Optimizing the benefits from Nigerian small and medium size reservoirs through cooperative management approach

The paper traces the different management practices adopted for Nigerian inland water bodies from the Colonial era to independence. It observes that the full potentials of these waters have never been realized over the years due to the absence of an effective management. The replacement of the traditional fisheries management by the centralized top-down approach by government after independence has not helped matters. Lately, the cooperative/community-based management approach has taken the centre stage worldwide. This has been identified to offer the most viable and equitable option towards the attainment of an optimum utilization of the fisheries resource. The entire community sensing security of tenure and enjoying some of the benefits from access control will actively take responsibility and enforcement. The paper drew experiences from some water bodies in Bangladesh, Philippines, Benin Republic and Malawi showing sound management strategy that, if adopted for our small and medium size reservoirs and other water bodies, would help optimize on an sustainable manner the benefits from those water bodies

Holistic fisheries management: combining macroecology, ecology, and evolutionary biology

Ecosystem-based management is one of many indispensable components of objective, holistic management of human impacts on nonhuman systems. By itself, however, ecosystem-based management carries the same risks we face with other forms of current management; holism requires more. Combining single-species and ecosystem approaches represents progress. However, it is now recognized that management also needs to be evosystem-based. In other words, management needs to account for all coevolutionary and evolutionary interactions among all species; otherwise we fall far short of holism. Fully holistic practices are quite distinct from the approaches to the management of fisheries that are applied today. In this paper, we show how macroecological patterns can guide management consistently, objectively, and holistically. We present one particular macroecological pattern with two applications. The first application is a case study of fisheries from the Baltic Sea involving historical data for two species; the second involves a sample of 44 species of primarily marine fish worldwide. In both cases we evaluate historical fishing rates and determine holistic/systemic sustainable single-species fishing rates to illustrate that conventional fisheries management leads to much more extensive and pervasive overfishing than currently realized; harvests are, on average, over twenty-fold too large to be fully sustainable. In general, our approach involves not only the sustainability of fisheries and related resources but also the sustainability of the ecosystems and evosystems in which they occur. Using macroecological patterns accomplishes four important goals: 1) Macroecology becomes one of the interdisciplinary components of management. 2) Sustainability becomes an option for harvests from populations of individual species, species groups, ecosystems, and the entire marine environment. 3) Policies and goals are reality-based, holistic, or fully systemic; they account for ecological as well as evolutionary factors and dynamics (including management itself). 4) Numerous management questions can be addressed.

Marine Fisheries Stock Assessment Improvement Plan: report of the National Marine Fisheries Service National Task Force for Improving Fish Stock Assessments

This report argues for greatly increased resources in terms of data collection facilities and staff to collect, process, and analyze the data, and to communicate the results, in order for NMFS to fulfill its mandate to conserve and manage marine resources. In fact, the authors of this report had great difficulty defining the "ideal" situation to which fisheries stock assessments and management should aspire. One of the primary objectives of fisheries management is to develop sustainable harvest policies that minimize the risks of overfishing both target species and associated species. This can be achieved in a wide spectrum of ways, ranging between the following two extremes. The first is to implement only simple management measures with correspondingly simple assessment demands, which will usually mean setting fishing mortality targets at relatively low levels in order to reduce the risk of unknowingly overfishing or driving ecosystems towards undesirable system states. The second is to expand existing data collection and analysis programs to provide an adequate knowledge base that can support higher fishing mortality targets while still ensuring low risk to target and associated species and ecosystems. However, defining "adequate" is difficult, especially when scientists have not even identified all marine species, and information on catches, abundances, and life histories of many target species, and most associated species, is sparse. Increasing calls from the public, stakeholders, and the scientific community to implement ecosystem-based stock assessment and management make it even more difficult to define "adequate," especially when "ecosystem-based management" is itself not well-defined. In attempting to describe the data collection and assessment needs for the latter, the authors took a pragmatic approach, rather than trying to estimate the resources required to develop a knowledge base about the fine-scale detailed distributions, abundances, and associations of all marine species. Thus, the specified resource requirements will not meet the expectations of some stakeholders. In addition, the Stock Assessment Improvement Plan is designed to be complementary to other related plans, and therefore does not duplicate the resource requirements detailed in those plans, except as otherwise noted.

