Publication Abstract

The ecology and management aspects of extensive mariculture, Introduction

J.-P. Troadec and S.J. Lockwood

When proposing that ICES convene a symposium on the ecology and management aspects of extensive aqua-culture, an important objective was to provide a forum where fisheries scientists of various disciplines could cross the artificial barriers, which often separate their specialities, to address issues of growing concern in the field of applied ecology. Extensive aquaculture was thought to offer a particularly appropriate topic for this purpose. Systems where Man manages the resource while Nature feeds it offer challenging opportunities for increasing production of large bodies of marine and fresh water. However, it is not simply on economic grounds that such systems are interesting. Investigations on conditions for extensive aquaculture development and management cover scientific topics that, irres-pective of the fields of economic activity, have become crucial for the efficient and sound utilization of aquatic ecosystems - e.g., the dynamics of recruitment processes, density-dependent effects, conservation of species and gene diversity, user rights, and institutions for resource allocation. Moreover, progress in under-standing them depends on the concerted input of ecology, aquaculture biology, population dynamics, economics, and modelling. Such ideas are developed by Troadec in the paper which opens this volume.

Reference:

J.-P. Troadec and S.J. Lockwood, 1991. The ecology and management aspects of extensive mariculture, Introduction. ICES Marine Science Symposium, 192: 1.