Summary

This chapter briefly summarizes the history of scientific understanding of the fluctuations of small pelagic fishes and fisheries. The classical quantitative models underlying modern fishery analysis and management were developed in the 1950s and 1960s. Although California and Japan had previously experienced collapses of major fisheries for small pelagics in the 1940s and 1950s, it was the collapse of the “scientifically managed” Peruvian anchoveta fishery in the early 1970s that drew worldwide attention to the problem of collapsing small pelagic fisheries. The inability of the anchoveta to regain its former levels of productivity cast doubt on the classical equilibrium fishery models. In the late twentieth century, substantial progress was made toward understanding the environmental influences on these fishes. Some of the major environmental influences (which often may not be specifically identified) fluctuate at interdecadal time scales, giving rise to prolonged periods of high and low fish productivity, abrupt transitions including collapses, global teleconnections and phase relationships. These so-called “regimes” have recently become a major topic of research in fishery science. Despite scientific progress in understanding many facets of these fisheries and their fluctuations, there still is no accepted theory of the fishery–oceanographic dynamics of small pelagic fishes that links their commonly shared properties and that provides the predictive capability needed for ecosystem-based management.

Introduction

This history of small pelagic fisheries focuses specifically on the development of a scientific understanding of their dynamics, especially regarding their problematic fluctuations in abundance. Fréon et al. (2005) describe several distinct historical periods in the study of pelagic fish stocks, a system that is adopted for this review.