Report of the Study Group on the History of Fish and Fisheries (SGHIST)

The Study Group on the History of Fish and Fisheries (SGHIST) brings together fish-eries scientists, historians and marine biologists working on multidecadal to centen-nial changes in the marine environment, and aims at improving the understanding of the long term dynamics of fish populations, fishing fleets, and fishing technologies. The results are used for setting baselines for management, restoration and conserva-tion of marine resources and ecosystems. The third meeting of SGHIST was held at Cefas, Lowestoft, UK, from 24–27 October 2011 and was attended by 12 scientists from across Europe (and one scientist in the US through correspondence). Two years previously, the first (2009) meeting of SGHIST had focused on data recovery and digitization. The second (2010) SGHIST meeting had focused on historical data analysis and methodologies, particularly on fishing power change and spatio-temporal dynamics. The emphasis of the current, third SGHIST was on the use of long-term historical data to help disentangling the effects of climate change and fishing pressure (and/or other drivers) on fish popula-tion dynamics.