Book Reviews

Sustainable Fisheries—Are We There Yet?

Making Seafood Sustainable: American Experiencesin Global Perspective. Blackford, M. 2012. Universityof Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, PA. 296 pp. $45.00(hardcover). ISBN 978–0–8122–4393–2.

All the Fish in the Sea: Maximum Sustainable Yieldand the Failure of Fisheries Management. Finley, C.2011. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL. 224 pp.$35.00 (hardcover). ISBN 978–0226249667.

World Without Fish. Kurlansky, M. 2011. WorkmanPublishing, New York, NY. 192 pp. $16.95 (hardcover).ISBN 9780761156079.

For the past few years, in almost every major commu-nication on marine resources, we have been told thatthe world’s marine fisheries are in crisis at the globallevel. The situation is said to be worsening despite effortsat fisheries management. We may ask ourselves, withnagging doubt, whether commercial fisheries can everbe sustainable in a globalized world. Many of us try tounderstand how we came to this point and what we cando, now and in the future, to put fisheries back on tracktoward ecological, economic, and social sustainability inorder to make significant contributions to human wellbeing.

Three books reviewed here tackle the issue of sustain-able commercial marine fisheries, with emphasis on U.S.fisheries, from different perspectives. Mansel Blackford,in Making Seafood Sustainable: American Experiencesin Global Perspective, focuses mainly on governmentregulation and the development of the seafood industry.In All the Fish in the Sea: Maximum Sustainable Yieldand the Failure of Fisheries Management, Carmel Fin-ley also examines U.S. fisheries management, but morefrom the angle of developing fisheries science tinged withinternational politics. Finally, Mark Kurlansky, in WorldWithout Fish delightfully illustrated by Frank Stockton,takes younger readers on a journey of discovery and in-tervention that is much less academic than the other 2volumes and probably immensely more satisfying to anyreader seeking practical solutions to the complex andwicked problems of sustainability.

Blackford selects the Pacific northwest and Alaska asthe main study area in which to ground his stories of therise and fall of various fisheries, but he also touches onother parts of the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, and

Gulf of Mexico. The chapters describe U.S. regulatorymeasures for various fisheries, from cod to crab, as heprovides views from both the harvest and postharvestparticipants in the fishing industry. The many roles ofseafood processing and marketing firms in the devel-opment and regulation of the various fisheries are ana-lyzed. The policy influence of some firms in the fisherieswas considerable. Blackford is adept at describing thewheeling and dealing that took place between industrypower brokers and their counterparts in government.He illustrates, albeit indirectly in places, the necessity toaddress the ecological, economic, and social aspects ofsustainability as a package.

The relationship between first promoting innovativetechnology in the development phase of a fishery andthen constraining technology and efficiency in the con-servation phase, when a fishery matures and overex-ploitation is evident or imminent, is complex. Blackfordillustrates this often with quotes from industry stake-holders that add life to a fairly dull and repetitive nar-rative. We get a feel for real trade-offs between devel-opment and conservation at a personal level. A curiousdevice in this vein is his frequent reference to the semi-fictional work of fisher and author William McCloskeyJr.; his novels depict the fluctuating fortunes of crabfisheries in particular. This infusion of fiction detractsfrom the otherwise evidence-based arguments the authormakes.

The sum of these arguments is that “[f]ailures to at-tain sustainable fishing outnumbered successes” (p. 202)at a global level. However, in the too brief analyticalclosing section on common-pool resources, globalization,and the environment Blackford offers hope. He acknowl-edges that cooperative arrangements for resource man-agement, from community to country level, have oftenbeen successful. Sustaining success requires paying atten-tion to the implications of globalization, such as patternsof seafood marketing and trade. Consumerism combineswith environmentalism to increasingly shape the way ref-erence points, such as maximum or optimum sustainableyields, are viewed or met.

