Fish and Fisheries Ecology

Abstract

My paper on fish and fisheries ecology is offered to demonstrate a rich blending of applied and fundamental ecology, achieved by the intersections among fishery science, ichthyology, and ecology. The example, while specific, parallels practices and opportunities available in other areas of applied ecology. The emergence of fish and fisheries ecology as a discipline is evidence by such recent textbooks as Fisheries ecology by Pitcher and Hart (1982) and Ecology of teleost fishes by Wootton (1990). The ecology relevant to fish and fisheries includes not only marine and freshwater ecology, oceanography, and limnology, but also terrestrial study. Early work in fish and fisheries ecology came from Stephen A. Forbes > 100 yr ago in his books On some interactions of organisms (Forbes 1880) and The lake as a microcosm (Forbes 1887). These constitute one of the earliest conceptualizations of an ecosystem. By 1932 E. S. Russell concluded that fishery research was a study in marine ecology. I give examples of applications from six different categories of ecology. (1) Physiological ecology: The F. E. J. Fry school of fish physiology developed the concepts of temperature as a lethal, controlling and directive factor. More than 40 yr later, this knowledge is being combined with G. E. Hutchinson's concept of an n-dimensional niche to analyze potential influences of global climate warming on fishes. (2) Behavioral ecology: A. D. Hasler and students formulated and tested the hypothesis of olf…