Environmental Management Ecosystem vs. Engineering System Theory Approach Modeling and Analysis: Risk Management System as a Managerial Tool

Fisheries management can take the form of input control, output control, or a combination of both. Input controls introduce:

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  Rules on Access to Waters:To control which vessels have access to which waters and areas.

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  Controls:To limit fishing capacity and vessel usage. Fishing effort management is a combination of limitations to the fleet capacity and the amount of time that can be spent at sea by that fleet. Often effort restrictions are applied in addition to the more generally used system of total allowable catches.

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  Fishing effort restrictions have been introduced in a number of situations: under multiannual plans for the management of a specific stock or group of stocks, and more generally area-based.

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  Technical Measures:To regulate gear usage and where and when fishermen can fish - Technical measures are a broad set of rules which govern how, where and when fishermen may fish. They are established for all European sea basins, but they differ considerably from one basin to another, in accordance with the regional conditions. The measures may include:

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    Minimum landing sizes and minimum conservation sizes

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    Specifications for design and use of gears

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    Minimum mesh sizes for nets

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    Requirement of selective gears to reduce unwanted catches;

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    Closed areas and seasons;

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    Limitations on by-catches (catches of unwanted or non-target species);

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    Measures to minimize the impact of fishing on the marine ecosystem and environment.

Output controls mainly consist of limiting the amount of fish from a particular fishery through total allowable catches. Total allowable catches (TACs) or fishing opportunities, are catch limits (expressed in tones or numbers) that are set for most commercial fish stocks. The Commission prepares the proposals, based on scientific advice on the stock status from advisory bodies such as ICES The international Council for exploration of the Sea and STECF (Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries). Some multi-annual plans contain rules for the setting of the TACs. TACs are set annually for most stocks (every two years for deep-sea stocks) by the Council of fisheries ministers. For stocks that are shared and jointly managed with non-EU countries, the TACs are agreed with those (groups of) non-EU countries.

TACs are shared between EU countries in the form of national quotas. For each stock a different allocation percentage per EU country is applied for the sharing out of the quotas. This fixed percentage is known as the relative stability key. EU countries can exchange quotas with other EU countries.

EU countries have to use transparent and objective criteria when they distribute the national quota among their fishermen. They are responsible for ensuring that the quotas are not overfished. When all the available quota of a species is fished, the EU country has to close the fishery.

The Common Fisheries Policy increasingly has recourse to multi-annual plans which often combine different management tools.

Fisheries management is based on data and scientific advice, and control measures to ensure that rules are applied fairly to and complied with by all fishermen. (EC, 2014 b).