Discuss international measures that would promote the conservation of fish, including methods used to measure conservation of fish stocks.

measures to promote conservation: [3 max]

reduce total allowable catch below maximum sustainable yield/MSY;

limit areas where fishing can take place;

decrease total net size;

increase mesh size to let immature fish through / set minimum landing sizes for fish;

reduce fishing effort;

reduce/stop subsidies for increasing size of fleet;

methods used to measure conservation: [3 max]

monitor fish catches;

calculate the mass of fish that can be removed annually / maximum sustainable yield;

required knowledge of birth rate, growth rate of fish and mortality rates;

can be estimated by looking at age structure of landed fish;

can be estimated by catch per fishing effort;

The answers here were often mediocre.

The most popular mark points seen were:

• Limiting areas where fishing can take place;
• Decrease total net size ( including then the use of drag nets);
• Increasing mesh size to let immature fish through;

The methods to promote the conservation of fish stocks were acceptable, but methods used to measure conservation of stock were often poor. Some answers though did include required knowledge of age of landed fish as a mark point. Few could reliably suggest ways of monitoring catches; many did suggest capture-mark-recapture, but then went on to correctly criticise this as a method being restricted to e.g. lakes. Others wrote about electric-counting, which is limited to rivers.

The main problem seen here was the use of correct vocabulary concerning fishing and fishing efforts, maximum sustainable yields and so on.