Modeling Atlantic herring fisheries as multiscalar human-natural systems
Introduction
Environmental challenges of the modern era, including climate change, species invasion, biodiversity loss, and food/nutrition insecurity, affect the depth and complexity of connections between humans and ecosystems (Vitousek et al., 1997; Parmesan and Yohe, 2003; Godfray et al., 2010; Blackburn et al., 2019). Amid the rapid pace of science and technology in our globalized world, it is increasingly feasible to understand how environmental challenges manifest locally, regionally, and globally. Global couplings—interactions between humans and nature over long distances—are the subject of a recently developed framework (telecoupling; Liu et al., 2013) for evaluating how people influence, and are influenced by, ecosystems far removed from where they reside. For example, biofuel mandates in the European Union and the United States elicit deforestation in the tropics, and fisheries harvest in Peru affects soybean and wheat supplies across the globe (Liu et al., 2015; Carlson et al., 2018a; Hull and Liu, 2018). The telecoupling framework has been recognized as a research priority by the Global Land Programme and the United Nations and applied to diverse social-ecological phenomena (e.g., agricultural trade, species invasion, ecotourism, water transfer; Liu et al., 2019). Despite its growing visibility and applications, the telecoupling framework captures merely one component of our globalized, hyperconnected world: distant social-ecological connections. People and ecosystems are also connected regionally and locally, demanding a conceptual and analytical framework akin to telecoupling but which explicitly accounts for human-nature couplings at smaller spatial scales.
A local-regional-global coupling framework termed “metacoupling” (Liu, 2017) is one such approach. Local-regional-global couplings (metacouplings) are human-nature interactions that occur within individual (local) coupled human and natural systems (Type 1 interactions) and between adjacent systems (Type 2) and distant systems (Type 3; Fig. 1). By juxtaposing these coupling levels and interactions, the metacoupling framework is useful for evaluating the relative importance of local, regional, and global human-nature interactions and thereby determining potential ecological or policy interventions. To date, the metacoupling framework has been applied to topics such as giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) conservation, agricultural trade, and marine and freshwater fisheries management (Liu, 2017; Schaffer-Smith et al., 2018; Herzberger et al., 2019; Carlson et al., 2020a, b,c). Studies have typically described local-regional-global interactions and policy implications rather than modeled or predicted these multiscalar connections. Hence, there is a need to connect theory and practice through quantitative local-regional-global coupling models that inform resource policy and management.
As coupled human and natural systems spanning individual locations, regions, and the globe, fisheries are ideal systems for operationalizing the metacoupling framework. Whether industrial (large-scale and commercial), artisanal (small-scale and commercial), subsistence (small-scale and non-commercial—primarily for consumption), or recreational (small-scale and non-commercial—primarily for pleasure; Pauly et al., 2020), fisheries are multiscalar systems encompassing human-nature interactions between people, fishes, and habitats. For example, site-specific catches and local market sales of artisanal fishers can be affected by local and regional distribution of industrial fishing vessels, which in turn reflect regional and global policies of fisheries agencies and fishing companies (Crona et al., 2015). Although international connections among fisheries ecosystems and human systems are increasingly investigated (Österblom and Folke, 2015; Tapia-Lewin et al., 2017), studies rarely assess fisheries catches at local, regional, and global scales over multidecadal time scales. There is a pressing need for such multiscalar fisheries catch information as billions of people throughout the world, including many in developing nations, depend on fisheries for food, income, livelihoods, and poverty alleviation. Fish are a relatively affordable source of omega-3 fatty acids and micronutrients and supply 4.5 billion people with ≥ 15 % of their animal-derived protein (Béné et al., 2015; Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), 2020a). In addition, the diverse array of fishing sectors, locations, and fisher identities causes multiscalar connections between global policies and local conventions that affect fish stocks, habitats, and people in unique ways. For these reasons, it is imperative to develop quantitative approaches to operationalize fisheries metacoupling research, particularly at spatial scales relevant for contemporary fisheries management (e.g., exclusive economic zones [EEZs] in marine fisheries, states and provinces in freshwater fisheries).
