Actionable Business Rules to Operationally Address Shifting Marine Fish and Fisheries Distributions
Dr Jason Link1, Dr Jon Hare1, Dr Cisco Werner2, Dr Rick Methot3
1NOAA Fisheries, Woods Hole, United States, 2NOAA Fisheries, Silver Spring, United States, 3NOAA Fisheries, Seattle, United States
Shifting distributions of marine fishes are now well documented, as are fisheries that target them. Projections indicate that these shifts to both marine fishes and fisheries are only going to continue as global change continues to alter ocean dynamics. There have been calls for action to address these shifts by fisheries management organizations. Thus the need to address these shifts in a governance context is clearly recognized, but the actual mechanics of how these shifts impact allocations across jurisdictions, how they alter status determinations, biological reference points, harvest control rules, etc., and ultimately how fisheries management decisions account for these shifts are not clearly delineated in an operational context. Here we develop a set of business rules for addressing these shifts. We identify criteria and frequency of evaluation to determine clearly whether a shift has occurred and if so what type of shift. From that, we then explore a suite of options starting from re-treatment of data to spatial assessment models to modified biological reference points to a set of control rules, all related proportionally to the degree and intensity of shifting. This then leads to adjustments that can be used in operational fisheries management that account for the true dynamics of fish populations, attempting to avoid erroneous attribution to other changes in fish population or fisheries dynamics, synthesized in a decision table. We propose these business rules as advice for fisheries managers to better adapt to the ongoing changes we see in fisheries around the globe.
Biography:
Dr. Jason Link is the Senior Scientist (ST) for Ecosystem Management with the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS). In this role, Dr. Link leads approaches and models to support development of ecosystem-based management plans throughout the agency. Dr. Link has written several books and book chapters on the topic of Ecosystem-based Fisheries Management, has written over 190 peer-reviewed publications, over 300 reports, has over 250 published abstracts, and has convened over 10 major international symposia and summits on ecosystem management and modeling-related topics. Dr. Link has led the development of several strategic documents for NOAA and NMFS to improve and enhance mission-needed science. Dr. Link has been a champion of ecosystem science and ecosystem-based management, both as a discipline and as a practice, for resource management agencies in the U.S. and around the world, sitting on several international advisory boards and the editorial board of an international marine science journal.
Dr. Link received his B.S. from Central Michigan University and his Ph.D. from Michigan Technological University. Dr. Link holds an adjunct faculty position at the School for Marine Science and Technology at the University of Massachusetts. He is a fellow of the American Institute of Fishery Research Biologists and has received the Fisheries Society of the British Isles Medal for significant advances in fisheries science and a Department of Commerce Bronze medal.