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There is no I in EAFM:

Adapting Integrated Ecosystem Assessment
for Mid-Atlantic Fisheries Management

Sarah Gaichas, Geret DePiper, Brandon Muffley, Richard Seagraves, Sean Lucey
Northeast Fisheries Science Center, Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council

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An integrated ecosystem assessment success story (in progress)

Diverse stakeholders agreed that an ecosystem approach was necessary. Developing and implementing an ecosystem approach to fishery management was done in collaboration between managers, stakeholders, and scientists.

Outline

  • Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council Ecosystem Approach (EAFM)

  • Tailoring ecosystem reporting for fishery managers

  • Mid-Atlantic EAFM risk assessment

  • Mid-Atlantic EAFM conceptual modeling (towards MSE)

  • Improvements: open-source data and technical documentation

Integrated Ecosystem Assessment

iea-loop

https://www.integratedecosystemassessment.noaa.gov/national/IEA-approach

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The Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council

MAcouncil

MAFMPs

Source: http://www.mafmc.org/fishery-management-plans
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Why an ecosystem approach?

"We rebuilt all the stocks, so why is everyone still pissed off?" --Rich Seagraves

in 2011, the Council asked:

visioning1

visioning2

And many people answered, from commercial fishery, recreational fishery, environmental organization, and interested public perspectives.

Visioning report:

http://www.mafmc.org/s/MAFMC-stakeholder-input-report-p7b9.pdf

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Common themes among all stakeholder groups:

• There is a lack of confidence in the data that drive fishery management decisions.

• Stakeholders are not as involved in the Council process as they can and should be.

• Different jurisdictions and regulations among the many fishery management organizations result in complexity and inconsistency.

• There is a need for increased transparency and communications in fisheries management.

• The dynamics of the ecosystem and food web should be considered to a greater extent in fisheries management decisions.

• Stakeholders are not adequately represented on the Council.

• Pollution is negatively affecting the health of fish stocks.

Visioning report, p. 3:

http://www.mafmc.org/s/MAFMC-stakeholder-input-report-p7b9.pdf

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Mid-Atlantic Council Ecosystem Approach

Details on development, including workshop presentations and white papers: http://www.mafmc.org/eafm

[1] Gaichas, S., Seagraves, R., Coakley, J., DePiper, G., Guida, V., Hare, J., Rago, P., et al. 2016. A Framework for Incorporating Species, Fleet, Habitat, and Climate Interactions into Fishery Management. Frontiers in Marine Science, 3.

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Examples illustrating the use of the framework

firstrisk

Risk assessment highlights prority species/issues for more detailed evaluation

A conceptual model maps out key interactions for high risk fisheries, specifies quantitative management strategy evaluation

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Examples illustrating the use of the framework

firstrisk

Risk assessment highlights prority species/issues for more detailed evaluation

A conceptual model maps out key interactions for high risk fisheries, specifies quantitative management strategy evaluation

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The conceptual model is used to specify quantitative management strategy evaluation

But where will the risk assessment indicators come from?

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Meanwhile, scientists were improving ecosystem reports:

"So what?" --John Boreman, September 2016

  1. Clear linkage of ecosystem indicators with management objectives

  2. Synthesis across indicators for big picture

  3. Objectives related to human-well being placed first in report

  4. Short (< 30 pages), non-technical (but rigorous) text

  5. Emphasis on reproducibility

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In 2016, we began taking steps to address these common critiques of the ESR model

Revised ecosystem status reporting

Report structure

  1. Synthetic overview

  2. Human dimensions

  3. Protected species

  4. Fish and invertebrates (managed and otherwise)

  5. Habitat quality and ecosystem productivity

Ecosystem-scale objectives and indicators on the Northeast US shelf
Objective Categories Indicators
Seafood Production Landings by feeding guild
Profits Revenue by feeding guild
Recreation Number of anglers and trips; recreational catch
Stability Diversity indices (fishery and species)
Social & Cultural Commercial and recreational reliance
Biomass Biomass or abundance by feeding guild from surveys
Productivity Condition and recruitment of managed species
Trophic structure Relative biomass of feeding guilds, primary productivity
Habitat Estuarine and offshore habitat conditions
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Indicator spatial scales--already Mid-Atlantic specific

https://noaa-edab.github.io/tech-doc/epu.html

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Indicators

Risk assessent indicators and ranking criteria: Commercial revenue

This element is applied at the ecosystem level. Revenue serves as a proxy for commercial profits.

