Time, Space, and Fish Scales: A “Tail” of Fishery Oceanography, Climate Change, and Ecosystem-based Management

Frank Schwing

NOAA/NMFS

Wednesday, Oct 09, 2019, 3:00 pm
DSRC Room 1D403

Abstract

Ecosystem-based management (EBM) is a foundation for providing adaptable management to maintain the health, productivity, and resilience of ecosystems and their resources, and to sustain the benefits they provide to communities, economies, and cultures. It is a potentially revolutionary approach for efficient and effective interagency, multi-jurisdictional, and cross-sectoral planning and management.

EBM must be informed by sound interdisciplinary science. This presentation will highlight how fishery oceanography research by NOAA scientists and their colleagues has provided understanding of the relationship between physical ocean conditions and biological productivity, and the connections between climate change and marine populations, and has allowed us to move toward EBM.

The transition from traditional single species or sector management to one that considers and integrates the whole ecosystem or multiple management objectives is an evolutionary process. The presentation will describe NOAA’s adoption of ecosystem-based fisheries management (EBFM) as an approach for the regional management of fish stocks and protected and other trust marine species. The early successes of EBFM provide an example for the management of other maritime sectors.

Challenges remain to achieving operational multi-sectoral resource management that integrates across political and ecological boundaries, considers emergent risks and the cumulative impacts of multiple human activities, and addresses future environmental change.