Key issues for European ecosystem based fisheries management

Ecosystem based fisheries management (EBFM) aims to maintain healthy ecological systems as well as sustainable exploitation and benefits to social systems. However, the operationalization of EBFM may be hampered by a variety of factors, including lack of clarity about key priorities, lack of adequate knowledge and lack of management responses. We derived key concern topics in European-wide consultations of scientists and stakeholders, investigated the knowledge available for each of these topics and compared both to existing European management indicators to determine the degree to which key topics, knowledge, and management indicators align. The identified issues of relevance to EBFM advice included almost as many topics related to human wellbeing as to ecological wellbeing for all stakeholder groups. The frequency of topics varied among regions but did not differ between non-scientist stakeholder groups. Comparison of the balance between topics revealed large differences between regions in the available knowledge in spite of extensive consistency among key topics. This leaves local and Europe-wide “blind spots” for managers when trying to make informed decisions. Knowledge is particularly limited on the links between fisheries and human well-being, endangered, threatened and protected species and other human drivers such as pollution. Further, management indicators on these areas of limited knowledge and goals that consider interactions between different components of the ecosystem are also lacking. These gaps need to be resolved to harvest the full ecological and social benefits of European EBFM.