Risk Level Definition
Low No trend and low variability in revenue
Low-Moderate Increasing or high variability in revenue
Moderate-High Significant long term revenue decrease
High Significant recent decrease in revenue

Ranked moderate-high risk due to the significant long term revenue decrease for Mid-Atlantic managed species (red points in top plot)

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Risk assessent indicators and ranking criteria: Climate

This element is applied at the species level. Risks to species productivity (and therefore to achieving optimum yield) due to projected climate change in the Northeast US were evaluated in a comprehensive assessment1.

Risk Level Definition
Low Low climate vulnerability ranking
Low-Moderate Moderate climate vulnerability ranking
Moderate-High High climate vulnerability ranking
High Very high climate vulnerability ranking

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0146756.

[1] Hare, J. A., Morrison, W. E., Nelson, M. W., Stachura, M. M., Teeters, E. J., Griffis, R. B., Alexander, M. A., et al. 2016. A Vulnerability Assessment of Fish and Invertebrates to Climate Change on the Northeast U.S. Continental Shelf. PLOS ONE, 11: e0146756.

Each species ranked according to position/color in the plot on the right

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Risk assessment results

Species and Sector level risk elements1

[1] Gaichas, S. K., DePiper, G. S., Seagraves, R. J., Muffley, B. W., Sabo, M., Colburn, L. L., and Loftus, A. L. 2018. Implementing Ecosystem Approaches to Fishery Management: Risk Assessment in the US Mid-Atlantic. Frontiers in Marine Science, 5.

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Risk assessment results updated with 2019 indicators

Species level risk elements Ecosystem level risk elements

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How are they using the risk assessment? What's next?

  • Based on risk assessment, the Council selected summer flounder as high-risk fishery for conceptual modeling

  • Working group of habitat, biology, stock assessment, management, economic and social scientists developed:

    • draft conceptual models of high risk elements, linkages
    • dataset identification and gap analysis for each element and link
    • draft questions that the Council could persue with additional work

  • Final conceptual model and supporting information at December 2019 Council meeting

  • Council may then elect to proceed with management strategy evaluation (MSE) using the information from conceptual modeling as a basis

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Community VulnerabilityDissolved OxygenEconomic DriversFreshwater InfluxNutrient InfluxOcean AcidificationOcean FeaturesOceanographic TransportOther Species Ditributional ShiftsShifts in PreferencesTemperatureWater DiversionComplianceDiscardsFishery Distributional ShiftFishery ResilienceFleet DiversityLandingsPerceived InequityTechnical InteractionsAllocationCommunicationEnforcementManagement ControlOther RegulationsPermit AccessRegulatory ComplexityRisk BufferingAdults & SpawnersAge & Size StructureFluke Distributional ShiftFluke RecruitmentFluke SSBGrowthMaturationNatural MortalitySex RatioAssessment ProcessData QualityPredictability of Recreational FishingStock AssessmentAquatic VegetationEstuarine HabitatFood Web ChangesHabitat AlterationLoose Inert SubstrateOffshore HabitatSalinityWater ClarityCommercial ProfitsConsumer SurplusRecreational ProfitsRecreational ValueSeafoodProtected Species
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Conclusions

Integrated ecosystem assessment is a valuable framework for the general implementation of ecosystem approaches to natural resource management

  • The Council’s rapid progress in implementing EAFM resulted from positive collaboration between managers, stakeholders, and scientists. Collaboration is essential to IEA and to the success of EAFM.

  • Ecosystem indicators and reporting can be tailored to specific regional objectives.

  • Risk assessment is a rapid, familiar, scaleable, and transparent method to move forward with EAFM within a real-world operational fishery management context.

  • This EAFM process highlights certain species and certain management issues as posing higher cumulative risks to meeting Council-derived management objectives when considering a broad range of ecological, social, and economic factors.

  • Conceptual modeling links the key factors for high risk fisheries and scopes more detailed integrated analysis and management strategy evaluation.

