The shifting policy focus towards Ecosystem Based Management in Fisheries (EBFM) requires the integration of knowledge and disciplines and the engagement of stakeholders to support decision-making processes. Scientists contribute to this through (i) participatory research projects, (ii) stakeholder partnerships and (iii) institutional scientific advice processes. Understanding the role of scientists in such processes, the nature of the interactions between scientists, stakeholders and managers in knowledge integration and the link between science and policy is an emerging field of research addressing transdisciplinary challenges. In 2018, Ifremer-UMR AMURE organized the workshop ‘Science, Partnership and Decision-support in Fisheries’ bringing together international scientists from natural and social sciences to conduct a review based on twenty concrete case studies. Findings indicate that science-stakeholder-manager partnerships for decision-support in fisheries can play an essential role in the transition to EBFM. To foster this transition, eight recommendations are presented that cover the roles of the different participants, the expectations of partnerships, capacity building, the integration of the social sciences, and funding structures. Further, it is recommended that future research and innovation framework programmes into sustainable fisheries and other ocean uses should explicitly include mechanisms to foster transdisciplinary approaches and the development of best practices. Building-up networks and developing reflexive approaches to review experiences and practices for transdisciplinary approaches in EFBM decision-support will contribute to design the next generation transdisciplinary platforms and generating actionable knowledge towards EBFM.

The Landing Obligation (LO) represents a fundamental change in European Union fisheries policy and it has a particularly significant bearing on the activities of Europe's fishing industry. This chapter provides an account of European fishing industry engagement with the discard issue prior to the LO and industry attitudes towards the LO. A discussion about discard management in Europe follows. The fishing industry had a consistent approach to discard management in the run-up to the LO enactment: they favoured fishery-specific discard reduction plans and were unanimously opposed to an outright 'discard ban'. Canvassing fishers' opinions from the North Sea (Denmark, France), Eastern and Western Mediterranean (Greece, Spain and France), the Celtic Sea (France, the UK and Ireland), Western English Channel (France) and the Azores between 2015 and 2018 reveals a consistent negative attitude towards the LO. We found that choke species are the main concern outside the Mediterranean Sea while in the Mediterranean region, the cost of disposal and the creation of a black market for juvenile fish are seen as the main negatives. Fishers recognise the necessity of reducing discards although zero discard fisheries are not seen as attainable. They favour a combination of selectivity improvements and spatial management as the best discard reduction measures. New measures to deal with intractable choke species problems are being sought by industry and Member State groups but the European Commission want existing measures to be utilised first. We discuss some potential consequences of negative stakeholders' attitudes towards this key element of EU fisheries management policy. These include control and compliance challenges, associated business reputation problems for the industry, a longer LO implementation timescale, and deterioration in the quality of scientific data about discards.

In many countries, policies regarding reduction of unwanted catch and discards are crafted in response to concerns regarding accountability, conservation, and waste as well as scientific needs to fully account for all sources of fishing mortality. It is important to note, however, that unwanted catch is minimal and most, or all, of the catch has value in some fisheries. Utilisation rates are very high, and discarding is generally not of concern in such fisheries which occur primarily, but not entirely, in developing countries. Where unwanted catch and discards are a concern, legislation may be prescriptive, as can be seen in the EU Landing Obligation (LO), and programmes established in e.g. Norway, Iceland, Argentina, Chile and New Zealand. Elsewhere, legislative language is intended to minimize unwanted catch but allows for some flexibility in developing strategies and solutions, as in the USA. The effectiveness of these approaches depends on many factors and all require effective cross-sectoral collaboration. Also essential is a comprehensive monitoring and control system which insures regulatory compliance and collection of adequate data to address scientific and management information needs. In this chapter, we evaluate the effectiveness of discard and unwanted catch reduction approaches under diverse legislative systems in different parts of the world, with reference to emerging practices under the LO. We consider the importance of finding the balance between top-down and bottom-up processes and look carefully at different governance/regulatory frameworks (e.g. input controls, output controls, quota management and transferability, cooperative/collaborative management), factors which encourage or discourage innovation and collaborative problem solving, monitoring and accountability. This is accomplished through case studies from selected fisheries around the world.

