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How is our ocean doing?

Data, statistics, and modeling
for management advice

Sarah Gaichas
Northeast Fisheries Science Center

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Outline

  • My background

  • What is NOAA?

    • What we do

    • Challenges with what we do

    • Addressing challenges

  • What do I do?

  1. Integrated ecosystem assessment

  2. Modeling management strategies

xkcd comic https://xkcd.com/242/

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My (circuitous) path to NOAA

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My (circuitous) path to NOAA

NHMI

ponies Aedes solicitans

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My (circuitous) path to NOAA

NHMI

ponies Aedes solicitans

summer flounder with tag

 

 

Spanish mackerel with otoliths for ageing

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What is NOAA?

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What is NOAA?

NOAA regions

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Working at NOAA Fisheries

observers assessment phd

Alaska:

  • Observer program analyst
  • Stock assessment + PhD at UW
  • Ecosystem modeling GOA food web

Northeast:

  • Integrated ecosystem assessment, management strategy evaluation

multispecies harvest

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Fisheries: what do we need to know?

How many fish can be caught sustainably?

  • How many are caught right now?
  • How many were caught historically?
  • How many are there right now?
  • How many were there historically?
  • How productive are they (growth, reproduction)?

school of forage fish

  • What supports their productivity?
  • What does their productivity support, besides fishing?
  • How do they interact with other fish, fisheries, marine animals?
  • How do environmental changes affect them?
  • What is their ecological, economic, and social value to people?
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Challenges, how we address them

  • We don’t live in the ocean; can’t see or directly count what we manage
  • We know only basic biological properties of species; data are expensive
  • Catch coming to land is not the only fishing effect
  • We manage species separately but they interact
  • Different laws govern different species, activities
  • People depend on these estimates for livelihoods
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Challenges, how we address them

  • We don’t live in the ocean; can’t see or directly count what we manage
  • We know only basic biological properties of species; data are expensive
  • Catch coming to land is not the only fishing effect
  • We manage species separately but they interact
  • Different laws govern different species, activities
  • People depend on these estimates for livelihoods
  • Statistical design of surveys, sampling and estimation
  • Observation models for data
  • Sampling and estimation
  • Model structure and parameterization
  • Discarded catch estimation, habitat and other alterations
  • Multispecies and integrated assessment
  • Integrated assessment, management strategy evaluation
  • Validation, quality control, transparency
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What do I do? 1. Integrated ecosystem assessment

  • Establish objectives

  • Develop indicators

  • Assess ecosystem

  • Risk assessment

  • Management strategy evaluation

  • Evaluate and iterate

The IEA Loop1 IEA process from goal setting to assessment to strategy evaluation with feedbacks

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

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State of the Ecosystem Report

  • Ecosystem indicators linked to management objectives

  • Open science emphasis

  • Used within Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council's Ecosystem Process

2021 Report

  1. Graphical summary
    • Page 1 report card re: objectives →
    • Page 2 risk summary bullets
    • Page 3 synthesis themes
  2. Performance relative to management objectives
  3. Risks to meeting management objectives
Ecosystem-scale fishery management objectives
Objective Categories Indicators reported here
Provisioning and Cultural Services
Seafood Production Landings; commercial total and by feeding guild; recreational harvest
Profits Revenue decomposed to price and volume
Recreation Days fished; recreational fleet diversity
Stability Diversity indices (fishery and ecosystem)
Social & Cultural Community engagement/reliance status
Protected Species Bycatch; population (adult and juvenile) numbers, mortalities
Supporting and Regulating Services
Biomass Biomass or abundance by feeding guild from surveys
Productivity Condition and recruitment of managed species, Primary productivity
Trophic structure Relative biomass of feeding guilds, Zooplankton
Habitat Estuarine and offshore habitat conditions
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State of the Ecosystem summary

State of the Ecosystem page 1 summary table

State of the Ecosystem page 2 risk bullets

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Ecosystem synthesis themes

Characterizing ecosystem change for fishery management

  • Societal, biological, physical and chemical factors comprise the multiple system drivers that influence marine ecosystems through a variety of different pathways.
  • Changes in the multiple drivers can lead to regime shifts — large, abrupt and persistent changes in the structure and function of an ecosystem.
  • Regime shifts and changes in how the multiple system drivers interact can result in ecosystem reorganization as species and humans respond and adapt to the new environment.

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Performance relative to management objectives

Fishing icon made by EDAB       Fishing industry icon made by EDAB       Multiple drivers icon made by EDAB       Spiritual cultural icon made by EDAB       Protected species icon made by EDAB

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Objective: Seafood production decreasing arrow icon below average icon icon

Indicators: Commercial and recreational landings

Key: Black = Landings of all species combined;

Red = Landings of MAFMC managed species

Multiple drivers: ecosystem and stock production, management, market conditions, and environment

Is biomass driving?

Key: Black = NEFSC survey;

Red = NEAMAP survey

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Landings drivers: Ecosystem and stock production?

Key:

Orange background = Tipping point overfishing threshold, Link and Watson 2019

Green background = Optimal range, Link and Watson 2019

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Implications: Seafood Production

Key: Black = Landings of all species combined;

Red = Landings of MAFMC managed species

Drivers:

  • market dynamics affecting commercial landings of surfclams and ocean quahogs

  • other drivers affecting recreational landings: shark fishery management, possibly survey methodology

Monitor:

  • climate risks including warming, ocean acidification, and shifting distributions
  • ecosystem composition and production changes
  • fishing engagement
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Because ecosystem overfishing seems unlikely, stock status is mostly acceptable, and aggregate biomass trends appear stable, the decline in commercial landings is most likely driven by market dynamics affecting the landings of surfclams and ocean quahogs, as quotas are not binding for these species.

