Steneck et al. (2011) - gilded traps

Question 1

Unsustainable fishing simplifies food chains and, as with aquaculture, can result in what?

Answer 1

Reliance on a few economically valuable species. This lack of diversity may increase risks of ecological and economic disruptions.

Question 2

enturies of intense fishing have extirpated most apex predators in the Gulf of Maine (United States and Canada), effectively creating what?

Answer 2

An American lobster (Homarus americanus) monoculture. Over the past 20 years, the economic diversity of marine resources harvested in Maine has declined by almost 70%.

Question 3

What are Gilded traps?

Answer 3

Gilded traps are a type of social trap in which collective actions resulting from economically attractive opportunities outweigh concerns over associated social and ecological risks or consequences.

Question 4

The resilience of an ecosystem, society, or economy is defined as what?

Answer 4

Its capacity to absorb recurrent stochastic events (e.g., natural disasters, economic or political turbulence) and to continue to function without changing fundamentally (e.g., Walker & Meyers 2004).

Question 5

Human activities can reduce ecological resilience and lead to phase shifts in which an alternative ecosystem with different dynamics and feedbacks emerges. For example…

Answer 5

When coral reef ecosystems are gradually polluted or fished unsustainably, they can lose their resilience to natural or human-made disturbances and may rapidly become dominated by non-reef building organisms, such as seaweed.

Question 6

To confront and escape gilded traps requires what?

Answer 6

Recognition that increasing reliance on a few high-value species increases risks and consequences of precipitous stochastic declines in those species.