Fisheries Sciences

Fisheries sciences encompass the study and management of aquatic living resources—from wild‐capture fisheries and stock assessment to aquaculture, post‐harvest technologies, fish physiology, genetics, health and socio-economic dimensions. Core themes include estimating population abundance and productivity to set sustainable harvest limits; developing eco-efficient culture systems that balance yield with environmental impacts; innovating tools for catch, handling and processing; and understanding physiological and genomic traits that govern growth, disease resistance and climate resilience. Interdisciplinary advances in remote sensing, molecular biology, modelling, precision tracking and data analytics now inform ecosystem-based management, risk-equivalent advice, selective breeding and welfare-centred husbandry. Together, these approaches aim to secure food security, maintain biodiversity and support coastal and inland communities through responsive governance and technological innovation.

Research from Nature Portfolio

High-resolution satellite imagery integrated with vessel GPS data and deep-learning algorithms has produced the most detailed global map of industrial fishing effort. The analysis revealed that three-quarters of large vessels remain untracked publicly, documented a 12 % decline in activity during the early COVID-19 period and exposed spatial conflicts with expanding offshore wind farms—underscoring the need for integrated marine spatial planning.

An onboard trial of pelagic trawling on Atlantic herring employed Reflex Action Mortality Predictor (RAMP) tests and blood biomarkers to assess welfare. Despite minimal external injuries, over 95 % of sampled herring exhibited complete reflex impairment and osmoregulatory stress, indicating near-total mortality. Findings highlight the urgency of shorter tow times, gear redesign and rapid release protocols to mitigate unintended deaths.

In aquaculture hatcheries, an immersion treatment with peracetic acid eradicated a newly described parasitic copepod on squid eggs within minutes, while preserving embryonic survival and larval growth. This targeted oxidative approach offers a scalable disinfection strategy for cephalopod culture and broader pathogen control in intensive systems.

Research from all publishers

A new online framework for Management Strategy Evaluation (MSE) has been developed to support data-limited fisheries. Through a guided questionnaire and flexible operating models coded in R, users can rapidly test both generic and custom harvest control rules. A Mediterranean sparid case study demonstrated how stakeholder engagement within this platform pinpoints critical data gaps and prioritises research and monitoring efforts.

An integrated catch-at-age assessment of Pacific sardine in the Gulf of California combined acoustic surveys, egg and larva indices, commercial catch rates, spawning probabilities and a bird-diet index into a single age-structured model. The approach yielded robust retrospective fits, improved estimates of recruitment variability and produced management reference points that better reflect multisource information.

Fisheries Sciences publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in fisheries sciences across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ): A sea zone extending up to 200 nautical miles from a country’s coast, within which the state has rights to explore and exploit marine resources.

Trawl: A cone-shaped net towed through the water or along the seabed to enclose and capture fish or invertebrates, often used in large-scale commercial fisheries.

Reflex Action Mortality Predictor (RAMP): A welfare assessment test that scores fish reflex responses to predict survival probability following capture stress.

Management Strategy Evaluation (MSE): A closed-loop simulation framework that tests fishery management procedures against operating models to evaluate performance under uncertainty.

Integrated Catch-at-Age Model: A statistical assessment model that simultaneously fits catch-at-age and multiple survey indices within a unified framework to estimate stock dynamics and reference points.

References

1. Satellite mapping reveals extensive industrial activity at sea. Nature (2024).
2. Investigating the effects of pelagic trawling on the welfare of Atlantic herring (Clupea harengus). Scientific Reports (2024).
3. Peracetic acid treatment of squid eggs infected with parasitic copepod (Ikanecator primus gen. et sp. nov.). Scientific Reports (2024).
4. Method evaluation and risk assessment: A framework for evaluating management strategies for data‐limited fisheries. Fish and Fisheries (2023).
5. An integrated catch-at-age model for analyzing the variability in biomass of Pacific sardine (Sardinops sagax) from the Gulf of California, Mexico. Frontiers in Marine Science (2023).