Multi-species considerations in planning methodologies for possible joint South African-Namibian hake assessments

Abstract

There are increasing pressures for an EAF (an Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries - Garcia et al. 2003) both in South Africa and Namibia as well as world-wide. The management of the major South African and Namibian fisheries is currently based on single-species approaches although it has been appreciated for some time that there is a need to consider the potential impacts of inter-species interactions. The latter needs to be done taking due account of uncertainty in both data inputs and current understanding of multi-species interactions.