Publication Abstract

There is every reason to believe that the biology and dynamics of marine fish populations are no less complex than those of terrestrial animals. However, the technical problems of “observing” (in its widest sense) how individuals and populations behave and function in their natural environment has always been a fundamental problem in the development of our understanding of the processes that affect and regulate fish populations and, consequently, the rules and assumptions used to model the responses of fish populations to exploitation and management actions.

 

Since Beverton and Holt wrote their seminal work On the Dynamics of Exploited Fish Populations, there has been unprecedented development in the technologies available to study fish at sea and in our ability to model and predict population processes. These include, inter alia, fisheries acoustics, telemetry, molecular genetics, stable isotope microchemistry and computationally intensive modelling. In addition, developments in the technologies available to study the marine environment and to model environmental processes now allow us to integrate fish biology and the environment in a way never previously possible.

 

Here we explore what new technologies exist and what they may hold for the future understanding of fish biology and the development of fisheries science.