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State of the Ecosystem
New England

NEFMC
14 April 2022

Sean Lucey
Northeast Fisheries Science Center

Many thanks to:
Kimberly Bastille, Geret DePiper, Sarah Gaichas,
Kimberly Hyde, Scott Large, Laurel Smith,
and all SOE contributors

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State of the Ecosystem (SOE) reporting

Improving ecosystem information and synthesis for fishery managers

  • Ecosystem indicators linked to management objectives (DePiper, et al., 2017)

    • Contextual information
    • Report evolving since 2016
    • Fishery-relevant subset of full Ecosystem Status Reports

  • Open science emphasis (Bastille, et al., 2020)

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: Maintain 2021 structure for 2022

2021 Report

  1. Graphical summary
    • Page 1-2 report card re: objectives →
    • Page 3 risk summary bullets
    • Page 4 synthesis themes
  2. Performance relative to management objectives
  3. Risks to meeting management objectives
Example 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 2022

State of the Ecosystem page 1 summary table

State of the Ecosystem page 2 summary table

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State of the Ecosystem: Risks to Meeting Fishery Management Objectives

State of the Ecosystem page 1 summary table

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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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Document Orientation

Spatial scale NEFSC survey strata used to calculate Ecosystem Production Unit biomass A glossary of terms, detailed technical methods documentation and indicator data are available online.

Key to figures

Trends assessed only for 30+ years: more information

Orange line = significant increase

Purple line = significant decrease

No color line = not significant or < 30 years

Grey background = last 10 years

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Main sections

  • Performance relative to management objectives
    • What does the indicator say--up, down, stable?
    • Why do we think it is changing: integrates synthesis themes
      • Multiple drivers
      • Regime shifts
      • Ecosystem reorganization
  • Objectives
    • Seafood production
    • Profits
    • Recreational opportunities
    • Stability
    • Social and cultural
    • Protected species
  • Risks to meeting fishery management objectives
    • What does the indicator say--up, down, stable?
    • Why this is important to managers: integrates synthesis themes
      • Multiple drivers
      • Regime shifts
      • Ecosystem reorganization
  • Risk categories
    • Climate: warming, ocean currents, acidification
      • Habitat changes (incl. vulnerability analysis)
      • Productivity changes (system and fish)
      • Species interaction changes
      • Community structure changes
    • Other ocean uses
      • Offshore wind development
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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 landings

Key: Black = Landings of all species combined;

Red = Landings of NEFMC managed species

Coastwide landings at the Federal fishery management plan (FMP) level were mixed in 2020 when compared to recent years. Landings of groundfish were up, while monkfish and scallop were down. Lobster landings also decreased in 2020.*

Indicators: Recreational harvest

*US Seafood Industry and For-Hire Sector Impacts from COVID-19: 2020 in Perspective

Multiple drivers: ecosystem and stock production, management, market conditions (including COVID-19 disruptions), and environmental change

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Although scallop decreases are partially explained by a decreased TAC, analyses suggest that the drop in landings is at least partially due to market disruptions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, we do not anticipate the long-term declining trend in landings to change.

Landings drivers: Stock status? Survey biomass?

Indicator: Stock status

Indicator: Survey biomass

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Implications: Seafood Production

Drivers:

  • decline in commercial landings is most likely driven by the requirement to rebuild individual stocks as well as market dynamics

  • 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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Objective: Commercial Profits mixed trends arrow icon

Indicator: Commercial Revenue

Key: Black = Revenue of all species combined;

Red = Revenue of NEFMC managed species

Both regions driven by single species

  • GOM high revenue despite low volume
  • Fluctuations in GB due to rotational management

Monitor changes in climate and landings drivers:

  • Sea scallops and lobsters are sensitive to ocean warming and acidification
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Objective: Recreational opportunities no trend icon near average icon icon

Indicators: Recreational effort and fleet diversity

Implications

  • Absence of a long-term trend in recreational effort suggests relative stability in the overall number of recreational opportunities in New England
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Objective: Stability decreasing arrow icon Com below average icon icon; Rec near average icon icon

Fishery Indicators: Commercial fleet count, fleet diversity

Fishery Indicators: commerical species revenue diversity, recreational species catch diversity

