The following definitions are far from exhaustive and aim at clarifying certain terms recurring in the text of the document. In particular they pertain to fisheries for human consumption and other forms of human economic activity. They do not include reference to management for specifically conservationistic objectives.
Inland fisheries: any activity conducted to extract fish and other aquatic organisms from inland waters
Capture fisheries: the removal of aquatic organisms from natural or enhanced inland waters.
Culture based fisheries: capture fisheries which are maintained by stocking with material originating from aquaculture installations.
Enhanced fisheries: (also include culture-based fisheries): activities aimed at supplementing or sustaining the recruitment of one or more aquatic organisms and raising the total production or the production of selected elements of a fishery beyond a level which is sustainable by natural processes.
Precautionary approach: a set of agreed cost-effective measures and actions, including future courses of action, which ensures prudent foresight, reduces or avoids risk to the resources, the environment, and the people, to the extent possible taking explicitly into account existing uncertainties and the potential consequences of being wrong.
Recreational fisheries: fisheries conducted by individuals primarily for sport but with a possible secondary objective of capturing fish for domestic consumption but not for onward sale.
Wild fisheries: fisheries based on natural production and recruitment.
Sustainable development: in both marine and inland fisheries, there has been a long tradition among biologists to use the term ‘sustainable’ with reference to the yield which can be removed from a fish stock in perpetuity. The sustainability of a fish stock is, in addition, also affected by its habitat and its interrelationship with other plant and animal species. In inland fisheries, however, with the increasing use of enhancement techniques the term sustainable takes on a more agricultural connotation implying the continuance of given levels of yield under particular regimes on input without damage to the surrounding environment. In this context a broad definition for sustainable agricultural and rural development is offered by FAO as ‘... the management and conservation of the natural resource base, and the orientation of technological and institutional change in such a manner as to ensure the attainment and continued satisfaction of human needs for present and future generations. Such sustainable development (in the agricultural, forestry and fishery sectors) concerns land, water, plant and animal genetic resources, is environmentally non-degrading, technically appropriate, economically viable, and socially acceptable.
The following sections provide commentaries on individual articles of the Code as they may be applied to inland fisheries. They draw attention to particular characteristics of inland fisheries that may differ from marine fisheries and therefore require special interpretation.
