There are numerous ecosystem goods and services (EGS) provided by the ocean. There are also multiple mandates to address this suite of EGS. Which facets of the ocean EGS does this portfolio of mandates collectively address? How are these mandates interrelated? Are there gaps in their coverage of EGS? Are there areas of reinforcement? To elucidate this set of issues, we characterize the portfolio of mandates that a leading U.S. governmental ocean agency, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the subset of those that one of its Line Offices, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NOAA-Fisheries), is responsible for implementing. We link these mandates to a suite of EGS, evaluating the relative degree that each mandate addresses each EGS. The weighted overlap across mandates with respect to EGS was also estimated. Of the nearly 100 NOAA mandates, and the subset of 50 NOAA-Fisheries mandates, there was broad coverage of ocean EGS; every EGS has at a minimum of 9 NOAA mandates that addressed that topic. Food production, habitat provision, genetic resources, recreation, tourism, historical and heritage value, and knowledge and science value were the EGS that had the highest amount of coverage at 30, 42, 50, 39, 38, 34, and 60 NOAA mandates, respectively. There was some reinforcement across mandates, particularly for the top EGS, suggesting that the multiple facets of these EGS are being reasonably well addressed. Seventy percent of mandates informed the same EGS via implementation of the top 10 mandates considered to be the most important for NOAA. The large number of mandates and the overlap in the EGS they address suggest that some form of coordination is warranted, particularly via adoption of an ecosystem-based approach to management.

Ecosystem management (EM) suffers from linguistic uncertainty surrounding the definition of “EM” and how it can be operationalized. Using fisheries management as an example, we clarify how EM exists in different paradigms along a continuum, starting with a single-species focus and building towards a more systemic and multi-sector perspective. Focusing on the specification of biological and other systemic reference points (SRPs) used in each paradigm and its related regulatory and governance structures, we compare and contrast similarities among these paradigms. We find that although EM is a hierarchical continuum, similar SRPs can be used throughout the continuum, but the scope of these reference points are broader at higher levels of management. This work interprets the current state of the conversation, and may help to clarify the levels of how EM is applied now and how it can be applied in the future, further advancing its implementation.

Ecosystem-based fisheries management has been perceived as something desirable but pragmatically unachievable due to several impediments identified earlier during its implementation phase. Over the years, many of these impediments have been resolved but not well communicated to stakeholders, managers, scientists, and policymakers. As a result, several past impediments to implementing ecosystem-based fisheries management have taken on a mythical status. Here we identify six common myths, address why they in fact no longer impede ecosystem-based fisheries management, and propose solutions for moving forward. We assert that these myths need not continue to exist and that improved approaches for fisheries are indeed feasible.

An often-cited impediment to the operationalization of ecosystem-based fisheries management is the lack of a governance structure that explicitly provides the authority and framework for implementing this holistic approach to fisheries management. However within the United States and elsewhere in the world, the concept of optimum yield appears to be an explicit mandate and framework that can and should be used to operationalize ecosystem-based fisheries management. This optimum yield policy has been hidden in plain sight for close to 40 years, largely due to happenstance, as other factors facing society-at-large have masked the original intent behind this concept. This paper describes the similarities between optimum yield and ecosystem-based fisheries management, how it has been overlooked in the past, and how the concept can be used to operationalize ecosystem-based fisheries management Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Single-species life history parameters are central to ecological research and management, including the fields of macro-ecology, fisheries science, and ecosystem modeling. However, there has been little independent evaluation of the precision and accuracy of the life history values in global and publicly available databases. We therefore develop a novel method based on a Bayesian errors-in-variables model that compares database entries with estimates from local experts, and we illustrate this process by assessing the accuracy and precision of entries in FishBase, one of the largest and oldest life history databases. This model distinguishes biases among seven life history parameters, two types of information available in FishBase (i.e., published values and those estimated from other parameters), and two taxa (i.e., bony and cartilaginous fishes) relative to values from regional experts in the United States, while accounting for additional variance caused by sex- and region-specific life history traits. For published values in FishBase, the model identifies a small positive bias in natural mortality and negative bias in maximum age, perhaps caused by unacknowledged mortality caused by fishing. For life history values calculated by FishBase, the model identified large and inconsistent biases. The model also demonstrates greatest precision for body size parameters, decreased precision for values derived from geographically distant populations, and greatest between-sex differences in age at maturity. We recommend that our bias and precision estimates be used in future errors-in-variables models as a prior on measurement errors. This approach is broadly applicable to global databases of life history traits and, if used, will encourage further development and improvements in these databases.

Life history parameters of fish stocks are central to ecological research and management, including the fields of macro-ecology, fisheries science, and ecosystem modeling. The need for such information has led to several life history databases being developed to support and disseminate this information publicly. However, there has been little independent evaluation of the precision and accuracy of the life history values in these databases. This article summarizes a recent evaluation of FishBase, one of the largest and oldest life history databases, by distinguishing biases among seven life history parameters, two types of information available in FishBase (i.e., Entered vs. Generated data), and two taxa (i.e., Teleost vs. Chondrichthyan). In general, the study shows that certain types of information like data "entered" by experts are relatively accurate and precise, while empirically "generated" were not. We conclude with some ideas on how American Fisheries Society members can improve upon the data already available within FishBase.