Finley’s book is all about the latter points on whichBlackford closes. She traces aspects of the developmentof fisheries science and management in the 20th century,focusing mainly on the concept of maximum sustainableyield (MSY). Like Blackford, she uses the north Pacificregion as the geographic focus, but her attention rangeswider in the Americas and to Europe as well as Japan. Thepolitics of fisheries management is a refreshing center of

292Conservation Biology, Volume 28, No. 1, 292–297C© 2013 Society for Conservation BiologyDOI: 10.1111/cobi.12208

Book Reviews 293

attention because few books on fisheries science andmanagement explicitly tackle political power dynamicsthe way she does, head on. In doing so she exposes thereader to more detail, often as personal histories of keyactors, than seems necessary to make key points, but atthe same time this puts a human face on the attemptedrationality and objectivity of science. This emphasizesthe subjectivity underlying many fisheries managementdecisions and initiatives.

She may surprise some readers with how U.S. maritimeand foreign policy to maintain a global ocean regime withthe fewest restrictions on U.S. vessels influence fisheriesmanagement. The developed and developing countriesperceived threats and opportunities respectively fromenclosing sections of ocean for fisheries managementand economic development. For Finley, Great Britain,the United States, and Japan are the key actors. TheSecond World War and the Cold War periods providethe political contexts for MSY. Without going into asmuch detail as Blackford, Finley analyses the roles andthe power of the domestic fishing industry lobby insecuring fishing grounds for U.S. fleets with minimalregulation at home or abroad. She makes the dynamicinterdependent relationship between the United Statesand Japan quite intriguing in terms of both fisheriesscience and fishing industry perspectives on fisheriessustainability.

Finley assembles an entire cast of key actors presentat the 1955 Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)meeting in Rome and explains the politics behindMSY becoming enshrined in international ocean law.This she describes as “a disaster for fisheries science”(p. 155). Her critical point is that use, and abuse, ofMSY has caused fishing effort to increase in many in-stances, thereby reducing the prospects for sustainablefisheries. She does not offer much by way of solutions,but observes that if the politics was removed from fish-eries science and management more realistic manage-ment measures and regimes would be implemented thatcould lead to improvements in the pursuit of sustainablefisheries.

It is the communication of concrete, practical, andpersonal recommendations for achieving sustainable fish-eries that sets the book by Mark Kurlansky apart from theother two. Despite being targeted at young readers thebook contains enough fact and substance to interest mostadults, and the illustrations by Frank Stockton stronglyreinforce the main messages in ways that are entertain-ing but not distracting. The book starts with a primeron fisheries ecology, integrating an ecosystem servicesapproach that is conspicuously absent in the other 2more academic volumes. Without employing an abun-dance of technical or scientific jargon, Kurlansky tack-les issues of uncertainty, complexity, networks, learning,and adaptive capacity in fisheries. As a narrative runningthroughout the book the author examines relationships

among science, industry, and consumers over time, ad-dressing how cumulative uncertainty, misunderstanding,and unwillingness to intervene can lead to the escalationof problems in the world’s fisheries.

World Without Fish ends by offering readers practicalrecommendations for taking individual and collective ac-tion in support of sustainable fisheries. It lists resourcesand contacts to help in the effort. Of the 3 books itcommunicates most clearly the agency available to allof us, and the urgency with which our ingenuity must beapplied, to make a difference in creating the path towardmore sustainable fisheries. It suggests that we can getthere if we try.

Patrick McConney

Centre for Resource Management and Environmental Studies(CERMES), The University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, Bar-bados, email patrick.mcconney@gmail.com

Frames and Fences: Combining Approaches to Un-derstanding and Managing Resilient Cultural Land-scapes

Resilience and the Cultural Landscape: Understand-ing and Managing Change In Human-Shaped Envi-ronments. Plieninger, T., and C. Bieling, editors. 2012.Cambridge University Press, New York, NY. 348 pp. $70(hardcover). ISBN 9781107020788.

Restoring Paradise: Rethinking and Rebuilding Na-ture in Hawai’i. Cabin, R. J. 2013. University of HawaiiPress, Honolulu, HI. 236 pp. $24.99. ISBN 978-0-8248-3693-1.

