Implementing a nesting analysis to describe the context of range shifts in Barents Sea fish species
Dr Eleanor Bors1
1Oregon State University , Newport, United States, 2The Arctic University of Norway , Tromsø, Norway
Shifts in the distribution of Arctic marine fish are likely to affect commercial and subsistence fishing in northern countries. In the Barents Sea, for example, some fish species have shifted to the north and east, affecting Arctic marine food webs and leading to changes in ecosystems that could affect ecosystem services and sustainable harvest. Fisheries actors in the Barents Sea will likely need to respond to these spatial changes in order to achieve a sustainable harvest and ensure persistence of fish stocks. The first step in responding to an environmental management challenge is to identify and describe the context of the challenge. This step, however, is rarely comprehensive and sometimes missing entirely. I will present research that aims to summarize the intellectual, societal, and institutional context of fisheries range shifts in the Barents Sea using a nesting analysis (introduced by Bors and Solomon (2013) for use in comparative environmental analysis). ‘Nesting’ of environmental problems is essentially a metric of complexity that attempts to describe the degree to which an issue is entrenched intellectually, societally, and institutionally. Intellectual nesting refers to the academic communities that study a problem’s causes as well as possible solutions. Societal nesting refers to the sectors of human actors and activities that are associated with the problem. Institutional nesting describes the types of governance or management structures that could address the problem. By mapping out the context of fisheries range shifts in the Barents Sea at a high level, this nesting analysis could aid in future decision-making
Biography:
Ellie Bors is a marine biologist with policy experience whose research has spanned numerous environments from the deep sea to coastal waters. Her research has an emphasis on the use of genetics to better understand population dynamics and evolution. She is currently a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State University and a Fulbright Arctic Initiative Scholar studying the biological and policy implications of shifting distributions of Arctic fish stocks in Norway. In 2017, Ellie was a Knauss Marine Policy Fellow in the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of International Affairs. She holds a Ph.D. from the MIT-Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program in Oceanography.