The EBM-DPSER conceptual model: integrating ecosystem services into the DPSIR framework

There is a pressing need to integrate biophysical and human dimensions science to better inform holistic ecosystem management supporting the transition from single species or single-sector management to multi-sector ecosystem-based management. Ecosystem-based management should focus upon ecosystem services, since they reflect societal goals, values, desires, and benefits. The inclusion of ecosystem services into holistic management strategies improves management by better capturing the diversity of positive and negative human-natural interactions and making explicit the benefits to society. To facilitate this inclusion, we propose a conceptual model that merges the broadly applied Driver, Pressure, State, Impact, and Response (DPSIR) conceptual model with ecosystem services yielding a Driver, Pressure, State, Ecosystem service, and Response (EBM-DPSER) conceptual model. The impact module in traditional DPSIR models focuses attention upon negative anthropomorphic impacts on the ecosystem; by replacing impacts with ecosystem services the EBM-DPSER model incorporates not only negative, but also positive changes in the ecosystem. Responses occur as a result of changes in ecosystem services and include inter alia management actions directed at proactively altering human population or individual behavior and infrastructure to meet societal goals. The EBM-DPSER conceptual model was applied to the Florida Keys and Dry Tortugas marine ecosystem as a case study to illustrate how it can inform management decisions. This case study captures our system-level understanding and results in a more holistic representation of ecosystem and human society interactions, thus improving our ability to identify trade-offs. The EBM-DPSER model should be a useful operational tool for implementing EBM, in that it fully integrates our knowledge of all ecosystem components while focusing management attention upon those aspects of the ecosystem most important to human society and does so within a framework already familiar to resource managers.

Assessment of existing information on Atlantic coastal fish habitats: development of a web-based spatial bibliography, query tools, and data summaries

The primary objective of this project, “the Assessment of Existing Information on Atlantic Coastal Fish Habitat”, is to inform conservation planning for the Atlantic Coastal Fish Habitat Partnership (ACFHP). ACFHP is recognized as a Partnership by the National Fish Habitat Action Plan (NFHAP), whose overall mission is to protect, restore, and enhance the nation’s fish and aquatic communities through partnerships that foster fish habitat conservation. This project is a cooperative effort of NOAA/NOS Center for Coastal Monitoring and Assessment (CCMA) Biogeography Branch and ACFHP. The Assessment includes three components; 1. a representative bibliographic and assessment database, 2. a Geographical Information System (GIS) spatial framework, and 3. a summary document with description of methods, analyses of habitat assessment information, and recommendations for further work. The spatial bibliography was created by linking the bibliographic table developed in Microsoft Excel and exported to SQL Server, with the spatial framework developed in ArcGIS and exported to GoogleMaps. The bibliography is a comprehensive, searchable database of over 500 selected documents and data sources on Atlantic coastal fish species and habitats. Key information captured for each entry includes basic bibliographic data, spatial footprint (e.g. waterbody or watershed), species and habitats covered, and electronic availability. Information on habitat condition indicators, threats, and conservation recommendations are extracted from each entry and recorded in a separate linked table. The spatial framework is a functional digital map based on polygon layers of watersheds, estuarine and marine waterbodies derived from NOAA’s Coastal Assessment Framework, MMS/NOAA’s Multipurpose Marine Cadastre, and other sources, providing spatial reference for all of the documents cited in the bibliography. Together, the bibliography and assessment tables and their spatial framework provide a powerful tool to query and assess available information through a publicly available web interface. They were designed to support the development of priorities for ACFHP’s conservation efforts within a geographic area extending from Maine to Florida, and from coastal watersheds seaward to the edge of the continental shelf. The Atlantic Coastal Fish Habitat Partnership has made initial use of the Assessment of Existing Information. Though it has not yet applied the AEI in a systematic or structured manner, it expects to find further uses as the draft conservation strategic plan is refined, and as regional action plans are developed. It also provides a means to move beyond an “assessment of existing information” towards an “assessment of fish habitat”, and is being applied towards the National Fish Habitat Action Plan (NFHAP) 2010 Assessment. Beyond the scope of the current project, there may be application to broader initiatives such as Integrated Ecosystem Assessments (IEAs), Ecosystem Based Management (EBM), and Marine Spatial Planning (MSP).

