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Common themes & threads: Four threads run through all of OpenOcean collaborations. First, since at least the 1990s, rapid warming of the earths atmosphere and oceans has profoundly affected the movements and productivity of marine organisms; often leading to rapid and sometimes abrupt ecological changes that are difficult to understand. Second, the system of governance we have built to determine and manage the sustainable harvest of the marine organisms has proven unable to cope with the rapid pace of ecological, as well as social change. This system of governance includes fisheries science that relies mostly on traditional scientific data sources (stratified surveys & experiments) for studies that take 3 to 5 years to complete and even longer to apply. By the time results are disseminated and acted upon they are often relevant to the state of nature in the past, not to the present, let alone the future. Third, fisherman have practical, real time understanding of changes occurring “now” in the marine ecosystems in which they harvest our food. They also have a practical understanding of the complex human dimensions of the fisheries they participate in. Yes, they are driven by economic self interest. But sustainable harvest is in their long term interest, and they have unique expertise. Fourth, fisheries are complex socio-ecological systems of interacting components ranging from ocean physics to global geopolitics. A multiplicity of expertises is necessary to diagnose fishery problems and to design effective solutions. Success is impossible without multidisciplinary collaborations that include fishing industry experts. Humility is also required because fishery problems are pregnant with contingency. Every solution is provisional. “Better is good” and the best we can do.

Below are several projects ed by John Manderson at OpenOcean Research:

  • Collaborative development of a Fishery Knowledge Trust (ongoing)

    • Individuals in the fishing industry interact daily with marine ecosystems and have timely, fine grained, tacit knowledge of the ecological and social dimensions underlying their fisheries. Fisherman are not just “citizen scientists”, but practical experts who sustain engagement with changing marine ecosystems. This fishery dependent understanding (FDU), if made explicit, could fill many gaps in information used to assess marine ecosystems and thereby reduce the risk of mismatches between ecosystem dynamics and governance that frequently result in the loss of natural resources and/or services they provide to humans. However, as a result of economic incentives, fisherman rarely share qualitative information (FDU) to develop consensus hypothesis or the quantitative fishery dependent data (FDD) that could be used along with other data to evaluate their consensus hypothesis. As a result, ecosystem scientists and policy makers often dismiss the “tacit” knowledge of individual fisherman as anecdotal and biased.

      OpenOcean Research is collaborating with the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, and Steven Jacobs to develop a fishing industry owned Fishery Knowledge Trust (FKT) that allows fisherman to collaborate amongst themselves and with others to develop credible science products to inform marine ecosystem management. The FKT is an organizational knowledge creation platform built on the foundation of the tripartite definition of knowledge as “justified true belief” and the concept of the legal trust. The knowledge creation platform infrastructure combines 3 components; 1) tools allowing individual industry experts to collect qualitative knowledge of ecosystem dimensions (FDU) in a standardized form so it can be aggregated to develop consensus hypothesis, 2) a distributed data storage and sharing system for standardized fishery dependent data (FDD) and qualitative knowledge (FDU) in which knowledge owners retain ownership and control over information through read only access permissions, and c) a library of shared and evolving software tools for processing and analysis facilitating the development of transparent, reproducible research products from FDU and FDD held within the FKT. We have developed strict rules governing the use of FKT infrastructure with regard to access to data and knowledge, project development, oversight and review of projects by advisory/review panels, and certification of quality science products by the FKT. These rules are codified in the mission and foundational principles of the FKT that are explicit in Memoranda of Understanding and Non Disclosure Agreements knowledge owners, analysts, advisors and trustees are required to sign.

      With support from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority we are developing the infrastructure and governance of the FKT in pilot projects focused on analyses of the potential impacts of offshore wind energy development on the Atlantic Herring and Clam fisheries in the Northwest Atlantic.

  • Northern shortfinned squid, population ecology & the fishery. (9/1/2019-Present)

    • Objective: OpenOcean Research is acting as an advisor to assist the northern shortfin squid fishery in engaging and collaborating with fishery scientists and managers to reduce uncertainties preventing responsive fisheries management in the near term. Participants in the fishery believe that uncertainties in stock status have produced inflexible fisheries management and early US fishing season closures in the face of the persistent high availability of the squid over the past 5 years and early fishery closures in the previous 4 years.

