Trends in marine fisheries social-ecological systems studies

Fisheries are complex and unpredictable; the design and use of adaptive tools to understand and manage them are therefore necessary. The social-ecological systems (SES) approach seeks to achieve an integrated understanding of fisheries to find sustainable solutions applied to real-world uncertainties. The number of SES studies has increased since the arrival of Ostrom's reference framework in 2009, especially in the past 6 years. In the present review, we identified the trends in scientific literature focused on marine fisheries social-ecological systems (MFSES) published in the past two decades. The main objectives were to: (1) identify MFSES research trends and (2) detect how the social-ecological reference framework has evolved and how transdisciplinary approaches are occurring in fisheries science. Results showed that the most frequent approach was theoretical or conceptual, qualitative, using mainly secondary data. The greatest number of researches were undertaken in the northern Pacific, northern Atlantic, and the western coast of Africa. The most frequently used variables to analyze MFSES were related to the social subsystem. We conclude that the conceptual development of information on SES and specifically on MFSES is very extensive due to the need to analyze complex SES, particularly in marine fisheries.