Just as fences can be used to exclude certain speciesand enable others to thrive in the restoration of Hawaiianlandscapes, the conceptual frames we use to structurehow we think about and manage landscapes determineswhat is included and what is left out of our analysis andplanning. And while determining how best to proceed israrely simple or straightforward, having a solid concep-tual framework and philosophical grounding is critical tomaking informed choices. At the same time, rapid changeprecludes the option of sorting out the finer details ofthe theoretical basis of our actions, so we must grapplewith the challenge, both conceptually and on the ground,as we pursue the mostly shared goal of not destroyingthe natural capital and cultural diversity upon which hu-man well-being depends. On this point, Resilience andthe Cultural Landscape: Understanding and Manag-ing Change in Human-Shaped Environments, edited byPlieninger and Bieling, and Cabin’s book, Restoring Par-adise: Rethinking and Rebuilding Nature in Hawai’i,inform our understanding of how diverse perspectivesframe our understanding and management of cultural

Conservation BiologyVolume 28, No. 1, 2014

294 Book Reviews

landscapes and other types of social-ecological systems.Together these books offer insights from numerous casestudies in Hawaii and other places around the world, in-cluding Europe, South America, and Australia, as to howwe might progress our thinking and practice of landscapemanagement.

The resilience framework combines a related set ofconcepts that address complex systems and their ca-pacity to cope with disturbance such that the systemdoes not change its fundamental structure, function, andidentity (Walker & Salt 2006). Resilience itself is a prop-erty of social-ecological systems and as Kinzig notes inchapter 18 of Plieninger and Bieling’s book, “it is notas though a system either has resilience or does not.Instead, it may have more or less resilience” (p. 316).How people interact with and manage a landscape caninfluence how resilient it is to particular disturbancesor to system perturbations more generally. The frame-work can thus be particularly useful in the context ofchanging landscapes and informing options for directingchange along desirable pathways. The cultural landscapeframework within human geography similarly recognizes“the concept of landscape as an expression of a complexinteraction between human ideas, social structures, andthe physical features of the human environment” (p. 14).Although there are many views on cultural landscapes,3 basic understandings are outlined by Plieninger andBieling in chapter 1: cultural landscapes are modified orinfluenced by human activity, they are threatened by thedisappearance or change of valued landscape features,and they have meaning to groups of people in particularcultural or socioeconomic contexts (p. 15).

The papers in Resilience and the Cultural Landscapedeal with the challenges and opportunities presented bycombining these 2 frameworks, which emerged from dif-ferent disciplines. Researchers and practitioners who usethese concepts have a shared interest in analyzing andmanaging landscape change to sustain cultural and eco-logical values. The book is an outcome of a workshop in-volving researchers predominantly from the cultural land-scape field. Participants explored similarities betweenthe approaches and considered how the approachesmight inform one another. The book offers a diversityof perspectives and case studies that contrast, compare,and merge the concepts as they guide the reader fromconceptual foundations, to analytic frameworks, to thepractice of managing landscapes for resilience. The vol-ume concludes with a reflection on what is to be gainedfrom connecting resilience and cultural landscape theory.

The convergence of thinking around landscape man-agement from 2 distinct starting points, resilience withroots in ecology and cultural landscapes with roots inthe social sciences, could be taken as a cue that weare approaching a deeper understanding of how thingswork. Despite their different origins, the 2 frameworksappear to have much in common. Several authors begin

by making the comparison between the cultural land-scape concept and social-ecological systems, a key com-ponent of resilience thinking. Although the concept ofcultural landscapes has multiple discourses, UNESCO’s(2008) broad definition, “the combined works of natureand man,” shares a core feature with social-ecologicalsystems in that people are seen as a key component ofthe landscape, or in the later case the system.

The use of the word system highlights a significantdifference between the 2 concepts, which is that social-ecological systems and the umbrella framework of re-silience stem from complex adaptive systems. With afocus on system thresholds and emergent behavior, muchof resilience research involves analyzing interactionsamong various system parts, including natural resourcesand ecosystem components as well as individuals, socialgroups, and institutions. Thus, an underlying criticism ofthe resilience approach, which gives rise to the “consid-erable differences” described by Kirchoff et al. in chap-ter 3, revolves around applying an ecologically derivedconcept to the social domain. For example, Widgren,in chapter 6, describes how an analysis of local farmingin Tanzania might be limited if social stratification werenot examined, in this case how and why wealthy andpoor groups of farmers differ in their ability to managethe land sustainably. Both frameworks have limitations toacknowledge and work within. However, most authorsof the edited volume appear to concur that resiliencethinking still has some way to go before bringing a depthof understanding of the social sciences, including politi-cal ecology (and the attention it brings to power relationsin particular) to resilience analysis.