As one of the world’s most abundant and harvested fishes, Atlantic herring (Clupea harengus, hereafter “herring”) is important nutritionally, culturally, and socioeconomically throughout its range in the North Atlantic Ocean from Canada to Northern/Western Europe and the Arctic (Tacon and Metian, 2009). In 1950–2014, herring was caught by 28 nations—86 % of which were from Europe—at a variety of scales (i.e., nations in their own waters, adjacent waters, and distant waters) by industrial, artisanal, subsistence, and recreational fishers using numerous gear types, including purse seines, bottom and pelagic trawls, longlines, gillnets, hand lines, small-scale encircling nets, and recreational fishing gear (Pauly et al., 2020). Herring is used primarily for fishmeal and fish oil production and direct human consumption, both intranationally and internationally (Cashion et al., 2016; Norwegian Seafood Council, 2020). In addition, herring is an important forage species for marine organisms such as Atlantic bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus), cods (Gadidae), killer whales (Orcinus orca), and Atlantic puffin (Fratercula arctica; Richard et al., 2017; Leo et al., 2018). Given the local, regional, and global importance of herring fisheries and the management significance of determining how catches interact across sectors and spatial scales, there is a need for metacoupling research specifically focused on herring.
The goal of this study was to use the local-regional-global metacoupling framework to understand past and present, and predict future, herring catches and fishing-sector interactions to better manage herring fisheries as multiscalar human and natural systems. Unless otherwise noted, “catches” are EEZ- and year-specific sums of: (1) catches reported to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and (2) catches unreported to the FAO and estimated using Sea Around Us (Pauly et al., 2020) catch reconstruction (see below). Our first objective was to assess herring catches over 65 years with available data (1950–2014) across multiple scales: local (catches by nations in their own EEZs), regional (in adjacent EEZs), and global (in distant EEZs). Our second objective was to generate models to quantitatively understand and predict how fishing sectors (industrial, artisanal, subsistence, recreational) interact locally, regionally, and globally. Our final objective was to compare local, regional, and global couplings in EEZs across the range of herring worldwide to yield insights for fisheries management that increases economic gains without destabilizing herring fisheries. We hypothesized that fishing-sector interactions would be largely positive and future catches stable to increasing given the expanding global population and sheer abundance of herring (IUCN, 2020). However, we also predicted that fishing-sector competition (e.g., artisanal-industrial, artisanal-recreational) would have management relevance because it can directly and indirectly affect income, employment, food supplies, and food/nutrition security of fishers across sectors (Crona et al., 2015; Prato et al., 2016). In light of the metacoupling framework’s growing applications in natural resources (e.g., water, marine and freshwater fisheries, crops, soil; Liu, 2017; Schaffer-Smith et al., 2018; Herzberger et al., 2019; Carlson et al., 2020a, b,c), we anticipated that metacoupling models would yield useful insights for herring management and governance locally, regionally, and globally.
Section snippets
Metacoupling framework
Herring catches were subdivided into three broad classes. Type 1 catches result from fishing by nations within their own EEZs, including territories, collectivities, and other administrative divisions (Fig. 1). Type 2 catches represent fishing by nations in adjacent EEZs (shared land/maritime borders), whereas Type 3 catches denote fishing in distant (non-adjacent) EEZs (Fig. 1). The three classes encompassed six unique fishing types: Type 1 artisanal (small-scale commercial), subsistence
Catches by reporting status
Unreported catches represented a small percentage of total reconstructed catches, averaging 9.3 ± 0.3 % (SEM) across the study area in 1950–2014 (Figure S1). Over this time span, unreported catches were proportionally smallest in Norway (5.8 ± 0.3 %) and less than 15 % of total reconstructed catches in all EEZs except Poland (16.7 ± 2.2 %), Denmark (Baltic Sea, 17.6 ± 1.3 %), and the Netherlands (23.6 ± 1.3 %; Table 1, Figure S2, S3). Reported and total reconstructed catches exhibited
Discussion
Our study illustrates how metacouplings are widespread, spatially and temporally variable phenomena affecting Atlantic herring fisheries throughout the world. Although research on fisheries as coupled human and natural systems is growing (Crona et al., 2015; Österblom and Folke, 2015; Tapia-Lewin et al., 2017), few studies have explicitly considered local, regional, and global scales and associated interactions among fishing sectors, leaving considerable knowledge gaps regarding the structure,
Data availability statement
Datasets analyzed in this study can be found at the Sea Around Us (http://www.seaaroundus.org/) and are available on request to the corresponding author.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Andrew K. Carlson: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Validation, Formal analysis, Data curation, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing, Visualization, Project administration, Funding acquisition. Daniel I. Rubenstein: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Resources, Writing - review & editing, Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition. Simon A. Levin: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Resources, Writing - review & editing, Supervision,
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
We thank members of the Sea Around Us project, particularly D. Pauly, D. Zeller, and M. L. D. Palomares for developing an excellent database for fisheries science. We thank members of the Rubenstein and Levin labs at Princeton University (especially M. Andrews, J. Bak-Coleman, A. Gersick, S. Hex, J. Kariithi, Y. Li, and E. Krueger) for constructive feedback on this manuscript and related research. Funding in support of this research has been provided by Office of the Dean for Research
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