The United States provides some insight into the power of fisheries management to impact stock health. Alaska is home to the largest fisheries in the country – including pollock, cod, sole, salmon, crab, herring and halibut – many of which have sustained Alaskan communities since humans first arrived. Offshore fisheries were developed far more recently by foreign vessels, until the declaration of the United States’ EEZ in . By that time, industrial fishing in the North Atlantic had already overfished many stocks, and Alaska’s managers, scientists and fishermen had seen the catastrophic consequences of poor fisheries management. As a result, managers had learned the lessons of the North Atlantic and fishing pressure never rose too high — the abundance of the fish has remained well above target levels.

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The Common Fisheries Resource Analysis is a modest effort considering the scale of the South China Sea’s environmental challenges. Still, this relatively small step is important: the efforts are delivering scientific evidence to improve domestic policies. By combining the analysis among the five participating countries, fisheries policies have a stronger evidence base on which to make policy decisions.

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