The field of fisheries management has recently undergone a
paradigm shift. Traditional fisheries management assumed that
the productivity of fish populations was largely independent of
the physical environment and social-ecological changes. Fisheries
management models assumed that the recruitment of new fish
could be predicted based on the size of the adult population and
that the size of a fish population could be manipulated through
fishing pressure. Consequently, for close to 100 years fisheries
management has focused on regulating fishing pressure through,
for example, the number of boats, the size of fishing nets, and the
setting of a total allowable catch (Pauly et al. 2002, Bavington
2009). The new paradigm, known as an ecosystem approach to
fisheries, recognizes that fisheries are social-ecological systems
shaped over time by human activities that are both the cause and
result of ecological change (Wilson 2006).