The Past, Present and Future Role of Limnology in Freshwater Fisheries Science

Limnology has greatly influenced the field of freshwater fisheries science, particularly fisheries biology. However, both fields became increasingly disconnected during the 20thcentury, when major research traditions within limnology became more tightly focused and humans, even fish, were externalized. A paradigm shift occurring within freshwater fisheries science today is redefining research questions and approaches and is further challenging the role of limnology within fisheries science. Modern fisheries science has become a multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary and sometimes transdisciplinary endeavour that melds the social with the natural sciences to understand fisheries as social‐ecological systems. Limnology remains important to capture some of the dynamics inherent in social‐ecological fisheries systems, but becomes one of the many necessary scientific disciplines of fisheries science, rather than the primary supporting science that it used to be. To improve scholarly communication between limnologists and freshwater fisheries scientists, major shifts in perspective are needed. It is hardly understandable why fish are only regarded as a component of the aquatic ecosystem or a means for biomanipulation in modern textbooks on limnology or limno‐ecology, while the fisheries science as a natural component of theoretical and applied limnology in the spirit of Thienemann is not mentioned in the table of contents! H.‐J. Elster, 1993 (translated from German) (© 2008 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)