Abstract

The objective of this work was to advice management and conservation strategies for the shallow and the possible new deep-sea crustacean fisheries in the Colombian Caribbean Sea based on an ecosystem approach to fisheries. The manage-ment of the shallow shrimp fishery and the potential new deep-sea crustacean fishery should be based on an ecosystem approach that considers population dynamics and structure, the optimum allocation of catches and effort, protection of nursery and spawning areas, the development of monitoring strategies and the care of ecosystems. The future development of the fishing sector in Colombia will depend on the identification of new resources with potential for sustainable exploita-tion. These considerations highlight the need for ecosystem approach to fisheries based on knowledge of characteristics of the deep sea habitats and the organisms in the Colombian Caribbean Sea. In this sense, four management objectives were distinguished as a means of evaluating the ecological state of marine ecosystems: conservation of biodiversity (CB), maintenance of ecosystem stability and resistance to perturbations (SR), maintenance of ecosystem structure and function-ing (EF), and maintaining resource potential (RP). Eight indicators were selected to attain these objectives: i) Total biomass of surveyed species, ii) The inverse ratio of landings/biomass (1/(landing/biomass)), iii) Mean length of fish in the community, iv) Trophic level (TL) of landings, v) Proportion of predatory fish, vi) Proportion of under- and moderately exploited stocks, vii) Mean lifespan, and viii) The reciprocal of the coefficient of variation of total biomass (1/coefficient of variation (CV) of total biomass).

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