This is the sixth in a series of guest posts by Joel Barkan, a previous contributor to “The Intersection” and a graduate student at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The renowned Scripps marine biologist Jeremy Jackson is teaching his famed “Marine Science, Economics, and Policy” course for what may be the last time this year (along with Jennifer Jacquet), and Joel will be reporting each week on the contents of the course.
It seems simple enough: we should manage our marine resources to protect the whole ecosystem, not just a single species. That’s the basic premise of ecosystem-based management (EBM), the topic of this week’s class at Scripps (Read a previous post on EBM by Sheril here). EBM is all about interactions: between predator and prey, parasite and host, nutrients and phytoplankton, humans and our environment. The need for EBM comes from too many cases of a single-species management practice resulting in unintended impacts on the surrounding environment. (more…)
