Artisanal marine invertebrate fisheries of sandy shores are amongst the poorest understood systems regarding connections between the structure and dynamics of harvested resources, a complex fishing process that involves recreational and commercial users and a management subsystem influenced by cultural, social and political factors. For thin reason, this paper addresses: (1) the temporal extractive phases through which benthic invertebrate stocks of sandy shores have gone through time, the confronted socio-economic scenarios and the relevance of different operational management measures and strategic institutional structures, and (2) critical ecological aspects of the life cycle that must be considered in assessment and management because of their strong incidence in the dynamics of the fishing process. Concerning (1): most sandy beach stocks around the-world are fully exploited, overexploited or depleted. Open access regimes and the fact that ocean beaches are open and extended systems readily accessible to unauthorized fishers or recreational harvesters, are important causes of management failure. Preferred operational management measures to revert such situation must consider spatially explicit management strategies such as reproductive refugia, rotation and closure of grounds, experimental management with spatial controls, habitat-dependent enhancement through natural restocking and seeding, and a combination of the above and other measures (e.g., size limits) through management redundancy. The high information, enforcement and policing costs of management regulations-stress the importance of fisher participation in its planning, formulation and surveillance, through formal co-management as the desired institutional arrangement. In this context, I discuss study cases in which co-management and experimental approaches were applied on a different extent and with diverse modus operandi, and how these procedures determined a gain in scientific information. Concerning (2): (a) Sandy beach populations are highly spatially structured stocks, which determine an also aggregated allocation of fishing effort. This aggregated nature of sandy beach stocks and harvesting behaviour calls for implementing spatially-explicit management strategies to properly evaluate the trade-off between alternative harvest tactics. (b) Most resources constitute metapopulations with planktonic larvae and a benthic adult phase. High and variable mortality during them dispersive planktonic phase makes prediction of recruitment to the benthic life highly uncertain. Different management strategies could be set up depending on the pattern of connectance between metapopulation components and the extent-of aggregation and persistence of the spatial structure in adults. (c) Longterm, large-scale field experiments suggest that large fluctuations in sandy beach populations are the result of intertwined forces of exogenous, environmental, density-dependent and human-induced factors operating together at different spatial and temporal scales. (d) Harvesting produces incidental mortality in exploited and unexploited population fractions and also in unharvested sympatric species, by means of direct (shell damage) and indirect (sediment disturbance) agents. (e) Short and long-term climatic events, accumulation of toxins resulting from algal blooms and viral diseased produce massive mortalities that must be addressed throughout the entire range. of distribution of species. The identification of meaningful spatial and temporal scales of variability in population regulation mechansms and processes, and also in the dynamic nature of the fishing process, are relevant for assessment and-management. Throughout the paper I stress some future research directions directed to improve the management status of sandy beach fisheries around the world.
