Fisheries Management

• Lecture Outline

– Personal information

– Syllabus

– Introduction and History of Fisheries Management

– Bring graph paper to lab

• Assignments

– Read pp. 3 – 30 in Inland Fisheries Management

What is Fisheries Management?

1) Fishery – A system composed of three interacting components: habitat, biota, and humans (Willis and Murphy 1996)

2) Fisheries management - The manipulation of aquatic organisms, aquatic environments, and their human users to produce sustained and ever increasing benefits for people (Nielsen 1996)

History of Fisheries Management

1) Chinese (2,000 B.C.) – raised common carp for food

2) Egyptians (1,500 B.C.) – took part in recreational fishing

3) Native Americans (???) – Harvesting of fishes and shellfish are a major part of their culture

4) 1652 – Massachusetts law restricting fish catches

5) 1783 - Treaty of Paris

6) 1869 – Completion of transcontinental railway

7) 1870 – American Fish Culturist Association

8) 1871 – Development of the U.S. Fish Commission to investigate the decline in commercial fisheries

9) 1926 – Black Bass Act

10) 1950 – Dingell-Johnson Act (Federal Aid in Sport Fish Restoration Act)

11) Fish and Wildlife Act of 1956 - Established the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries in the Fish and Wildlife Service