Aquaculture & Fisheries

Fish Habitat, Ecology and Conservation

Fisheries and aquaculture meetings spotlight on Fish Habitat and ecological studies of physiological tolerances, predator avoidance and feeding, reproduction and life histories. Its unifying role is built on two postulations, introduced from that struggle is present interspecifically and intraspecifically under at least some situations, and that habitat features have some perseverance and predictability in space and time. Consistent with its central theoretical place in ecology, habitat science has added importantly to scientific opinion on pollution, coastal zone management and many other areas of environmental quality, even though it has been largely divorced from developments in fish population dynamics done for fisheries management. Commitments by most of agencies to apply an integrated, ecosystem to management of human activities in marine systems, poses new challenges to marine science advisors to organizations. Integrated management and ecosystem approaches both intrinsically require spatial thinking and spatial tools, building habitat science a particularly appropriate advisory framework, particularly because of this role of habitat in ecology. The vital mechanisms of biological dynamics, productivity, concentration, present much weaker opportunities for competition and less persistence and predictability, the foundations of theory and concepts behind current habitat science. This conference highlights thinking about 'habitat' that will be needed, if habitat science is to meet the advisory needs of the new approaches to management.