Monitoring Hawaii’s marine protected areas: examining spatial and temporal trends using a seascape approach

Hawaii’s coastal marine resources have declined dramatically over the past 100 years due to multiple anthropogenic stressors including overfishing, coastal development, pollution, overuse, invasive species and climate change. It is now becoming evident that ecosystem-based management, in the form of marine protected areas (MPAs), is necessary to conserve biodiversity, maintain viable fisheries, and deliver a broad suite of ecosystem services. Over the past four decades, Hawaii has developed a system of MPAs to conserve and replenish marine resources around the state. These Marine Life Conservation Districts (MLCDs) vary in size, habitat quality, and management regimes, providing an excellent opportunity to test hypotheses concerning MPA design and function using multiple discreet sampling units. NOAA/NOS/NCCOS/Center for Coastal Monitoring and Assessment’s Biogeography Branch used digital benthic habitat maps coupled with comprehensive ecological studies between 2002 and 2004 to evaluate the efficacy of all existing MLCDs using a spatially-explicit stratified random sampling design. The results from this work have shown that areas fully protected from fishing had higher fish biomass, larger overall fish size, and higher biodiversity than adjacent areas of similar habitat quality. Other key findings demonstrated that top predators and other important fisheries species were more abundant and larger in the MPAs, illustrating the effectiveness of these closures in conserving these populations. Habitat complexity, protected area size and habitat diversity were the major factors in determining effectiveness among MPAs.

Abundance, migration and management of Jatka (juvenile hilsa, Tenualosa ilisha) in the Gajner Beel, Pabna, Bangladesh

Studies on the abundance, migration and management of Jatka (juvenile hilsa, Tenualosa ilisha) were conducted in the Gajner Beel, located at the south-east corner of the Pabna Irrigation and Rural Development Project (PIRDP) in Sujanagar Upazila of Pabna district, Bangladesh. The main Jatka season was found to be extended from mid August to mid October. Veshal/Bandh/Khora Jal (lift net) and Ber Jal (beach seine net) were found as the major gears involved in Jatka fishing. The estimated total amount of Jatka caught from the Beel during the studied season was 46.2 t. The migratory route of Jatka is extended from the Padma and/or Jamuna rivers to the Badai river and then to the Beel through the sluice gate. The possibility of breeding of hilsa in the Beel was nullified. Finally, a community based management plan was suggested for implementation by the Gajner Beel management committee.

PICES Press, Vol. 13, No. 1, January 2005

The state of PICES science - 2004 (pdf 0.7 MB) 2004 Wooster Award (pdf 0.2 MB) Micronekton – What are they and why are they important? (pdf 0.5 MB) Upscaling for a better understanding of climate links to ecosystems (pdf 0.1 MB) PICES Interns (pdf 0.1 MB) Report of the APN workshop on “Climate interactions and marine ecosystems” (pdf 0.6 MB) Photo highlights of PICES XIII (pdf 0.3 MB) Recent trends in waters of the subarctic NE Pacific – summer 2004 (pdf 0.1 MB) The state of the western North Pacific in the first half of 2004 (pdf 0.3 MB) The Bering Sea: Current status and recent events (pdf 0.1 MB) Study Group on Fisheries Ecosystem Responses to Recent Regime Shifts completes its mandate for the provision of scientific advice (pdf 0.1 MB) PICES Calendar (pdf 0.1 MB) The new PICES Working Group on Ecosystem-based management (pdf 0.05 MB) CO2 data integration activity for the North Pacific (pdf 0.2 MB) Carbon cycle changes in the North Pacific (pdf 0.8 MB) New and upcoming PICES publications (pdf 0.8 MB)

