Following on The effects of climate change on the world’s oceans conference, Kirstin Holsman led an effort to discuss the role of old and new, tried and true, dynamic and static in fisheries management. Given how ecological response often varies based on the scale of species-environment interactions and even our scale of measurement, alignment between data and management can be misaligned. The paper uses the Bering Sea as one of the case studies to explore the advantages of dynamic vs. adaptive vs. fixed approaches in managing variable ocean resources. Read more in the recent NOAA Fisheries article here!
K.K. Holsman, E.L. Hazen, A. Haynie, S. Gourguet, A. Hollowed, S.J. Bograd, J. Samhouri, and K. Aydin, 2019. Toward climate resiliency in fisheries management. ICES J Marine Science,doi:10.1093/icesjms/fsz031 PDF
Abstract: It is increasingly evident that climate change is having significant impacts on marine ecosystems and dependent fisheries. Yet, translating cli- mate science into management actions and policies is an ongoing challenge. In particular, four aspects have confounded implementation of climate-resilient management: (i) regional management tools may not be well-suited for managing the same systems under climate change, (ii) individual management policies and climate research studies are often implicitly focussed on spatio-temporal scales that are rarely aligned, (iii) management approaches seldom integrate across spatio-temporal scales and are, therefore, maladapted to unidirectional change and extreme events, and (iv) challenges to modelling socio-economic implications of climate change impede projections of cumulative costs to society, disguise adaptive limits, and ultimately impact climate risk and management trade-off assessments. We suggest that addressing environmental change favours adaptive and dynamic management approaches, while addressing shifting socio-economic and political conditions favours fixed long-term measures; considering both jointly requires a combination of dynamic-adaptive-fixed approaches. We outline a framework to integrate climate-responsive tools into a unified climate-resilient management approach using nested dynamic-adaptive-fixed management portfolios that improve management effectiveness and efficiency. This approach may help reduce future conflict between marine resource extractive and conservation goals through more explicit characterization of management trade-offs and identification of social and ecological tipping points.