Unexpected Management Choices When Accounting for Uncertainty in Ecosystem Service Tradeoff Analyses

Resource management and conservation increasingly focus on ecosystem service provisioning and potential tradeoffs among services under different management actions. Application of bioeconomic approaches to tradeoffs assessment is touted as a way to find win-win outcomes or avoid unnecessary stakeholder conflict. Yet, nearly all assessments to date have ignored inherent uncertainties in the provision and valuation of services. We incorporate uncertainty into the ecosystem services analytical framework and show how such inclusion improves optimal decision making. In particular, we show: (1) “suboptimal” solutions can become optimal when uncertainties are accounted for; (2) uncertainty paradoxically makes stakeholders value conservation despite their lack of preference for it; and (3) substantial losses or missed gains in ecosystem service provisioning can be incurred when uncertainty is ignored. Our results highlight the urgency of accounting for uncertainties in ecosystem services in tradeoff assessments given the widespread use of this approach by government agencies and conservation organizations

Drivers of redistribution of fishing and non-fishing effort after the implementation of a marine protected area network

Marine spatial planning (MSP) is increasingly utilized to sustainably manage ocean uses. Marine protected areas (MPAs), a form of spatial management in which parts of the ocean are regulated to fishing, are now a common tool in MSP for conserving marine biodiversity and managing fisheries. However, the use of MPAs in MSP often neglects, or simplifies, the redistribution of fishing and non-fishing activities inside and outside of MPAs following their implementation. This redistribution of effort can have important implications for effective MSP. Using long-term (14 yr) aerial surveys of boats at the California Channel Islands, we examined the spatial redistribution of fishing and non-fishing activities and their drivers following MPA establishment. Our data represent 6 yr of information before the implementation of an MPA network and 8 yr after implementation. Different types of boats responded in different ways to the closures, ranging from behaviors by commercial dive boats that support the hypothesis of fishing-the-line, to behaviors by urchin, sport fishing, and recreational boats that support the theory of ideal free distribution. Additionally, we found that boats engaged in recreational activities targeted areas that are sheltered from large waves and located near their home ports, while boats engaged in fishing activities also avoided high wave areas but were not constrained by the distance to their home ports. We did not observe the expected pattern of effort concentration near MPA borders for some boat types; this can be explained by the habitat preference of certain activities (for some activities, the desired habitat attributes are not inside the MPAs), species’ biology (species such as urchins where the MPA benefit would likely come from larval export rather than adult spillover), or policy-infraction avoidance. The diversity of boat responses reveals variance from the usual simplified assumption that all extractive boats respond similarly to MPA establishment. Our work is the first empirical study to analyze the response of both commercial and recreational boats to closure. Our results will inform MSP in better accounting for effort redistribution by ocean users in response to the implementation of MPAs and other closures

Designing MPAs for food security in open-access fisheries

Food security remains a principal challenge in the developing tropics where communities rely heavily on marine-based protein. While some improvements in fisheries management have been made in these regions, a large fraction of coastal fisheries remain unmanaged, mismanaged, or use only crude input controls. These quasi-open-access conditions often lead to severe overfishing, depleted stocks, and compromised food security. A possible fishery management approach in these institution-poor settings is to implement fully protected marine protected areas (MPAs). Although the primary push for MPAs has been to solve the conservation problems that arise from mismanagement, MPAs can also benefit fisheries beyond their borders. The literature has not completely characterized how to design MPAs under diverse ecological and economic conditions when food security is the objective. We integrated four key biological and economic variables (i.e., fish population growth rate, fish mobility, fish price, and fishing cost) as well as an important aspect of reserve design (MPA size) into a general model and determined their combined influence on food security when MPAs are implemented in an open-access setting. We explicitly modeled open-access conditions that account for the behavioral response of fishers to the MPA; this approach is distinct from much of the literature that focuses on assumptions of “scorched earth” (i.e., severe over-fishing), optimized management, or an arbitrarily defined fishing mortality outside the MPA’s boundaries. We found that the MPA size that optimizes catch depends strongly on economic variables. Large MPAs optimize catch for species heavily harvested for their high value and/or low harvesting cost, while small MPAs or no closure are best for species lightly harvested for their low value and high harvesting cost. Contrary to previous theoretical expectations, both high and low mobility species are expected to experience conservation benefits from protection, although, as shown previously, greater conservation benefits are expected for low mobility species. Food security benefits from MPAs can be obtained from species of any mobility. Results deliver both qualitative insights and quantitative guidance for designing MPAs for food security in open-access fisheries