Annual report 2005 - North Pacific Marine Science Organization (PICES). Fourteenth meeting, Vladivostok, Russia, September 29-October 9, 2005

Report of Opening Session (pdf 0.07 Mb) Report of Governing Council (pdf 0.2 Mb) Report of the Finance and Administration Committee (pdf 0.07 Mb) Reports of Science Board and Committees Science Board inter-sessional meeting (pdf 0.07 Mb) Science Board (pdf 0.1 Mb) Biological Oceanography Committee (pdf 0.2 Mb) Fishery Science Committee (pdf 0.04 Mb) Marine Environmental Quality Committee (pdf 0.06 Mb) MONITOR Technical Committee (pdf 0.05 Mb) Physical Oceanography and Climate Committee (pdf 0.06 Mb) Technical Committee on Data Exchange (pdf 0.04 Mb) Reports of Sections, Working and Study Groups Section on Ecology of harmful algal blooms in the North Pacific (pdf 0.03 Mb) Section on Carbon and Climate Working Group 18 on Mariculture in the 21st century - The intersection between ecology, socio-economics and production (pdf 0.06 Mb) Working Group 19 on Ecosystem-based management science and its application to the North Pacific (pdf 0.03 Mb) Reports of the Climate Change and Carrying Capacity Program Implementation Panel on the CCCC Program (pdf 0.04 Mb) CFAME Task Team (pdf 0.04 Mb) MODEL Task Team (pdf 0.04 Mb) Reports of Advisory Panels Advisory Panel on Iron Fertilization Experiment in the Subarctic Pacific Ocean (pdf 0.04 Mb) Advisory Panel on Marine Birds and Mammals (pdf 0.03 Mb) Advisory Panel on Micronekton Sampling Inter-Calibration experiment (pdf 0.05 Mb) Summary of Scientific Sessions and Workshops (pdf 0.2 Mb) Membership List (pdf 0.07 Mb) List of Participants (pdf 0.07 Mb) List of Acronyms (pdf 0.03 Mb)

Annual report 2004 - North Pacific Marine Science Organization (PICES). Thirteenth meeting, Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.A., October 14-24, 2004

Report of Opening Session (pdf 0.07 Mb) Report of Governing Council (pdf 0.2 Mb) Report of the Finance and Administration Committee (pdf 0.08 Mb) Reports of Science Board and Committees Science Board inter-sessional meeting (pdf 0.05 Mb) Science Board (pdf 0.1 Mb) Biological Oceanography Committee (pdf 0.1 Mb) Fishery Science Committee (pdf 0.04 Mb) Marine Environmental Quality Committee (pdf 0.04 Mb) Physical Oceanography and Climate Committee (pdf 0.04 Mb) Technical Committee on Data Exchange (pdf 0.04 Mb) Reports of Sections, Working and Study Groups Harmful Algal Blooms Section (pdf 0.03 Mb) Working Group 17 on Biogeochemical data integration and synthesis (pdf 0.03 Mb) Working Group 18 on Mariculture in the 21st century - The intersection between ecology, socio-economics and production (pdf 0.06 Mb) Study Group on Ecosystem-based management science and its application to the North Pacific (pdf 0.04 Mb) Reports of the Climate Change and Carrying Capacity Program Implementation Panel on the CCCC Program (pdf 0.04 Mb) BASS Task Team (pdf 0.04 Mb) CFAME Task Team (pdf 0.04 Mb) MODEL Task Team (pdf 0.04 Mb) MONITOR Task Team (pdf 0.03 Mb) REX Task Team (pdf 0.04 Mb) Reports of Advisory Panels Advisory Panel on Continuous Plankton Recorder Survey in the North Pacific (pdf 0.4 Mb) Advisory Panel on Iron Fertilization Experiment in the Subarctic Pacific Ocean (pdf 0.03 Mb) Advisory Panel on Marine Birds and Mammals (pdf 0.04 Mb) Advisory Panel on Micronekton Sampling Inter-Calibration experiment (pdf 0.04 Mb) Summary of Scientific Sessions and Workshops (pdf 0.2 Mb) Membership List (pdf 0.07 Mb) List of Participants (pdf 0.09 Mb) List of Acronyms (pdf 0.03 Mb)

