Fisheries Success and Failure: The Case of the Bristol Bay Salmon Fishery

Author(s):

Journal or Book Title: Bulletin of Marine Science

Volume/Issue: 78/3

Page Number(s): 487-498

Year Published: May 2006

Abstract:

Many of Alaska’s salmon fisheries are models of biological success, with management structures that have maintained biomass, stock diversity, and biological yield. At the same time the fisheries face severe challenges due to low product price, and have been declared formal “economic” disasters by state and federal agenciesin recent years. From many perspectives, these fisheries are in crisis. I explore how the governance system for Alaska’s Bristol Bay fishery has led to biological success and economic failure. I review a range of alternative governance structures, in place or being considered, that might provide for social and economic sustainability. Ialso demonstrate that the basic biological principal that has guided management, maximum sustainable yield, is a serious impediment to social and economic sustainability.

Type of Publication: Journal Article

Publisher: University of Miami - Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science

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National Science Foundation (NSF) - The only federal agency whose mission includes support for all fields of fundamental science and engineering, except for medical sciences. We are tasked with keeping the United States at the leading edge of discovery in areas from astronomy to geology to zoology. So, in addition to funding research in the traditional academic areas, the agency also supports "high-risk, high pay-off" ideas, novel collaborations and numerous projects that may seem like science fiction today, but which the public will take for granted tomorrow.

Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability, Michigan State University - A center of excellence that integrates ecology with socioeconomics, demography, and other disciplines for ecological sustainability from local, national, to global scales.

Global Land Project - A joint research project for land systems in the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme and the International Human Dimensions Programme.

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Fisheries Success and Failure: The Case of the Bristol Bay Salmon Fishery

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