The lack of clarity in the objectives of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) must be addressed to create a more efficient balance across diverse ecological, economic and social dimensions. Particularly economic and social objectives present at an overarching level must be made explicit and addressed in lower level management measures, in order to link them to biological objectives and allow policy to build a balance across types of objectives. Selecting clear objectives is essential, particularly for policy impact assessment. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate how more specific high level objectives to managing fisheries can be derived from stakeholders. The paper first reviews the definition of objectives, from a historical and conceptual perspective. Secondly, it discusses the issues of manageability and acceptability, and finally describes an articulation of the high level objectives derived from extensive stakeholder consultations at European and regional level. The results from workshops at the European level to identify objectives were further examined at regional level for the Baltic and North Seas in additional individual consultations. The German case addresses two seas (Baltic and North Seas), has a complex governance structure (due to federalism) and significant roles for the three types of actors (industry, government and environmental NGOs). The analysis suggests that establishing higher level sustainability objectives within the CFP can help diverse interest groups to develop a consensus on management actions to meet complex social goals.

Failure to understand the potential responses of fishers to management measures creates a significant risk of revisiting the familiar scenario of perverse and unintended consequences of those measures. This paper reports on a choice experiment survey to evaluate fisher's preferences for various management measures proposed under the EU Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) reform process, but the conclusions have wider relevance as similar measures are used by comparable fleets in fisheries globally. The survey was conducted with fishers involved in mixed pelagic and demersal fisheries in Ireland, pelagic fisheries in Denmark and demersal fisheries in Greece. Fisheries management policies were characterized by five attributes designed both to cover the principal CFP reform proposals and to integrate ecological, social, economic and institutional factors affecting fisher's decisions. The study uses a random utility modelling framework to reveal the preferences of the fishers across the alternative policy attributes. Results show that while there are generally preferences both for healthy stocks and for maintaining the importance of fishing to the local community, strong interfishery preference differences exist. These differences are most notable in relation to a discard ban and to the use of individual transferable fishing rights, favoured in Denmark, but not in Ireland for instance. The strength of these interfishery differences supports the assertion that there are no panaceas in fisheries management and that solutions should be tailored within the context of specific fisheries. Not doing so could create a significant risk of inappropriately managed fisheries that may lead to unsustainable outcomes.

This study compares the details and performance of fisheries management between the EU and a selection of other countries worldwide: Iceland, New Zealand, and Australia, which are considered in many respects to be among the most advanced in the world in fisheries management. Fisheries management in the EU, Iceland, Australia, and New Zealand has developed following different paths, despite being based on similar instruments and principles. Iceland, Australia, and New Zealand have been at the forefront of developing management practices such as stakeholder involvement, legally binding management targets (Australia, New Zealand), individual transferable quotas, and discard bans (Iceland, New Zealand). The EU has since the beginning of the 21st century taken significant steps to better involve stakeholders and establish quantitative targets through management plans, and a landing obligation is gradually being implemented from 2015 onward. The management of domestic fisheries resources in Australia, New Zealand, and Iceland has, overall, performed better than in the EU, in terms of conservation and economic efficiency. It should, however, be stressed that, compared to Australia, New Zealand, and Iceland, (i) initial over-capacity was more of an issue in the EU when management measures became legally binding and also that (ii) EU has been progressive in developing common enforcement standards, on stocks shared by sovereign nations. The situation of EU fisheries has substantially improved over the period 2004–2013 in the northeast Atlantic, with fishery status getting close to that in the other jurisdictions, but the lack of recovery for Mediterranean fish stocks remains a concern.

A survey of past and existing management measures applied to different fisheries in European Western Waters is analyzed as a typology of co-management between governments and stakeholders. Faced with increasing constraints on accessing fish stocks, management measures have evolved toward fishing rights individualization, limited access and various other specific measures. Restrictions on access have changed fishermen's behaviour in several significant ways. A comparative analysis, based on qualitative data collected through interviews and focus groups, is developed for fisheries from the following European countries: France, Ireland, Spain and the United Kingdom. Past and existing individual harvesting rights in the four countries are reviewed and compared.