Organic Contaminant Analytical Methods of the National Status and Trends Program: 2000-2006

This document describes the analytical methods used to quantify core organic chemicals in tissue and sediment collected as part of NOAA’s National Status and Trends Program (NS&T) for the years 2000-2006. Organic contaminat analytical methods used during the early years of the program are described in NOAA Technical Memoranda NOS ORCA 71 and 130 (Lauenstein and Cantillo, 1993; Lauenstein and Cantillo, 1998) for the years 1984-1992 and 1993-1996, respectively. These reports are available from our website (http://www.ccma.nos.gov) The methods detailed in this document were utilized by the Mussel Watch Project and Bioeffects Project, which are both part of the NS&T program. The Mussel Watch Project has been monitoring contaminants in bivalves and sediments since 1986 and is the longest active national contaminant monitoring program operating in U.S. costal waters. Approximately 280 Mussel Watch sites are sampled on a biennial and decadal timescale for bivalve tissue and sediment respectively. Similarly, the Bioeffects Assessment Project began in 1986 to characterize estuaries and near coastal environs. Using the sediment quality triad approach that measures; (1) levels of contaminants in sediments, (2) incidence and severity of toxicity, and (3) benthic macrofaunal conmmunities, the Bioeffects Project describes the spatial extent of sediment toxicity. Contaminant assessment is a core function of both projects. These methods, while discussed here in the context of sediment and bivalve tissue, were also used with other matricies including: fish fillet, fish liver, nepheloid layer, and suspended particulate matter. The methods described herein are for the core organic contaminants monitored in the NS&T Program and include polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), butyltins, and organochlorines that have been analyzed consistently over the past 15-20 years. Organic contaminants such as dioxins, perfluoro compounds and polybrominated biphenyl ethers (PBDEs) were analyzed periodically in special studies of the NS&T Program and will be described in another document. All of the analytical techniques described in this document were used by B&B Laboratories, Inc, an affiliate of TDI-Brook International, Inc. in College Station, Texas under contract to NOAA. The NS&T Program uses a performance-based system approach to obtain the best possible data quality and comparability, and requires laboratories to demonstrate precision, accuracy, and sensitivity to ensure results-based performance goals and measures. (PDF contains 75 pages)

A scientific forum on the Gulf of Mexico: The Islands in the Stream Concept. Proceedings of the Forum: 23 January 2008, Keating Education Center, Mote Marine Laboratory, Sarasota, Florida

The Scientific Forum on the Gulf of Mexico: The Islands in the Stream Concept took place in January 2008 in Sarasota, Florida. The purpose of the meeting was to bring together scientists and managers from around the Gulf of Mexico to discuss a range of topics on our knowledge of the Gulf of Mexico, from its geology to larger-scale connectivity to the Caribbean region, and their applications to the concept of a more integrated approach to area-based management. The forum included six panels of invited experts who spoke on the oceanographic and biological features in the Gulf of Mexico, including connections with Mexico and the Mesoamerican barrier reef system, and the legal and regulatory structure currently in place. The charge to the group was to share information, identify gaps in our knowledge, identify additional potential areas for protection, and discuss available science about connectivity and the potential value of establishing a marine protected area network in the Gulf of Mexico. (PDF has 108 pages.)

