INTRODUCTION What drives marine fisheries production?

This paper introduces the MEPS Theme Section (TS) 'Comparative Analysis of Marine Fisheries Production'. The unifying theme of the studies in the TS is the relative influence of a 'triad of drivers' - fishing, trophodynamic, and environmental - on fisheries production. The studies were developed during 2 international workshops held in 2010 and 2011, which assembled a database of fisheries, trophodynamic, and environmental time series from 13 northern hemisphere marine ecosystems, and applied a common production-modeling approach to this data. The studies encompass empirical examinations of the datasets, production models fitted to the data at multiple levels of organization from single species to full ecosystems, and simulation studies examining the impacts of climate effects and alternative management strategies on fisheries production. The body of work presented in the TS demonstrates that using both production modeling and the comparative approach together makes rapid progress towards ecosystem-based fishery management, whether the aim is a better understanding of the ecosystem or the provision of operational management advice.