Coastal fisheries in Korean waters have highly complexity with a variety of fishing gears, and scale of those fisheries is smaller than that of offshore fisheries. As a result, important spawning and nursery grounds for many species of fish has been destroyed. The pragmatic ecosystem-based approach was developed for the assessment of fisheries resources in Korean waters by Zhang et al. (2009; 2010). As for the species risk index (SRI), common squid caught by coastal gillnet in the Uljin region had the highest risk. As for the fisheries risk index (FRI), coastal gillnet in the Uljin coastal waters had the highest risk. For the common squid which had the highest SRI, resources management strategies must be established such as catch prohibition of length and period with TAC. For the coastal gillnet in the Uljin region which had the highest FRI, it is judged to need management plans for conserving biodiversity as reducing the catch of non-target species and discards. Also to protect existing habitat, illegal fishery should be prohibited, and fishing gears should be designed in the environmental-friendly way considering when fishing gears lost.

Ecosystem-based fisheries management requires a holistic assessment of the status of fisheries by integrating fishery ecosystem indicators for management objectives. In this study four objectives were identified such as the maintenance of the sustainability, biodiversity and habitat quality and socio-economic benefits. The ecosystem-based fisheries assessment (EBFA) model to assess fisheries and their resources at the ecosystem level developed for Korean fisheries (Zhang et al., 2009) has a number of indicators for three management objectives. However, it was found that there were some overlapping components among indicators and that there were difficulties in assessing some indicators in the EBFA model. This study identified problems of the approach and suggested more pragmatic and simpler indicators. It also presented alternative reference points to assess indicators and discussed issues associated with the application of the EBFA model to a marine ranching ecosystem. In this study a total of 24 indicators were used for the assessment which included 4 socio-economic indicators. New indicators and reference points were demonstrated by applying it to the Uljin marine ranch.