JAKFISH - Judgment and knowledge in Fisheries Management

  
 Judgment and knowledge in Fisheries Management
         

2008 - 2011

Client(s) & funding

EU

Objectives

Development of tools, practices and institutions that facilitate participatory modeling and decision-making in fisheries policies

Summary

The JAKFISH project offers opportunities for stakeholders and scientists to work together. JAKFISH is short for “Judgment and Knowledge in Fisheries involving Stakeholders”.

Background
The European policies for the marine environment are rapidly changing. The policies of the past were characterized by single-sector approaches (e.g. shipping, fishing, environment, etc) and by top-down regulations. The policies of the future are characterized by multi-sector approaches, integrated thinking and stakeholder involvement.

The introduction of the Regional Advisory Councils (RAC) has already initiated the greater involvement of stakeholder organizations in the fisheries policy process. But stakeholders’ organization like RACs will need to acquire scientific inputs into their policy contributions.

Participatory modeling and case studies
Participatory modeling is the process whereby scientists and stakeholders jointly develop flexible and transparent models. This is expected to enhance a common understanding of the current biological, fishery and management issues. Risks for the stocks and socio-economic consequences for the fisheries will be addressed. The comparison of different scenarios could help in agreeing on robust management plans. These approaches will be explored in four case studies:

• North Sea Nephrops fisheries: how to deal with data-poor stocks and fisheries that generate bycatches of other species
• Herring in Skagerrak, Kattegat and the Western Baltic: how to deal with stocks that mix and migrate over different management areas
• Herring in the Baltic Sea: how to assess and use the different mental models of stakeholders and scientists on herring dynamics in a comprehensive, Bayesian framework
• Swordfish in the Mediterranean: how to develop long term management plans for a stock that is shared over many countries with different interests.

In the JAKFISH project we will investigate how different actors in the marine sector use scientific knowledge, what roles scientists play in formulating policies and how governance approaches can be developed which enable policy decisions to address uncertainty and complexity. The project will collect and build on experiences from a diverse range of other policy areas like river basin management and forestry management.
 

Participating institutes
The 10 participating institutions reflect a wide range of expertise: ecology, fisheries science, social science and communication science and are well equipped to deal with the broad questions:

• IMARES, The Netherland (Coordinator)
• CEFAS, UK
• Aalborg University, Innovative Fisheries Management (IFM), Denmark
• Estonian Marine Institute, University of Tartu, Estonia
• Danish Technical University, National Institute of Aquatic Resources, Denmark
• University of Helsinki, Finland
• Institute for Marine Research, Norway
• University of Portsmouth, UK
• DIALOGIK, gemeinnützige Gesellschaft für Kommunikations- und Kooperationsforschung, Germany
• Hellenic Centre for Marine Research, Greece

Participating stakeholder organizations:

• North Sea RAC
• Baltic Sea RAC
• Pelagic RAC