Neither the resilience nor cultural landscape conceptsare value-free and, as Head notes in chapter 4 (“Conceptu-alising the Human in Cultural Landscapes and ResilienceThinking”), both frameworks need to examine their as-sumptions, particularly in terms of the desirability of asystem or landscape state. In their study of declining sea-sonal herd migration traditions in northern Spain (chapter14, “Ecosystem Services and Social-Ecological Resiliencein Transhumance Cultural Landscapes: Learning from thePast, Looking for a Future”), Oteros-Rozas and colleaguesreinforce the importance of questioning assumptions un-derlying the desirability of a particular cultural landscapestate. And in their analysis of shrimp farming off thecoast of Tanzania, Beymer-Farris et al. (“Promises andPitfalls of Adaptive Management in Resilience Thinking:the Lens of Political Ecology”) underscore the need toask for whom is the landscape in its current config-uration and use desirable. These thoughts are echoedincreasingly in the ecosystem services literature in theform of the questions who benefits and who does not(e.g., Daw et al. 2011)?

Although important differences between resilienceand cultural landscape frameworks can be readily ex-amined from various angles, it is their similarities and

Conservation BiologyVolume 28, No. 1, 2014

Book Reviews 295

potential benefits of integration that make this collec-tion such a timely and constructive contribution. Bothapproaches, it is noted, have emerged from a deeperunderstanding of processes of change. Combining andapplying tools that stem from each framework to thecompatible goals of sustainable development and pre-serving cultural and biological diversity should enableunderstanding and provide a greater range of options.Many of the case studies illustrate what is to be gainedfrom a multidisciplinary approach. In a study of sugar-cane landscapes, the authors, Found and Berbes-Blazquez(chapter 10, “The Sugar-Cane Landscape of the CaribbeanIslands: Resilience, Adaptation, and Transformation of thePlantation Social-Ecological System”), combined an exam-ination of multiscale, adaptive cycles of change with a his-torical analysis of labor, capital, markets, and political ac-tion, which allowed for a comprehensive analysis and ledto suggested modifications to the resilience framework.In chapter 13 (“Response Strategy Assessment: A Toolfor Evaluating Resilience for the Management of Social-Ecological Systems”), Tuvendal and Elmqvist introducea novel appraisal system for estimating resilience usingcoping strategies. Three final perspectives on resilientlandscapes offer a compelling discussion of what is tobe gained by cross-fertilization of the 2 frameworks, inparticular including the more complex attributes of hu-man societies in an approach that can be used to analyzehuman–environment interactions and search for generalpatterns.

Extending the dialogue from conceptual frameworksto practice, Cabin’s firsthand experiences related inRestoring Paradise, provides a unique dimension to thediscussion of managing cultural landscapes because itfocuses on some of the challenges of implementationhe has confronted both ecologically and in socioculturaland political realms. Cabin offers an expanded case studyon landscape management and restoration in Hawaii thatreveals multiple perspectives on land management andexposes the reality of triage-style restoration and aggres-sive management of ecosystems in one of the most rapidlychanging places on the planet.

Cabin arrived in Hawaii in 1997 to work as a researchecologist for the U.S. Forest Service, and his experiencesprovide a glimpse into the practical, political, and cul-tural dimensions of rebuilding nature in a place withthe highest rate of biodiversity loss in the world. Fromhis description of several ongoing restoration projectsin Hawaii, a multilayered picture emerges of the rela-tionships between people and their environment, wherethe complexity of species’ invasions and interactions isrivaled only by that of the power and politics involvedwith managing the landscape. Hawaii’s unique evolution-ary and cultural history have shaped a landscape thatis difficult to imagine as anything other than a culturallandscape, as elaborated on in Plieninger and Bieling’sbook.

