There is widespread agreement about the need to implement EBFM (Brodziak & Link
2002; Pikitch et al. 2004; Pitcher et al. 2008) because the historic focus on single species
management has had the unintended consequence of declining populations of many other
species. Several guidelines for implementing EBFM have been published, such as in the
papers by the National Marine Fisheries Service (1998), Ward et al. (2002), and the FAO
(2005). These guidelines supply detailed instructions for implementing the principles,
goals, and policies of fishery management in an ecosystem context. Nevertheless, the effective
application of these guidelines in practice is questionable. Pitcher et al. (2008)
showed that of 33 countries representing 90% of the world’s fish catch, no countries
achieved good performance for EBFM implementation steps, while two-thirds (21 countries)
were unlikely to carry out EBFM implementation steps (fail grades). Canada and
the United States are the only two countries in this study with acceptable performance of
EBFM implementation steps, while Russia and Thailand have the worst performance of
EBFM implementation steps.