Achieving a balance between fishing capacity and fishing opportunities is one of the major challenges in European fisheries. One way to achieve this is to introduce individual tradable quotas or similar management measures. In several mackerel and herring fisheries in the Northeast Atlantic, such systems have already been introduced on a national basis and the long term economic gains of this have been acknowledged. This paper takes this a step further and investigates the potential economic gains from introducing individual tradable quotas between countries. Overall, the results show that the gross cash flow can be improved by 21% by allowing the mackerel and herring quotas to be traded internationally in the Northeast Atlantic. This rent gain arises mainly from increased productivity by allowing tradability between areas and fleets. The analysis also shows that the Danish pelagic fleet will gain from increasing its share of mackerel and herring quotas, whereas the Irish fleets are incentivised to sell quota, if individual quotas are allowed to be traded among countries. This result is in line with the qualitative analyses that show that Irish fishermen targeting herring in the Celtic Sea are negatively oriented towards international individual tradable quotas, whereas the Danish pelagic fishermen have strong preferences for international individual tradable quotas.

Failure to understand the potential responses of fishers to new management measures creates a significant risk of revisiting the familiar scenario of perverse and unintended consequences. This paper reports on a Choice Experiment survey to evaluate fishermen’s preferences for new management measures proposed under the recent EU Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) reform process. The survey was conducted with fishermen involved in mixed pelagic and demersal fisheries in Ireland, pelagic fisheries in Denmark and demersal fisheries in Greece. Fisheries management policies were characterised by five attributes designed both to cover the principal CFP reform proposals and to integrate ecological, social, economic and institutional factors. The paper uses a Random Utility Modelling framework to reveal the preferences of the fishermen for the alternative policy attributes and to analyse how respondents make trade-offs. Results show that while there are broad preferences both for healthy stocks and for maintaining the importance of fishing to the local community strong inter-fishery preference differences exist, most notably in relation to a discard ban, to the use of individual transferable fishing rights and to a certain extent to the prioritising of healthy fish stocks.

Traditionally fisheries management has focused on biomass and mortality, expressed annually and across large management units. However, because fish abundance varies at much smaller spatio-temporal scales, fishing mortality can potentially be controlled more effectively if managed at finer scale. The ecosystem approach requires more indicators at finer scales as well. Incorporating ecosystem targets would need additional management tools with potentially conflicting results. We present a simple, integrated, management approach that provides incentives for "good behaviour". Fishers would be given a number of fishing-impact credits, called real-time incentives ( RTIs), to spend according to spatio-temporally varying tariffs per fishing day. RTI quotas and tariffs could be based on commercial stocks and ecosystem targets. Fishers could choose how to spend their RTIs, e. g. by limited fishing in highcatch or sensitive areas or by fishing longer in lower-catch or less sensitive areas. The RTI system does not prescribe and forbid, but instead allows fishers to fish wherever and whenever they want; ecosystem costs are internalized and fishers have to take them into account in their business decisions. We envisage no need for traditional landings or catch quotas for the fleets while operating under the scheme. The approach could facilitate further devolution of responsibility to industry.

Sarah B. M. Kraak1,2*, Dave G. Reid2, Hans D. Gerritsen2, Ciarán J. Kelly2, Mike Fitzpatrick3, Edward A. Codling4,5, and Emer Rogan1 School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland Marine Institute, Rinville, Oranmore, Co. Galway, Ireland Coastal and Marine Research Centre, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Essex, Colchester, UK Department of Biological Sciences, University of Essex, Colchester, UK *Corresponding author: tel: +353 91 387392; fax: +353 91 387201; e-mail: sarah.kraak@marine.ie.

Results-based management requires that outcomes can be demonstrated by industry and verified by managers on behalf of society. The core questions are: what outcomes, and how can they be proved? Existing fishery approaches to reversing the burden of proof are examined with focus on how proof is demonstrated. Outcomes can be measured in situ (on the vessel) or ex situ (at the stock or ecosystem level). In situ measures are preferable because they give direct measurements, although they can be invasive and costly. Ex situ results are only observable on scales that make it difficult to attribute them to specific management measures, or they may be influenced by external factors. Three main environmental impacts caused by fishing are assessed with respect to how industry can assume the burden of proof. The combined use of vessel-monitoring systems and benthic-impact models may offer a practical solution to the problem of managing fishery impacts on the benthos. Three Irish fisheries are assessed in terms of the feasibility of reversing the burden of proof. There are limits to the extent to which industry can assume the burden of proof, and the concept of sharing the burden of proof could be more realistic.