    • Backround: Northern shortfin squid, ranges from Florida to at least Newfoundland. The squid has a remarkable, opportunistic life cycle less than a year long that provides it with reproductive resilience in an environment in which resources defining habitat quality and carrying capacity are controlled by dynamic, ephemeral, and often unpredictable mixing processes of the western Atlantic boundary current system; the Gulfstream and its features, the shelf slope sea and the continental shelf. Key traits of the squid include a fast protein-based, temperature and body size dependent metabolism with cannibalism in all life stages; a sub-annual life cycle with multi-batch spawning of individuals and cohorts spawning in multiple seasons or continuously. Multiple spawning areas are possible and seasonal cohorts appear to exhibit asynchronous dynamics. Habitat use patterns diversify as the squid age to include slope sea, outer shelf and inner shelf habitats. Finally, development rates of the squid are temperature dependent and more so than growth rates; in warm temperatures they reach sexual maturity at earlier ages but smaller sizes. Diversity in the timing and locations of spawning, asynchronous cohort dynamics, and adult habitat diversity spread and thus reduce the risk of recruitment failure across multiple seasonal cohorts and habitats. In addition to these portfolio effects, cannibalism contributes reproductive resilience in ever changing ocean conditions.

      The US fishery is located on the outer edge of the southern New England and Mid Atlantic bight shelf break and is responsible for most northern shortfin squid landings. US and Canadian scientific surveys are limited to the continental shelve. As a result, large portions of the species habitat and species range are not sampled by the fishery or scientific surveys.

    • This project has progressed in 2 phases:

  • Atlantic Mackerel, population ecology & the fishery (2015-2017)

    • Since the 1990s the status of the Northwest Atlantic Mackerel population has been highly uncertain and perceptions of stock status have been different in the fishery and scientific communities. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, the perception of many fishers was that population assessments were overly optimistic. This perception was voiced but dismissed by fishery scientists, and policy makers who fostered the development of a high volume domestic US fishery. Until 2018 stock status continued to be uncertain and quotas were set primarily on the basis of landings without due consideration of economic, and ecological processes that, along with stock productivity, determined the availability of fish to the fishery. In 2015 several individuals from the US mackerel fishery and Dr. John Manderson who was then a research fisheries oceanographer with the NOAA/Northeast Fisheries Science Center took the initiative to develop an expert working group and field research program with the goal of providing information to improve the accuracy 2017 benchmark stock assessment. The partners led multi-disciplinary “Atlantic Mackerel Population Ecology and the Fishery” Workshops in 2015 and 2016 to foster open dialogue between fishing industry, marine scientist and policymaking experts and to prioritize research and review draft research products before the 2017 assessment meetings began. A collaborative field investigation of the winter ecology of mackerel and the fishery including human social dimensions was embedded within the fishery during the fishing seasons of 2015-2017. The work was supported by the NOAA/Northeast Fisheries Science Center & a grant from the Mid Atlantic Fisheries Management Council Collaborative Research Program Contract #16-0405 to the Garden State Seafood Association. Products developed and presented by the industry-science research partnership in the 2017 mackerel population assessment included:

      • Documentation of “Fishing industry perspectives of mackerel catchability and landings including detailed examination of the ecological, economic, regulatory drivers of catchability and fishery landings”

      • Fishery consensus about seasonal migration patterns for different mackerel contingents in US waters from 1970 to 2017. This included observed movements of groups of fish in nearshore and shelf-slope transition areas sampled by fisheries but not by fishery independent assessment surveys

      • A winter thermal habitat model for mackerel accounting for habitat connectivity along migration routes developed and validated within the active fishery. The model developed using iterative real time forecasting, was used in hindcast mode to estimate population availability to the stratified random fishery independent bottom trawl survey that has served as the principal source of information about trends in abundance and size/age structure to assessments.

      • A quantitative analysis of the spatial structure of mackerel in the fishery independent bottom trawl survey in which the interpretation of the results was informed by fishery ecological knowledge.

    • The information provided by the working group informed several key assessment decisions including:

      • Significant downweighting of abundance indices from the fishery independent bottom trawl survey in the assessment because of concerns about survey catchability. These concerns included potential impacts on survey availability of climate driven changes in migration and complex relationships between stratified random bottom trawl survey abundance indices and population size that could arise due to complex changes in mackerel schooling behavior with changes in population size. In addition the information developed by the group led to the elimination of catch estimates from foreign fleet period (early 1970s) from the analysis used to develop recruitment projections. Catches during the 1970s were reported to be 7xs larger than at any other time in the 200 year catch history.

    • The workgroup and its products contributed to the change in Atlantic mackerel stock status in the assessment from unknown to known. The work of the collaborative partnership; its leadership of workshops proceeding the assessment and its field research products represented an important and all too rare example of productive collaboration and trust between fishing industry experts and scientists in the pursuit of accuracy in fish population assessments in the Northeast US.

      Reviewers from The Center of Independent Experts commented on the importance and value of the industry-science collaboration, its approach and products, to the 2017 Atlantic Mackerel assessment.

      “This was a positive feature of the assessment. I would suggest expanding the WG (Work Group) recommendation (for continued industry science collaboration) to be a general one for all WGs. The work for this assessment and positive involvement of industry in the review could be a useful model for other fisheries.”

    • Selected products

  • Atlantic Butterfish, population ecology & the fishery (2012-2014) TODO