models for the sustainable-sized management, taking the impacts of the fishery on marine ecosystems into account, as well as those of marine ecosystems on the fishery. At present, the ecosystem-based biological-resource management includes a complex of ecological topics and issues, such as biodiversity conservation, effect of climate changes, sustainability of stocks and communities, interspecies relationships, multi-species fishery, conservation of rare species, protection of especially important water bodies and landscapes, biotope degradation, anti-pollution measures, invasive species, ranching aquaculture, genetic diversity, etc. The main current problem, besides insufficient knowledge of many of these issues, is how to practically integrate such a large number of parameters into the management system. Thus, the complicated and long-term problem of ecosystem management of marine biological resources should be solved step-by-step, following the progress in the technical capabilities and concepts of natural processes. As well, certain better-studied elements of the ecosystem approach should be implemented first in the practice of management, while taking the regional specifics into account.