Books:

1. Berrill, Michael. 1997. The Plundered Seas: Can the world’s fish be saved? Sierra Club Books: San Francisco.

   The Plundered Seas is a non-technical, impassioned account of the history and current state of fishing, what Berrill terms as a ‘biological war’ waged by humans against marine species. He effectively interlaces a lucid exposition of “the historic, economic, social, and political contexts” of fishing with strategies for change towards sustainable harvesting and the protection of species. Berrill focuses heavily on the particularities of the failures of both open access and domain-based fishery systems, and devotes several chapters to important individual fish species (cod, tuna, salmon).

2. Dyer, C. L., and J. R. McGoodwin (eds.). 1994. Folk management in the world’s fisheries: lessons for modern fisheries management. University Press of Colorado: Niwot, Colorado, USA.

   This book consists of a series of 12 articles or essays dealing with folk, or traditional, management in fisheries. The vast majority of the authors are fisheries social scientists (versus fisheries biologists) and are well-known in their fields. Examples of traditional management practices that have been both successes and failures are pulled mainly from North and South America. It is easy to read, well-written, relatively current, and well-organized.

3. OECD. 2000. Transition to responsible fisheries: economic and policy implications.

   The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) put together a 272-page book published in 2000 about the economic and policy ramifications of sustainable fisheries practices. Part 1 focuses on fisheries labor and adjustment to responsible fisheries. Part 2 deals with post-harvesting practices and policy. Government financial transfers and resource sustainability constitute Part 3. The final executive summary (Part 4) is comprised of modeling the transition to responsible fisheries with country-specific case studies. Although fairly technical, this book contains a large number of current statistics, graphs, and charts pertaining to world fisheries conservation and the movement towards sustainable fisheries practices. The species-specific and country-specific case studies in Part 4 are particularly interesting and provide examples of both successful and unsuccessful strategies with respect to future management strategies.

4. Sustaining Marine Fisheries. 1999. National Research Council. National Academy Press: Washington.

   Sustaining Marine Fisheries is an overview of the current state of the world’s marine fisheries and the potential of ‘ecosystem-based management’ to serve as a pathway towards sustainability. The book provides a concise summary of production trends, commercial fishing methods, and ecological diagnoses about the health of fisheries. The book advances the idea of ‘ecosystem-based management,’ a method that integrates conservative single-species management, precautionary approaches to harvesting, consideration of fishing impacts on other ecosystem services, and the use of biological indicators for assessing sustainability of fisheries.