FISHERIES IMPACT ON THE ECOSYSTEM
The ecosystems that support fisheries, together with other economic activities, are subject to a
number of alterations of significant relevance to their functioning and resilience and to the goods - 10 -
and services they can provide. Because of our imperfect understanding of ecosystem structure and
functioning, as well as the inherent difficulty of distinguishing between natural and human-induced
changes, the latter are not always perfectly predictable and/or reversible (Christensen et al., 1996).
The following sections elaborate briefly on some types of alteration