ECOSYSTEM CHARACTERISTICS
There are two major sets of challenges to the adoption and implementation of EAF. The first set is
rather familiar to all fisheries managers as it is at the origin of the conventional management failure.
It relates to the adjustment of fishing capacity to the resources’ productivity and its implications in
terms of use rights and resource allocation. The problems and the potential solutions are well
known and thoroughly dealt with elsewhere in the literature. We shall not dwell on them here. The
second set is “new”, at least to the fisheries arena, or has recently got a new and higher level of
priority in policy, the media and with a growing fraction of society at large. It relates to ecosystem
issues of key relevance to EAF such as: (1) the characteristics of ecosystems, their complexity,
structure, functioning, natural variability and boundaries, and (2) their modification and degradation
by fisheries and other land- and sea-based economic activities. Both are further elaborated below.