Everyone loves an update

Albi Rovellini's ongoing work on evaluating GOA optimum yield with Atlantis. This is part of a study on multispecies fishing simulations under different climate regimes and fishing configurations.

• Gulf of Alaska groundfish is managed with a multispecies ecosystem cap on annual catch allocations
• Optimum Yield cap = 800,000 mt each year, sum of single-species ABC must be lower
• Similar system in the Bering Sea, but higher cap (2M t)
• Since 1987, the GOA OY cap has never constrained catch allocations (unlike the Bering Sea cap), suggesting that the OY cap may be too high for the productivity of GOA stocks
• Given its history and projected climate change in the GOA, should we expect the OY cap to constrain GOA catches in the future?
• Multispecies fishing simulations with Atlantis, 4 climate-fishing combinations:
• Fishing: (1) all stocks fished at equal multipliers of FMSY; (2) same as (1) except arrowtooth flounder is only lightly exploited
• Climate: from ROMS, (1) pre-heatwave 1999 cool conditions; (2) high CO2 emissions, end of century scenario

Results: Underexploitation of key groundfish predator Arrowtooth flounder (right-hand column) leads to lower global yield, because arrowtooth predates on groundfish (mostly walleye pollock). Arrowtooth flounder is currently lightly exploited because it has limited commercial value Warmer climate (bottom row) leads to lower global yield, largely because of near collapse of Pacific cod under warm conditions mediated by recruitment failure

TAKE HOME MESSAGE: The OY cap in the GOA is unlikely to constrain fishery allocations in the future

Advancing the Utility of Food Web-Derived Indicators to Support Ecosystem-Based Fisheries Management

Goal: demonstrate the utility of diversification of fishing portfolios in New England

• NEFMC efforts toward climate-resilient fisheries.
• Worked example: expanding Northeast Groundfish Complex.
• Fishing portfolio diversification empowers fishers to find solutions to choke stocks which have threatened the sustainability and profitability of an historic fishery.

Efficiency frontiers quantify revenue and financial risk taken to achieve a given revenue. Red and blue lines compare an expanded groundfish complex to single species management of the same species. The point is the observed revenue and risk of forgone revenue for a given year. Preliminary results suggest the current, 13-species complex allows for some benefits beyond what single species management would achieve. The distance between observed and EBFM frontier suggests there is added economic benefit to expanding the current complex.

Simulation test

Council and Advisory Panel members recommended new elements addressing human dimensions (recreational access equity), new elements addressing cross-sectoral impacts (offshore wind impacts on biology and ecosystem as well as fishery access and scientific sampling), and transitions from static ecosystem indicators to time series indicators (prey availability, predation pressure, and fishing community vulnerability). New ecosystem science was required to support these requests. The process included development of new indicators of prey availability based on spatio-temporal modeling using ecological datasets (stomach contents, zooplankton), and new spatial analyses of habitat, revenue, and surveys relative to wind energy development areas. Development of potential risk criteria is ongoing; thresholds between low, moderate, and high risk that are essential to operational use are developed collaboratively with Council and Advisory Panel members.

The slide shows a higher risk example (black sea bass, low recent condition correlated with recently declining prey) and a lower risk example (bluefish, despite a long term decline in forage fish prey. recent condition has been good)