Comprehensive bycatch assessment in US fisheries for prioritizing management

Savoca, Matthew S.; Brodie, Stephanie; Welch, Heather; Hoover, Aimee L.; Benaka, Lee R.; Bograd, Steven J.; Hazen, Elliott L.

doi:10.1038/s41893-020-0506-9

Cited by 24 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…It is also considered to have contributed to a reduction in effort and landings of swordfish on the U.S. West Coast. Continued assessment of the economic impacts of these (and potential) regulations and closures is important to ensure thorough evaluation of the trade-off between bycatch reduction and economic opportunity; especially in the context of absolute bycatch impact (which for the DGN is comparatively low; Savoca et al, 2020), and considering the potential for "leakage" and "spillover" of the bycatch problem for many HMS (Chan and Pan, 2016;Helvey et al, 2017).…”

Section: The Drift Gillnet Fisherymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Comparing Dynamic and Static Time-Area Closures for Bycatch Mitigation: A Management Strategy Evaluation of a Swordfish Fishery

et al. 2021

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Time-area closures are a valuable tool for mitigating fisheries bycatch. There is increasing recognition that dynamic closures, which have boundaries that vary across space and time, can be more effective than static closures at protecting mobile species in dynamic environments. We created a management strategy evaluation to compare static and dynamic closures in a simulated fishery based on the California drift gillnet swordfish fishery, with closures aimed at reducing bycatch of leatherback turtles. We tested eight operating models that varied swordfish and leatherback distributions, and within each evaluated the performance of three static and five dynamic closure strategies. We repeated this under 20 and 50% simulated observer coverage to alter the data available for closure creation. We found that static closures can be effective for reducing bycatch of species with more geographically associated distributions, but to avoid redistributing bycatch the static areas closed should be based on potential (not just observed) bycatch. Only dynamic closures were effective at reducing bycatch for more dynamic leatherback distributions, and they generally reduced bycatch risk more than they reduced target catch. Dynamic closures were less likely to redistribute fishing into rarely fished areas, by leaving open pockets of lower risk habitat, but these closures were often fragmented which would create practical challenges for fishers and managers and require a mobile fleet. Given our simulation’s catch rates, 20% observer coverage was sufficient to create useful closures and increasing coverage to 50% added only minor improvement in closure performance. Even strict static or dynamic closures reduced leatherback bycatch by only 30–50% per season, because the simulated leatherback distributions were broad and open areas contained considerable bycatch risk. Perfect knowledge of the leatherback distribution provided an additional 5–15% bycatch reduction over a dynamic closure with realistic predictive accuracy. This moderate level of bycatch reduction highlights the limitations of redistributing fishing effort to reduce bycatch of broadly distributed and rarely encountered species, and indicates that, for these species, spatial management may work best when used with other bycatch mitigation approaches. We recommend future research explores methods for considering model uncertainty in the spatial and temporal resolution of dynamic closures.

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Section: The Drift Gillnet Fisherymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A key threat to sustainable fisheries is bycatch -the unintended catch of non-target species (Lewison et al, 2014;Savoca et al, 2020). Some of the tools for bycatch mitigation include gear changes, bycatch quotas, and spatial management (Hall et al, 2000;O'Keefe et al, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparing Dynamic and Static Time-Area Closures for Bycatch Mitigation: A Management Strategy Evaluation of a Swordfish Fishery

et al. 2021

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“…While the global issue of bycatch remains a challenge in the U.S., U.S. federal fisheries are required by law to establish monitoring programs, to adhere to protected species programs, and to minimize bycatch to the extent practicable. A recent assessment indicated that current rates of U.S. bycatch have declined, especially on the West Coast and Alaska (Savoca et al, 2020). Bycatch rates also vary by the type of fishing gear used.…”

Section: Box 1 Typical Seafood Supply Chainmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The sources of fish in this study originate primarily from trawl-type fishing gears, which involves trawling a net over the seabed. Trawl fishing bycatch in the U.S. was found to be much lower than in much of the world, due in part to strong management (Pérez-Roda et al, 2019;Savoca et al, 2020). The results of relying on media messages focused on consumption of underutilized species are mixed.…”

Section: Box 1 Typical Seafood Supply Chainmentioning

confidence: 99%

Making seafood accessible to low-income and nutritionally vulnerable populations on the U.S. West Coast

Koehn

Quinn

Otten

et al. 2020

J. Agric. Food Syst. Community Dev.

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Along the U.S. West Coast, sustainable management has rebuilt fish stocks, providing an opportunity to supply nutrient-rich food to adjacent coastal communities where food insecurity and diet-based diseases are common. However, the market has not successfully supplied locally sourced seafood to nutritionally vulnerable people. Rather, a few organizations make this connection on a limited scale. We used a “positive deviant” approach to learn how these organizations’ efforts developed, how they overcame challenges, and what conditions enabled their interventions. We found that organizations in these positive deviant cases provided fish from a wide variety of species and sources, and distributed them through different channels to a diversity of end consumers. A key factor facilitating success was the ability to negotiate a price point that was both profitable and reasonable for organizations supplying nutritionally vulnerable or low-income consumers. Furthermore, securing access to grants overcame initial costs of establishing new supply channels. All cases highlighted the importance of individual champions who encouraged development and cultural connections between the initiative and the nearby community. Organizations overcame key challenges by establishing regulations governing these new channels and either using partnerships or vertically integrating to reduce costs associated with processing and transport. Oftentimes training and education were also critical to instruct workers on how to process unfamiliar fish and to increase consumer awareness of local fish and how to prepare them. These lessons illuminate pathways to improve the contribution of local seafood to the healthy food system.

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“…One conservation issue that could be improved by better integration of social-based interventions is the management of fisheries bycatch (i.e., the non-target portion of the capture that is discarded dead or injured to the extent that death will result 8 ). Bycatch remains a critical issue throughout the world's fisheries 9,10 with notable impacts to taxonomic groups with conservative life history characteristics like sea turtles, developed in ecological science, and the benefits of all types of approaches for the many questions within social networks, will now be of great benefit.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing information-sharing networks within small-scale fisheries and the implications for conservation interventions

Arlidge

Firth

Alfaro‐Shigueto

et al. 2020

Preprint

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The effectiveness of biodiversity conservation interventions is often dependent on local resource users' underlying social interactions. However, it remains unclear how fine-scale differences in information shared between resource users can influence network structure and the success of behavior-change interventions. Using network null models that incorporate a pre-network data permutation procedure, we compare information-sharing networks in a Peruvian fishing community where a trial conservation intervention is underway to reduce the incidental capture of sea turtles (bycatch). We show that the general network structure detailing information sharing about sea turtle bycatch differs from other fishing-related information sharing, specifically in degree assortativity and eccentricity. This finding highlights the importance of assessing social networks in contexts directly relevant to the desired intervention and that fine-scale differences in the information shared between resource users may influence network structure. Our findings also demonstrate how null model approaches developed in the ecological sciences can elucidate important differences between human networks and identify the social contexts which might be more or less appropriate for information-sharing related to conservation interventions.

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Comprehensive bycatch assessment in US fisheries for prioritizing management

Cited by 24 publications

References 42 publications

Comparing Dynamic and Static Time-Area Closures for Bycatch Mitigation: A Management Strategy Evaluation of a Swordfish Fishery

Comparing Dynamic and Static Time-Area Closures for Bycatch Mitigation: A Management Strategy Evaluation of a Swordfish Fishery

Making seafood accessible to low-income and nutritionally vulnerable populations on the U.S. West Coast

Assessing information-sharing networks within small-scale fisheries and the implications for conservation interventions

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