PICES Press, Vol. 17, No. 1, January 2009

Major Outcomes from the 2008 PICES Annual Meeting: A Note from the Chairman (pdf, 0.1 Mb) PICES Science – 2008 (pdf, 0.1 Mb) 2008 PICES Awards (pdf, 0.3 Mb) Charles B. Miller – A Selective Biography (pdf, 0.4 Mb) Latest and Upcoming PICES Publications (pdf, 0.1 Mb) 2008 OECOS Workshop in Dalian (pdf, 0.2 Mb) PICES Calendar (pdf, 0.1 Mb) 2008 PICES Workshop on “Climate Scenarios for Ecosystem Modeling (II)” (pdf, 0.1 Mb) PICES/ESSAS Workshop on “Marine Ecosystem Model Inter-Comparisons” (pdf, 0.2 Mb) Highlights of the PICES Seventeenth Annual Meeting (pdf, 0.5 Mb) 2008 PICES Summer School on “Ecosystem-Based Management” (pdf, 0.3 Mb) 4th PICES Workshop on “The Okhotsk Sea and Adjacent Areas” (pdf, 0.2 Mb) PICES WG 21 Rapid Assessment Surveys (pdf, 0.4 Mb) PICES Interns (pdf, 0.3 Mb) PICES @ Oceans in a High CO2 World (pdf, 0.1 Mb) Coping with Global Change in Marine Social–Ecological Systems: An International Symposium (pdf, 0.1 Mb) The State of the Western North Pacific in the First Half of 2008 (pdf, 1.3 Mb) State of the Northeast Pacific through 2008 (pdf, 0.3 Mb) The Bering Sea: Current Status and Recent Events (pdf, 0.2 Mb) An Opinion Born of Years of Observing Timeseries Observations (pdf, 0.1 Mb) New Chairman for the PICES Fishery Science Committee (pdf, 0.1 Mb)

Coastal resource planning system: Integrating evaluation of ecological integrity and ecosystem services valuation

Efficient and effective coastal management decisions rely on knowledge of the impact of human activities on ecosystem integrity, vulnerable species, and valued ecosystem services—collectively, human impact on environmental quality (EQ). Ecosystem-based management (EBM) is an emerging approach to address the dynamics and complexities of coupled social-ecological systems. EBM “is intended to directly address the long-term sustainable delivery of ecosystem services and the resilience of marine ecosystems to perturbations” (Rosenberg and Sandifer, 2009). The lack of a tool that integrates human choices with the ecological connections between contributing watersheds and nearshore areas, and that incorporates valuation of ecosystem services, is a critical missing piece needed for effective and efficient coastal management. To address the need for an integrative tool for evaluation of human impacts on ecosystems and their services, Battelle developed the EcoVal™ Environmental Quality Evaluation System. The EcoVal system is an updated (2009) version of the EQ Evaluation System for Water Resources developed by Battelle for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (Dee et al., 1972). The Battelle EQ evaluation system has a thirty-year history of providing a standard approach to evaluate watershed EQ. This paper describes the conceptual approach and methodology of the updated EcoVal system and its potential application to coastal ecosystems. (PDF contains 4 pages)

The role of specially designated wildlife sites in freshwater conservation - an English perspective

The value of specially designated sites in conserving biodiversity has been a hotly debated issue for many years. The debate has recently been given fresh impetus by the creation of Natural England, the new Government Agency responsible for the protection and enhancement of the natural environment in England, and the challenges facing the management of designated sites resulting from the increasingly tangible effects of climate change. In the freshwater environment, the role of designated sites is very much under the spotlight because of the implementation of the European 'Water Framework' Directive, which aspires to holistic, ecologically-based management of aquatic habitats.This paper explores the underlying premises of, and rationale for, special site designations for wildlife, and provides a frank account of the inevitable clash of management philosophies that designated sites create in the freshwater environment, drawing on experiences of managing designated freshwater sites in England over the past decade. A positive role is outlined for designated sites in freshwater conservation, which addresses these management conflicts in a way that not only meets Government obligations towards these sites but also paves the way for enlightened, progressive management of the wider freshwater resource. As part of this account, attempts are made to clarify the relationship between key biodiversity-related policy drivers in the freshwater environment, and to explain how the spectre of climate change can be addressed within designated site management. The importance of strategic freshwater science, collaboratively designed and funded, in maximising the value of the designated freshwater site network to the wider freshwater habitat resource, is stressed.