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Objective: Stability mixed trend icon above average icon icon

Ecological Indicators: zooplankton and larval fish diversity

Ecological Indicator: expected number of species, NEFSC bottom trawl survey

Implications:

  • Commercial fishery diversity driven by small number of species
  • Diminished capacity to respond to future fishing opportunities
  • Recreational diversity due to species distributions and regulations
  • Adult diversity in GOM suggests increase in warm-water species
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  • Overall stability in the fisheries and ecosystem components
  • Increasing diversity in several indicators warrants continued monitoring

Objective: Environmental Justice and Social Vulnerability

Indicators: Environmental justice vulnerability, commercial fishery engagement and reliance

New England commercial fishing communities

Implications: Highlighted communities may be vulnerable to changes in fishing patterns due to regulations and/or climate change. When also experiencing environmental justice issues, they may have lower ability to successfully respond to change.

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These plots provide a snapshot of the presence of environmental justice issues in the most highly engaged and most highly reliant commercial and recreational fishing communities in the Mid-Atlantic. These communities may be vulnerable to changes in fishing patterns due to regulations and/or climate change. When any of these communities are also experiencing social vulnerability including environmental justice issues, they may have lower ability to successfully respond to change.

Objective: Environmental Justice and Social Vulnerability

Indicators: Environmental justice vulnerability, recreational fishery engagement and reliance

New England recreational fishing communities

Implications: Highlighted communities may be vulnerable to changes in fishing patterns due to regulations and/or climate change. When also experiencing environmental justice issues, they may have lower ability to successfully respond to change.

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Objectives: Protected species Maintain bycatch below thresholds mixed trend icon meeting objectives icon

Indicators: Harbor porpoise and gray seal bycatch

Implications:

  • Currently meeting objectives

  • The downward trend in harbor porpoise bycatch can also be due to a decrease in harbor porpoise abundance in US waters, reducing their overlap with fisheries, and a decrease in gillnet effort.

  • The increasing trend in gray seal bycatch may be related to an increase in the gray seal population (U.S. pup counts).

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Objectives: Protected species Recover endangered populations decreasing arrow icon below average icon icon

Indicators: North Atlantic right whale population, calf counts

Implications:

  • Population drivers for North Atlantic Right Whales (NARW) include combined fishery interactions/ship strikes, distribution shifts, and copepod availability.

  • Additional potential stressors include offshore wind development, which overlaps with important habitat areas used year-round by right whales, including mother and calf migration corridors and foraging habitat.

  • Unusual mortality events continue for 3 large whale species.

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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

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Risks: Climate change

Indicators: marine heatwaves


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Risks: Climate change and offshore habitat

Indicator: cold pool indices

Indicator: Ocean acidification Seasonal pH

Indicator: warm core rings

Warm core rings June 2021

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Risks: Ecosystem productivity

Indicators: chlorophyll, primary production

Implications: increased production by smaller phytoplankton implies less efficient transfer of primary production to higher trophic levels. Monitor implications of increasing gelatinous zooplankton and krill.

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Below average phytoplankton biomass could be due to reduced nutrient flow to the surface and/or increased grazing pressure. A short fall bloom was detected in November. Primary productivity (the rate of photosynthesis) was average to below average throughout 2021

Risks: Ecosystem productivity

Implications: fluctuating environmental conditions and prey for forage species affect both abundance and energy content. Energy content varies by season, and has changed over time most dramatically for Atlantic herring

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Risks: Ecosystem productivity

Indicator: fish condition

Georges Bank

Gulf of Maine

Implications: Many species in New England showed improved condition in 2021. Preliminary results of synthetic analyses show that changes in temperature, zooplankton, fishing pressure, and population size influence the condition of different fish species.

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Risks: Ecosystem productivity

Indicator: fish productivity anomaly

Small fish per large fish biomass anomaly on Georges Bank. The summed anomaly across species is shown by the black line.

Small fish per large fish biomass anomaly on Georges Bank. The summed anomaly across species is shown by the black line.

Small fish per large fish biomass anomaly in the Gulf of Maine. The summed anomaly across species is shown by the black line.

