Some fisheries have been managed to the second stage of the EBFM process, which
takes into account the direct effects of fishing (e.g., by using turtle excluder devices and
by-catch reduction devices such as shrimp trawls in the United States). In British
Columbia, some fisheries have also reached the second stage of EBFM because traceable
environmental effects are included in their management plans. For instance, commercial
groundfish bottom trawling has high impacts on benthic habitats of Canada’s Pacific
marine waters (Ban et al. 2010). These impacts have been taken into account in the
integrated fisheries management plan of in Pacific Region (Fisheries and Oceans Canada
2011a). Numerous studies have looked at the less traceable environment effects on
fisheries, such as those by Pauly et al. (1998), Knowler et al. (2001), and Smith (2007). It
is hard to find these effects taken into account in fishery management plans and British
Columbia is no exception. Climate change is one of the key factors affecting fisheries in
the province. The Strait of Georgia has warned almost 1°C over the past 40 years, which
may result in declining production of Pacific salmon (Beamish & Riddell 2009); however,
this impact has not been included in the integrated fisheries management plans of salmon
fisheries in Pacific Region (Fisheries and Oceans Canada 2011b, 2011c).