Skip to main content

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Mar. Sci.

Sec. Marine Fisheries, Aquaculture and Living Resources

Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmars.2025.1553838

This article is part of the Research Topic Ecocentric fisheries management in European Seas (Volume II): e-tools, management scenarios, and capacity building to support decision making in fisheries and ecosystems View all 3 articles

What do people make of "Ecosystem Based Fisheries Management"?

Provisionally accepted
  • 1 Faculty of Economics, Management and Accountancy, University of Malta, Malta, Malta
  • 2 NIVA Denmark Water Research, Copenhagen, Denmark
  • 3 Institute for Biological Resources and Marine Biotechnology (IRBIM), National Research Council of Italy (CNR), Ancona, Italy

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The topic of Ecosystem Based Fisheries Management (EBFM) and related terminology has attracted considerable scholarly debate and inspired regulatory interventions across Europe. Yet little attention has been paid to the general public’s awareness or understanding of this term and its implications for marine policy. We employ a unique and representative data set (n=542) from the United Kingdom (UK) and examine (i) the extent to which the public is aware of the concept of Ecosystem Based Fisheries Management, (ii) the demographic correlates of such awareness and understanding, and (iii) whether the public’s understanding converges with scientific notions and regulatory definitions. Our headline finding is that the vast majority of adults in the UK have never heard of EBFM. Participants who attempt to explain what they understood by EBFM associate it primarily with protecting the marine environment and safeguarding fish stocks. While this broadly conforms to scientific and regulatory notions, very few respondents mention socio-economic aspects, regulatory considerations, reliance on science/data or climatic issues. Examination of the correlates of awareness reveals that people who work in marine sectors, who fish more regularly, who have higher awareness of sustainability issues, and who are financially better off are more likely to have heard of EBFM. Among those who attempted a definition, older people were more likely to mention maintaining fish stocks, and people with higher marine education or whose family members worked in the marine sector, were more likely to mention regulatory aspects. Data and climate themes were less likely to be mentioned by those who had never heard of EBFM. Public support can be pivotal for successful implementation of fisheries management, but our findings suggest that there remains a significant gap to be addressed between scientific/regulatory notions and the public’s understanding of EBFM. In this regard, we offer some insights for communication of EBFM among the UK public.

    Keywords: Ecosystem based fisheries management (EBFM), marine education, Communication, Science-policy interface, public perception

    Received: 31 Dec 2024; Accepted: 25 Mar 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Briguglio, Ramírez-Monsalve, Abela and Armelloni. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Enrico Nicola Armelloni, Institute for Biological Resources and Marine Biotechnology (IRBIM), National Research Council of Italy (CNR), Ancona, Italy

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

    Research integrity at Frontiers

    Man ultramarathon runner in the mountains he trains at sunset

    95% of researchers rate our articles as excellent or good

    Learn more about the work of our research integrity team to safeguard the quality of each article we publish.


    Find out more