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The Council foresees refining the process so that ecosystem indicators monitor risks to achieving ecological, social, and economic fishery objectives, which can then be mitigated through management action.

Footnote: Improvements to reproducibility and provenance

  • Reporting the information is not enough
  • Managers appreciate the concise format, but back-end critical for describing collection, analyses, and processing
  • Streamlined workflow allowed scientists to meet management deadlines

soe-data-flow

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This workflows also ensures that there's no information lost between SOE cycles. We know exactly how a data set was analyzed and handled so that the data can be updated for next year's reports.

If you want all the details

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Contributors - THANK YOU!

The New England and Mid-Atlantic Ecosystem reports made possible by (at least) 38 contributors from 8 institutions

Donald Anderson (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute)
Amani Bassyouni (Virginia Department of Health)
Lisa Calvo (Rutgers)
Matthew Camisa (MA Division of Marine Fisheries)
Patricia Clay
Lisa Colburn
Geret DePiper
Deb Duarte
Michael Fogarty
Paula Fratantoni
Kevin Friedland
Sarah Gaichas
James Gartland (Virginia Institute of Marine Science)
Heather Haas
Sean Hardison
Kimberly Hyde
Terry Joyce (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute)
John Kosik
Steve Kress (National Audubon Society)
Scott Large

Don Lyons (National Audubon Society)
Loren Kellogg
David Kulis (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute)
Sean Lucey
Chris Melrose
Ryan Morse
Kimberly Murray
Chris Orphanides
Richard Pace
Charles Perretti
Karl Roscher (Maryland Department of Natural Resources)
Vincent Saba
Laurel Smith
Mark Terceiro
John Walden
Harvey Walsh
Mark Wuenschel
Qian Zhang (Unversity of Maryland and US EPA Chesapeake Bay Program)

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Extra Slides

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Standardized indicator visualization in reports

Status (short-term) and trend (long-term) of components are measured as indicators and plotted in a standardized way

Indicators are selected to

  1. Be broadly informative about a component in a management context1-3

  2. Minimize redundancy of information

  3. Be responsive to ecosystem change

[1] Rice J. C.Rochet M. J. "A framework for selecting a suite of indicators for fisheries management." ICES Journal of Marine Science 62 (2005): 516–527.

[2] Link J. 2010. Ecosystem-Based Fisheries Management: Confronting Tradeoffs . Cambridge University Press, New York.

[3] Zador, Stephani G., et al. "Ecosystem considerations in Alaska: the value of qualitative assessments." ICES Journal of Marine Science 74.1 (2017): 421-430.

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Risk assessent indicators and ranking criteria: System productivity

This element is applied at the ecosystem level, and ranks the risk of not achieving optimum yield due to changes in ecosystem productivity at the base of the food web.

Four indicators are used together to assess risk of changing ecosystem productivity: primary production, zooplankton abundance, fish condition and fish recruitment.

Risk Level Definition
Low No trends in ecosystem productivity
Low-Moderate Trend in ecosystem productivity (1-2 measures, increase or decrease)
Moderate-High Trend in ecosystem productivity (3+ measures, increase or decrease)
High Decreasing trend in ecosystem productivity, all measures
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We examine trends in total primary production, zooplankton abundance for a key Mid-Atlantic species, and two aggregate fish productivity measures: condition factor (weight divided by length of individual fish) and a survey based "recruitment" (small fish to large fish) index.

Risk assessent indicators and ranking criteria: System productivity

Ranked low-moderate risk due to the significant long term trends in zooplankton abundance for major species (top right plot)

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An integrated ecosystem assessment success story (in progress)

Diverse stakeholders agreed that an ecosystem approach was necessary. Developing and implementing an ecosystem approach to fishery management was done in collaboration between managers, stakeholders, and scientists.

Outline

  • Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council Ecosystem Approach (EAFM)

  • Tailoring ecosystem reporting for fishery managers

  • Mid-Atlantic EAFM risk assessment

  • Mid-Atlantic EAFM conceptual modeling (towards MSE)

  • Improvements: open-source data and technical documentation

Integrated Ecosystem Assessment

iea-loop

https://www.integratedecosystemassessment.noaa.gov/national/IEA-approach

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