Symposium overview, themes and sessions

Scientific program overview (2019)

The pressure on many exploited species for nutrition and recreation continues to increase in concert with demand for responsible and sustainable harvests. Contemporary fisheries management requires continual innovation and adaptation to meet these demands. Stock enhancement, sea ranching and restocking (aquaculture-based enhancement) are fisheries management strategies involving the use of aquaculture technologies to restore or enhance fisheries. After more than a century of development, these strategies have transitioned into tools commonly used to manage exploited or threatened populations of marine, estuarine and freshwater species. Contemporary fisheries management also includes habitat-based strategies that are broadly aimed at enhancing fisheries productivity, including habitat rehabilitation and restoration, and artificial reef deployment. While it is clear that increases in fisheries productivity are desired in many cases to meet growing demand, the measures employed must be responsible, effective, opportune, socially acceptable, and economically and ecologically sustainable over the long term. Changing environmental pressures acting at a global scale and the degraded state of many coastal ecosystems creates additional challenges. From Nov. 10-14, 2019, the 10th FSU-Mote International Symposium on Fisheries Ecology and the 6th International Symposium on Stock Enhancement and Sea Ranching joined forces to hold a combined symposium in Sarasota, Florida, to explore the scientific basis and practice of aquaculture-based and habitat-based fisheries enhancement, and identify where these approaches can be improved and integrated to provide innovative solutions and create new opportunities for resource management.

Symposium themes (2019)

a. Developments in the science base of aquaculture-based enhancement: Ecology, genetics, and human dimensions

b. Improving fisheries through habitat rehabilitation, artificial reefs, oyster reefs and spawning reefs

c. Hatchery technologies to improve enhancement outcomes and manage genetic risks

d. Ecological dimensions: Fisheries ecology, fisheries enhancement, and the broader ecosystem

e. Fisheries enhancement in support of recreational fisheries

f. Commercial-scale enhancement: Successes, failures and impediments

g. Re-stocking and restoration aquaculture

h. Integrating aquaculture-based and habitat-based fisheries enhancements: New technologies to maximise outcomes and create opportunities

i. Social and economic dimensions of fisheries enhancement programs

j. Legislation, policy and governance: Are policies supporting responsible enhancement keeping up with opportunities?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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