Worldwide, fishery managers strive to maintain fish stocks at or above levels that produce maximum sustainable yields, and to rebuild overexploited stocks that can no longer support such yields. In the United States, rebuilding overexploited stocks is a contentious issue, where most stocks are mandated to rebuild in as short a time as possible, and in a time period not to exceed 10 years. Opponents of such mandates and related guidance argue that rebuilding requirements are arbitrary, and create discontinuities in the time and fishing effort allowed for stocks to rebuild due to differences in productivity. Proponents, however, highlight how these mandates and guidance were needed to curtail the continued overexploitation of these stocks by setting firm deadlines on rebuilding. Here we evaluate the statements made by opponents and proponents of the 10-year rebuilding mandate and related guidance to determine whether such points are technically accurate using a simple population dynamics model and a database of U.S. fish stocks to parameterize the model. We also offer solutions to many of the issues surrounding this mandate and its implementation by recommending some fishing mortality based frameworks, which meet the intent of the 10-year rebuilding requirement while also providing more flexibility.

Bycatch presents a challenge to optimizing yield in commercial fisheries, where bycatch can total more than 1 million mt per year in the United States. Yet the economic impacts of bycatch have rarely been evaluated in the scientific literature. These economic impacts largely occur from the loss of landings through (1) early closure of fisheries when catch limits of bycatch species are reached; and (2) discards of marketable catch due to regulatory requirements in the fishery. This paper illustrates the economic impacts of early closures due to bycatch in U.S. fisheries by describing past case studies, as well as evaluating the economic impacts of discarding fish in U.S. commercial fisheries. Premature closures in the fisheries reviewed resulted in potential losses ranging from $34.4 million to $453.0 million annually. Nationally, bycatch estimates in the form of regulatory discards are annually reducing the potential yield of fisheries by $427.0 million in ex-vessel revenues, and as much as $4.2 billion in seafood-related sales, $1.5 billion in income, and 64,000 jobs. Our review also shows that some of the most promising work to reduce bycatch over the last decade has been the development of gears or gear modifications, termed "conservation engineering."

The management of marine fisheries is often based on a system of target and limit reference points, and contains significant amounts of scientific and management uncertainty that need to be interpreted and reconciled by managers. While scientific uncertainty has been thoroughly studied, described, and techniques have been developed to address this type of uncertainty; studies of management uncertainty are lacking and of the few studies available most are theoretical in nature. We evaluated 17 U.S. fisheries to describe how management uncertainty varies among management regimes and identify some potential factors that drive these variances. Our analysis found that a manager's ability to keep a fishery at or under the targeted catch level can vary substantially among fisheries, depending on the sector of the fishery, the management regime being used, the frequency at which landings are reported, and the magnitude of inter-annual target variability. Within our study, reporting frequency and the type of management regime being used seemed to describe the majority of the variance we observed among fisheries.

Assessing the vulnerability of stocks to fishing practices in U.S. federal waters was recently highlighted by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, as an important factor to consider when 1) identifying stocks that should be managed and protected under a fishery management plan; 2) grouping data-poor stocks into relevant management complexes; and 3) developing precautionary harvest control rules. To assist the regional fishery management councils in determining vulnerability, NMFS elected to use a modified version of a productivity and susceptibility analysis (PSA) because it can be based on qualitative data, has a history of use in other fisheries, and is recommended by several organizations as a reasonable approach for evaluating risk. A number of productivity and susceptibility attributes for a stock are used in a PSA and from these attributes, index scores and measures of uncertainty are computed and graphically displayed. To demonstrate the utility of the resulting vulnerability evaluation, we evaluated six U.S. fisheries targeting 162 stocks that exhibited varying degrees of productivity and susceptibility, and for which data quality varied. Overall, the PSA was capable of differentiating the vulnerability of stocks along the gradient of susceptibility and productivity indices, although fixed thresholds separating low-, moderate-, and highly vulnerable species were not observed. The PSA can be used as a flexible tool that can incorporate regional-specific information on fishery and management activity.

In 2005, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Marine Fisheries Service initiated a status review of Atlantic sturgeon to determine if the species warranted a threatened or endangered listing under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The Atlantic sturgeon status review team intended to rely on previously used methods to assess extinction risk, but found that most quantitative extinction risk analyses were performed on data-rich populations and often did not systematically consider the five factors specified in Section 4(a)(1) of the ESA as required for listing a species. Taking cues from structured decision analysis theory, the team created a framework, based around the five factors, which can be used to evaluate the status of data-poor species. Potential scoring biases were minimized in this analysis by providing experts with standardized reference points for scoring, dividing the analysis into smaller units, and using both individual and group opinion. Using this five-factored structured decision analysis, the status review team recommended that three of the five distinct population segments warranted listing as threatened. The status review team offers their approach to increase transparency about their scientific recommendation and to aid other teams who are tasked with systematically evaluating the status of data-poor species.

Fish hatchery programs commonly are used to enhance depleted fish populations. While these programs are highly valued by the public, most likely due to their nonrestrictive approach to restoring a fishery, the effectiveness of these programs has been often questioned. This study investigates economic and ecological effectiveness of the Albemarle Sound/Roanoke River (AR) striped bass stocking program from 1981 to1996 as a case study.