Small fish per large fish biomass anomaly in the Gulf of Maine. The summed anomaly across species is shown by the black line.

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Risks: Ecosystem structure

Indicators: distribution shifts, diversity, predator status and trends

No trend in aggregate sharks

HMS populations mainly at or above target

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Risks: Ecosystem structure

Indicators: predators

Gray seals increasing

  • Breeding season ~ 27,000 US gray seals, Canada's population ~ 425,000 (2016)
  • Canada's population increasing at ~ 4% per year
  • U.S. pupping sites increased from 1 (1988) to 9 (2019)
  • Harbor and gray seals are generalist predators that consume more than 30 different prey species: red, white and silver hake, sand lance, yellowtail flounder, four-spotted flounder, Gulf-stream flounder, haddock, herring, redfish, and squids.

Implications: stable predator populations suggest stable predation pressure on managed species, but increasing predator populations may reflect increasing predation pressure.

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Risks: Habitat climate vulnerability

Indicators: climate sensitive species life stages mapped to climate vulnerable habitats

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Risks: Offshore Wind Development

Indicators: development timeline

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Risks: Offshore Wind Development

Indicators: fishery and community specific revenue in lease areas

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Risks: Offshore Wind Development

Implications:

  • 2-69% of port revenue from fisheries currently comes from areas proposed for offshore wind development. Some communities have environmental justice concerns and gentrification vulnerability.
  • Up to 12% of annual commercial landings and revenue for major New England species occur in lease areas.
  • Development will affect species differently, negatively affecting species that prefer soft bottom habitat while potentially benefiting species that prefer hard structured habitat.
  • Planned wind areas overlap with one of the only known right whale foraging habitats, and altered local oceanography could affect right whale prey availability. Development also brings increased vessel strike risk and the potential impacts of pile driving noise.
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Current plans for rapid buildout of offshore wind in a patchwork of areas spreads the impacts differentially throughout the region Evaluating the impacts to scientific surveys has begun.

Contributors - THANK YOU!

The New England and Mid-Atlantic SOEs made possible by (at least) 61 contributors from 14 institutions

Kimberly Bastille
Aaron Beaver (Anchor QEA)
Andy Beet
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
Dan Dorfman (NOAA-NOS-NCCOS)
Emily Farr (NMFS Office of Habitat Conservation)
Michael Fogarty
Paula Fratantoni
Kevin Friedland
Marjy Friedrichs (VIMS)
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
Brandon Muffley (MAFMC)
Kimberly Murray
Chris Orphanides
Richard Pace
Tom Parham (Maryland DNR) Charles Perretti
CJ Pellerin (NOAA Chesapeake Bay Office)
Grace Roskar (NMFS Office of Habitat Conservation)
Grace Saba (Rutgers)
Vincent Saba
Chris Schillaci (GARFO)
Dave Secor (CBL)
Angela Silva
Adrienne Silver (UMass/SMAST)
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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References

Bastille, K. et al. (2020). "Improving the IEA Approach Using Principles of Open Data Science". In: Coastal Management 0.0. Publisher: Taylor & Francis _ eprint: https://doi.org/10.1080/08920753.2021.1846155, pp. 1-18. ISSN: 0892-0753. DOI: 10.1080/08920753.2021.1846155. URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/08920753.2021.1846155 (visited on Dec. 09, 2020).

DePiper, G. S. et al. (2017). "Operationalizing integrated ecosystem assessments within a multidisciplinary team: lessons learned from a worked example". En. In: ICES Journal of Marine Science 74.8, pp. 2076-2086. ISSN: 1054-3139. DOI: 10.1093/icesjms/fsx038. URL: https://academic.oup.com/icesjms/article/74/8/2076/3094701 (visited on Mar. 09, 2018).

Additional resources

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Discussion





Thank you!

]

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State of the Ecosystem (SOE) reporting

Improving ecosystem information and synthesis for fishery managers

  • Ecosystem indicators linked to management objectives (DePiper, et al., 2017)

    • Contextual information
    • Report evolving since 2016
    • Fishery-relevant subset of full Ecosystem Status Reports

  • Open science emphasis (Bastille, et al., 2020)

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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