Over-fishing in the Great Lakes: the context and history of the controversy
Keywords:
Ecosystem, Stresses, Disintegration, Rehabilitation, Rights, ResponsibilitiesAbstract
The issue of over-fishing has spawned controversy in the Laurentian Great Lakes since the early 1800s. Aboriginal, domestic, commercial food, aquacultural and recreational fisheries have experienced a number of different types of over-fishing that have contributed to the fishing-up sequence in the lakes. Some effects of fish habitat destruction by many environmental abuses interacted synergistically with inappropriate fishing practices. The fish communities near larger settled areas ‘hit the wall’ ecologically beginning in the late 1800s. The fisheries of the whole basin ‘hit the wall’ politically in the period 1955–1968. Since 1968, a managerial transformation to an ecosystem approach has occurred, from a modern progressive approach to a new self-organizing redevelopment approach in which biotic and abiotic interests are more balanced than previously. Controversy continues as emergent grass-roots regimes seek alternatives to remnant and senescent institutional arrangements or seek partnership arrangements with new governance institutions.
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