Successes and failures of ecosystem indicators

(just a few slides to stimulate discussion)

Nate MantuaUniversity of Washington

Aquatic and Fishery SciencesPICES/ICES/GLOBEC ECOFOR Workshop

Friday Harbor, Sept 7-11 2012

• Retested published correlations with new (independent) data and found many correlations didn’t hold up

• Found only 2 cases where environment-recruitment correlations were being used in management• SST-sardine recruitment relationship• Rainfall-banana prawn recruitment relationship

Management use of biophysical relationships today?

See Jackie King’s list from the previous talk … plus: • SST used to predict New Zealand snapper recruitment in

assessments for some regional stocks• Wilderbauer et al’s transport mediated recruitment

estimates for Eastern Bering Sea flatfish

A few more examples, but not that many considering the number of relationships that have been published. why the slow uptake into management?

• Ecosystem Considerations report (~200 p)

• Produced annually by NOAA ecosystem scientists

• Goal: to provide an overview of marine ecosystems in Alaska for the North Pacific Fishery Management Council

• Stock assessment recommendations are evaluated within an ecosystem context (EBFM, qualitative)

Supplying ecosystem information to fishery managers in Alaska

919 pages!

Only 70 pages

Ecosystem assessments

• Canada’s regional status and trends reports (annually published)

• Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands Ecosystems Considerations

• The California Current System– Northern California Current Ecosystem Indicators,

PaCOOS quarterly reports, CCEIA (919 pages!), Sydeman’s Central California EIA

• Puget Sound Marine Waters report (new)

Use of EIAs

• How are these being used? • How is the fishery oceanography community

increasing the utility of these efforts? • Are there opportunities to make them more

useful? • How can the EIA approach better compliment

the single stock assessments that continue to feed directly into fishery management? How or where might these parallel tracks intersect?

other