A new debate in fisheries science; hoping to practice what I preach

Fisheries science is known for having several high-profile controversies; and there is a new one these days: ‘balanced harvesting’. At issue is whether or not we should shift towards a fisheries management philosophy that tries to spread fishing pressure across all sizes and species of fish in an ecosystem – harvesting each size and species in proportion to…

Case Study: The Hilborn-Worm debate on the status of global fisheries

–Matt Burgess- In July 2009, a group of scientists, led by Boris Worm of Dalhousie University and Ray Hilborn of the University of Washington, published a study in the prestigious journal Science synthesizing the current state of knowledge on the status of global fisheries. The study found that a large fraction of well-studied fish populations have been severely depleted…