Tomorrow’s catch

Chaos theory’s potential for fisheries management

COUNTING FISH  A management approach based on chaos theory could help prevent collapses of sardines (shown) and other valuable fishes.

© Ralph A. Clevenger/CORBIS

There’s something fishy going on with Pacific sardines. The pint-size swimmers, whose abundance sustained California’s famed Cannery Row for decades, all but disappeared from coastal waters in the 1950s.