Putting Resilience Theory into Practice: The Example of Fisheries Management

By acknowledging a world of continuous change and reduced human control over nature, resilience theory thus suggests a wide range of potential changes to marine fisheries management for a changing ocean. Even the most modest of these, however, should inspire comprehensive amendments to both domestic and international fisheries law, particularly to their emphases on MSY. Full incorporation of resilience thinking, in turn, demands a longer-term and system-based perspective on marine management, empowering humans to make choices now to strengthen the ecological resilience of marine ecosystems to the changes that are still coming, increasing the chances that the ocean will remain a complex and biodiverse natural system far into the future