Climate change also seems to be shifting the distribution of surfclams and ocean quahogs, resulting in areas with overlapping distributions and increased mixed landings. Given the regulations governing mixed landings, this could become problematic in the future and is currently being evaluated by the Council.

Risks to meeting fishery management objectives

Climate icon made by EDAB       Wind icon made by EDAB

Hydrography icon made by EDAB       Phytoplankon icon made by EDAB       Forage fish icon made by EDAB       Apex predators icon made by EDAB       Other human uses icon made by EDAB

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Risks: Climate change

Indicators: ocean currents, bottom and surface temperature, marine heatwaves

 
 
     
 
 
   
 
   
   
 
   
 

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A marine heatwave is a warming event that lasts for five or more days with sea surface temperatures above the 90th percentile of the historical daily climatology (1982-2011).

Risks: Climate change

Indicator: cold pool area cold pool area

Indicator: acidification Seasonal pH

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Implications:

  • Surfclams vulnerable to increased temperature and acidification
  • Areas of low pH identified in surfclam and scallop habitat
  • Lab work in progress identified pH thresholds for surfclam growth: approaching threshold

What do I do? 2. Modeling management strategies

  • Changing climate and ocean conditions → Shifting species distributions, changing productivity

  • Needs:

    • Improve our ability to project global change impacts in the California Current and Nordic/Barents Seas (and elsewhere)
    • Test the performance of stock assessments to these impacts

Climate-Ready Management1 Climateready

[1] Karp, Melissa A. et al. 2019. Accounting for shifting distributions and changing productivity in the development of scientific advice for fishery management. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, doi:10.1093/icesjms/fsz048.

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Virtual worlds: end-to-end ecosystem models

Atlantis modeling framework: Fulton et al. 2011, Fulton and Smith 2004

Norwegian-Barents Sea

Hansen et al. 2016, 2018

NOBA scale 70%

California Current

Marshall et al. 2017, Kaplan et al. 2017

CCAspatial scale 80%

Building on global change projections: Hodgson et al. 2018, Olsen et al. 2018

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Design: Ecosystem model scenario (climate and fishing)

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  • Recruitment variability in the operating model

  • Specify uncertainty in assessment inputs using atlantisom

sardinerec scale 100%

Testing a simple "sardine" assessment (in progress)

Biomass true biomass compared with assessment biomass

Fishing mortality true fishing mortality compared with assessment fishing mortality

Recruitment true recruitement compared with assessment recruitment

Key: True SS3 estimate

workinprogress

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Multiple objectives, multiple challenges

Fisheries stock assessment and ecosystem modeling continue to develop
Can we keep pace with climate?

Existing management systems are at least as complex as the ecosystems, with diverse interests and emerging industries

Integrated ecosystem assessment and management strategy evaluation

  • Include key interactions
    • Species
    • Fisheries
  • Environment
  • Make tradeoffs explicit
  • Account for uncertainty

Mathematical innovation needed!

Three dimensional map of the Northeast US shelf showing major bottom

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State of the Ecosystem Collaborators --- THANK YOU!

The New England and Mid-Atlantic SOEs made possible by (at least) 52 contributors from 10 institutions

Andy Beet
Kimberly Bastille
Ruth Boettcher (Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries)
Mandy Bromilow (NOAA Chesapeake Bay Office)
Zhuomin Chen (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute)
Joseph Caracappa
Doug Christel (GARFO)
Patricia Clay
Lisa Colburn
Jennifer Cudney (NMFS Atlantic HMS Management Division)
Tobey Curtis (NMFS Atlantic HMS Management Division)
Geret DePiper
Emily Farr (NMFS Office of Habitat Conservation)
Michael Fogarty
Paula Fratantoni
Kevin Friedland
Sarah Gaichas
Ben Galuardi (GARFO)
Avijit Gangopadhyay (School for Marine Science and Technology, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth)
James Gartland (Virginia Institute of Marine Science)
Glen Gawarkiewicz (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
Sean Hardison
Kimberly Hyde
John Kosik
Steve Kress (National Audubon Society’s Seabird Restoration Program)
Young-Oh Kwon (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute)

Scott Large
Andrew Lipsky
Sean Lucey Don Lyons (National Audubon Society’s Seabird Restoration Program)
Chris Melrose
Shannon Meseck
Ryan Morse
Kimberly Murray
Chris Orphanides
Richard Pace
Charles Perretti
CJ Pellerin (NOAA Chesapeake Bay Office)
Grace Roskar (NMFS Office of Habitat Conservation)
Grace Saba (Rutgers)
Vincent Saba
Chris Schillaci (GARFO)
Angela Silva
Emily Slesinger (Rutgers University)
Laurel Smith
Talya tenBrink (GARFO)
Bruce Vogt (NOAA Chesapeake Bay Office)
Ron Vogel (UMD Cooperative Institute for Satellite Earth System Studies and NOAA/NESDIS Center for Satellite Applications and Research)
John Walden
Harvey Walsh
Changhua Weng
Mark Wuenschel

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If you want more details

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Questions? Thank you!

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Appendix 1: Fishery management in the US

Eight regional Fishery Management Councils establish plans for sustainable management of stocks within their jurisdictions. All are governed by the same law, but tailor management to their regional stakeholder needs.

US map highlighting regions for each fishery management council

More information: http://www.fisherycouncils.org/ https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/topic/laws-policies#magnuson-stevens-act

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Appendic 2: Trawl surveys-- how many fish are there?

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Outline

  • My background

  • What is NOAA?

    • What we do

    • Challenges with what we do

    • Addressing challenges

  • What do I do?

  1. Integrated ecosystem assessment

  2. Modeling management strategies

xkcd comic https://xkcd.com/242/

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