From the locally hired employees, field volunteers,restoration tourists, conservation actors, and politicians,people are a key component of every project describedby Cabin. With an increasing awareness of the roles theyplay from facilitating alien species’ invasions, support-ing or opposing restoration activities, and through vari-ous ways of participating in the process, Restoring Par-adise is as much about people as it is about nature andlandscapes. The significance of this relationship is per-haps distilled in the casual comments of committedrestoration practitioners admiring the results of their ef-forts and remarking, “Wow! What if it works?” “Whatif it works and no one cares?” (p. 104). The amount ofeffort required to restore and maintain Hawaiian land-scapes necessitates stewardship and volunteerism on alarge scale and these volunteer programs and locally hiredworkers emerge as key contributing factors to a project’ssuccess. And as one interview subject of Cabin’s states,if restoration is to succeed, it will “ultimately depend onthe public” (p. 79).

Part of what makes Cabin’s book so engaging are thefirst-hand accounts and multiple perspectives of front-line restoration practitioners, managers, and volunteers.The full spectrum of viewpoints reveals the challengeand illusiveness of achieving consensus or shared un-derstanding of how to best manage the land. This res-onates strongly with the more academic discussions inPlieninger and Bieling’s book and echoes many of theirauthors’ attempts to more fully integrate human dimen-sions of land management with the landscape resilienceconcept. The suitability of such an approach also be-comes clear upon being reminded that all the restora-tion efforts taking place in Hawaii today can be rela-tively easily undone. Hawaii remains vulnerable to a suiteof potentially devastating disturbances (e.g., new andpossibly worse alien species invasions, severe climatechange effects, catastrophic volcanic eruptions, etc.).Within this broader context, strategic efforts to buildresilience to large-scale disturbance would be prudent,and, drawing on Cabin’s book, it is likely only achiev-able with public engagement efforts on a comparablescale.

Central to both books, an unanswered question re-mains, for whom is the landscape (or social-ecologicalsystem to put it in resilience terms) being managed?Should—as Leopold suggests in Hawaii Volcanoes Na-tional Park’s 1972 management plan, “a visitor whoclimbs a volcano in Hawaii ought to see Mome (Sophorachrysophylla) trees and Silverswords, not goats” (p. 85)?Who ultimately should decide on the character and useof a landscape? Perhaps, as both books would suggest,the combined perspectives of cultural landscapes andresilience can offer a firm foundation from which to ad-dress what changes are acceptable, to whom, and howbest to ensure that the multiple values of landscapes aresustained.

Conservation BiologyVolume 28, No. 1, 2014

296 Book Reviews

Allyson Quinlan

Resilience Alliance, Department of Biology, Acadia University,Wolfville, Nova Scotia B4P 2R6, Canada email aquinlan@resalliance.org

Literature Cited

Daw, T., K. Brown, S. Rosendo, and R. Pomeroy. 2011. Applying theecosystem services concept to poverty alleviation: the need to dis-aggregate human well-being. Environmental Conservation 38:370–379.

UNESCO. 2008. Operational guidelines for the implementation of theWorld Heritage Convention. UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Paris.

Walker, B., and D. Salt. 2006. Resilience thinking: sustaining ecosystemsand people in a changing world. Island Press, Washington, D.C.

Noted with Interest

Yellowstone’s Wildlife in Transition. White, P. J.,R. A. Garrott, and G. E. Plumb. 2013. Harvard UniversityPress, Cambridge, MA. 347pp. $45.00 (hardcover). ISBN978–0–674–07318–0.

This book continues a long tradition of pronouncingupon the state of wildlife in Yellowstone National Parkwith optimism and certainty in the science. Over theyears such pronouncements have provided much fodderfor controversy, making Yellowstone a richer microcosmfor learning about the practice of conservation than likelywas ever intended. The editors of this volume and over30 contributors provide a comprehensive overview ofthe state of knowledge about Yellowstone’s wildlife. Forfollowers of the saga that is wildlife conservation in Amer-ica’s flagship national park this will be a very welcomeaddition. Tantalizingly though, the editors invoke somevery interesting and new theoretical approaches to think-ing about ecological change, yet do not dive as deeplyinto them as they could. Managing for change in pro-tected areas is a topic whose urgency is growing quickly,so further writing on that topic by these experiencedconservation scientists would be welcome.

