A significant number of the world's ocean fisheries are depleted, and some have collapsed, from overfishing. Although many of the same fishermen who are causing these declines stand to suffer the most from them, they continue to overfish. Why is this happening? What can be done to solve the problem.

The authors of Fish, Markets, and Fishermen argue that the reasons are primarily economic, and that overfishing is an inevitable consequence of the current sets of incentives facing ocean fishermen. This volume illuminates these incentives as they operate both in the aggregate and at the level of day-to-day decision-making by vessel skippers. The authors provide a primer on fish population biology and the economics of fisheries under various access regimes, and use that information in analyzing policies for managing fisheries. The book:

• provides a concise statistical overview of the world's fisheries
• documents the decline of fisheries worldwide
• gives the reader a clear understanding of the economics and population biology of fish
• examines the management issues associated with regulating fisheries
• offers case studies of fisheries under different management regimes
• examines and compares the consequences of various regimes and considers the implications for policy making

The decline of the world's ocean fisheries is of enormous worldwide significance, from both economic and environmental perspectives. This book clearly explains for the nonspecialist the complicated problem of overfishing. It represents a basic resource for fishery managers and others-fishers, policymakers, conservationists, the fish consuming public, students, and researchers-concerned with the dynamics of fisheries and their sustenance.

Christopher B. Field is Director of the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, in Stanford, California.

Michael R. Raupach is Chief Research Scientist in the CSIRO Land and Water Landscape Systems Research Directorate in Australia.

The Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE) was established by the International Council for Science (ICSU) in 1969. It brings together natural and social scientists to identify emerging or potential environmental issues and to address jointly the nature and solution of environmental problems on a global basis.With its headquarters in Paris, France, SCOPE programs are conducted by volunteer scientists from every inhabited continent of the globe.