Matt--could we make this into it's own page on the website?
Acronyms
EEZ: Exclusive Economic Zone
EBFM: Ecosystem-based Fishery Management
FAO: Food and Agriculture Organization
ICES: International Council for the Exploration of the Seas
ITQ: Individual Transferable Quotas
IWC: International Whaling Commission
LOS: Law of the Sea
MPA: Marine Protected Area
NMFS: National Marine Fisheries Service
NOAA: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Organization
RFB: Regional Fishery Body
TAC: Total Allowable Catch
UN: United Nations
WCD: World Commission on Dams
WTO: World Trade Organization
WWF: World Wildlife Fund
Terms and Definitions
Sustainable: Fishing healthy ecosystems at a level and in a manner that it is reasonably believed can be continued indefinitely, assuming proper responses to ecosystem changes.
Healthy Ecosystem: A healthy ecosystem is characterized by optimal biodiversity, populations at carrying capacity, an age distribution as close to normal as possible, natural predator-prey balance, robustness to change, recovery of crashed populations, and minimal negative anthropogenic changes in all of these criteria.
Fish: Many organisms are taken from the oceans, so for convenience we adopted Magnuson-Stevens Act definition (found in Section 3) as including finfish, crustaceans, mollusks, and marine animals but excluding plant life, mammals, and birds.
Exclusive Economic Zone: from the Law of the Sea, Part V, Article 55, the exclusive economic zone is "an area beyond and adjacent to the territorial sea, subject to the specific legal regime established in this Part, under which the rights and jurisdiction of the coastal State and the rights and freedoms of other States are governed by the relevant provisions of this Convention."
Fish stock: population of a species separate from other populations (FAO Fisheries Glossary); a manageable unit.
Territorial sea: from the Law of the Sea, Part II, Section 2, the territorial sea is "a limit not exceeding 12 nautical miles, measured from baselines determined in accordance with this Convention" for the definition of baseline as "the low-water line along the coast as marked on large-scale charts officially recognized by the coastal State."