Island Life: Or, the Phenomena and Causes of In-sular Faunas and Floras, Including a Revision andAttempted Solution of the Problem of GeologicalClimates. Wallace, A. R. 2013 (originally published in1880). University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL. 526 pp.$30.00 (paperback). ISBN 978–0–226–04503–0.

Many readers of this journal will be very familiar withthis foundational work by one of the world’s all-time greatfield naturalists. Those who aren’t should be, and thisnew edition makes such familiarization with the rootsof island biogeography very easy. The book includes aforeword by David Quammen (an accomplished author inhis own right) and a new introduction, with commentary,by Lawrence Heaney of the Field Museum in Chicago. Putthis on your list of books to read.

Urban Ecosystems: Ecological Principles for theBuilt Environment. Adler, F. R., and C. J. Tanner. 2013.Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K. 345 pp.£38.00 (paperback). ISBN 978–0–521–74613–7.

This book is intended as an accessible introductorytextbook on urban ecology and is based on a one-semester course at the University of Utah. Organizedinto 5 chapters, urban environments are introduced, theirfunctions (such as energy budgets and the water cycle)are then explored systematically, as are aspects of theirecology. The final chapter explores the consequencesof urban ecological processes for humans. Each chapterconcludes with suggested questions, readings, and labs.The authors’ stated goal for this book is “to provide aframework of fundamental principles for thinking aboutecological processes in urban environments” (p. ix). Theyhave succeeded in that and in producing a practical anduseful textbook.

Biodiversity Monitoring and Conservation:Bridging the Gap Between Global Commitmentand Local Action. Collen, B., N. Pettorelli, J. E. M.Billie, and S. M. Durant, editors. 2013. Wiley-Blackwell,Oxford, U.K. 448 pp. $89.95 (paperback). ISBN978–1–4443–3292–6.

Based on a 2009 symposium at the Zoological Society ofLondon, this book attempts to tackle important questionsabout biodiversity monitoring at national to global scales.It is written in the explicit context of the internationalConvention on Biological Diversity and the very clearfailure to meet the convention’s 2010 target. Monitoringbiodiversity is a conceptually simple task, yet when it isdone at all it is often done remarkably poorly. This bookmakes an important contribution to the literature on mon-itoring because it does not flinch from the hard questionsabout why that is so. Not all of these questions can be an-swered simply by more and better science, and this bookcovers those often-neglected nonscientific topics withequal vigor. Chapters on socioeconomic monitoring byKatherine Homewood, building sustainable monitoringnetworks by Sarah Durant, and monitoring in the realworld by Julia Jones, are especially realistic and clear-eyed assessments. If ecological monitoring is what youdo, you need to read this book.

On Gaia: A Critical Investigation of the Relation-ship Between Life and Earth. Tyrrell, T. 2013. Prince-ton University Press, Princeton, NJ. 311pp. $35.00 (hard-cover). ISBN 978–0–691–12158–1.

Controversy surrounding the Gaia theory since it wasfirst postulated by James Lovelock in the 1970s resemblesother long-running scientific debates about sociobiologyand evolution. Tyrrell wades boldly into these debatesand has assembled a comprehensive array of information

Conservation BiologyVolume 28, No. 1, 2014

Book Reviews 297

with the aim of scientifically testing whether the Gaiahypothesis is supportable in light of what we now knowabout the planet. This book is a worthy contributor tothis intellectual process, although it won’t settle the cur-rent round of debates. Further, the author’s conclusion—that there is no intrinsic planetary capability for self-

regulation—is framed as a call to actively steward ourplanet in the absence of a hoped-for capability of theEarth to do that itself. This provocative recommendationwill likely open up yet another round of debate, this timewith those who question humanity’s collective capacityfor such intelligence and benevolence.

Conservation BiologyVolume 28, No. 1, 2014