Ensuring Aquatic Food Security in the Philippines

The human population of the Philippines is expected to reach 158 million by the year 2050, or an increase of 37% relative to 2022. This implies increased demand for aquatic food (or “fish” hereafter). This begs the question of whether the Philippines can meet the expected increase in fish demand. We estimate that even if the Philippines can maintain its current fish production, the Philippines will still require 1.67 million metric tons more fish per year by 2050 to at least maintain its current per capita fish consumption of 34.27 kg per year. Continued mismanagement of inland and marine fisheries will further widen the gap in fish supply. However, we argue that simultaneously rebuilding overfished fisheries, restoring degraded habitats crucial to supporting productive fisheries, addressing current threats to fisheries sustainability, and expanding sustainable marine aquaculture (or mariculture) have the potential to meet future fish demand in the Philippines. Sustainably expanding mariculture requires careful siting and management of mariculture development areas so that mariculture can improve food security without disenfranchising and marginalizing local coastal communities

Siting marine protected areas based on habitat quality and extent provides the greatest benefit to spatially structured metapopulations

Connectivity and its role in the persistence and sustainability of marine metapopulations are attracting increased attention from the scientific community and coastal resource managers. Whether protection should prioritize the connectivity structure or demographic characteristics of a given patch is still unclear. We design a three-stage population model to analyze the relative importance of sources, sinks, quality and extent of juvenile and adult habitat, and node centralities (eigenvector, degree, closeness, and betweenness) as a basis for prioritizing sites. We use a logistic-type stage-structured model to describe the local dynamics of a population with a sessile adult stage and network models to elucidate propagule-exchange dynamics. Our results show that the coupled states of habitat extent and quality, which determine population carrying capacity, are good criteria for protection strategy. Protecting sites on the basis of sources, sinks, or other centrality measures of connectivity becomes optimal only in limited situations, that is, when larval production is not dependent on the adult population. Our findings are robust to a diverse set of larval pathway structures and levels of larval retention, which indicates that the network topology may not be as important as carrying capacity in determining the fate of the metapopulation. Protecting extensive, good quality habitat can help achieve both conservation and fisheries objectives

Valuing and Managing the Philippines’ Marine Resources toward a Prosperous Ocean-Based Blue Economy

The ocean-based “blue economy” is a significant part of the Philippine economy that has largely been taken for granted despite its enormous potential. It is of critical importance to a substantial segment of our population dependent on the seas and coastal resources for their livelihood and sustenance, appreciably enlarge the country’s wealth, and significantly contribute to its gross domestic product. This paper attempts to review the major issues concerning marine ecosystems in relation to the country’s pursuit of the blue economy. It discusses the economic and social activities in relation to the seas and coastal areas, and provides updated estimates of the real value of the country’s marine ecosystems’ goods and services. Based on primary and available secondary data, the marine ecosystems (excluding the continental shelf) can contribute a conservative monetary value of US$ 966.6 billion to the economy. In light of the risks and threats to the blue economy, the paper further discusses the country’s current national initiatives and involvement in regional collaborations toward ensuring its health and sustainable development. Given the Philippines’ vast largely untapped potential, a recommendation for the creation of a Department of Marine Resources, separate from the Department of Agriculture, seems in order

Reply to Swartz et al.: Challenges and opportunities for identifying forced labor using satellite-based fishing vessel monitoring

We appreciate Swartz et al. (1) for highlighting several key considerations for interpreting our results (2). While we discuss many of these in our paper, we are grateful to further highlight our work’s strengths, limitations, and future opportunities. A major challenge with understanding fisheries labor abuses is a lack of data. Automatic identification system (AIS) is only used by a subset of the global fishing fleet. However, AIS is valuable for monitoring certain types of fishing vessels, especially those that are large (∼52 to 85% carry AIS) (3) and those fishing on the high seas (∼80% carry AIS) (4). Mandating AIS and unique identifiers on fishing vessels and publishing vessel registries would facilitate more inclusive AIS-based analyses (5)

A computational approach to managing coupled human–environmental systems: the POSEIDON model of ocean fisheries

Sustainable management of complex human–environment systems, and the essential services they provide, remains a major challenge, felt from local to global scales. These systems are typically highly dynamic and hard to predict, particularly in the context of rapid environmental change, where novel sets of conditions drive coupled socio-economic-environmental responses. Faced with these challenges, our tools for policy development, while informed by the past experience, must not be unduly constrained; they must allow equally for both the fine-tuning of successful existing approaches and the generation of novel ones in unbiased ways. We study ocean fisheries as an example class of complex human–environmental systems, and present a new model (POSEIDON) and computational approach to policy design. The model includes an adaptive agent-based representation of a fishing fleet, coupled to a simplified ocean ecology model. The agents (fishing boats) do not have programmed responses based on empirical data, but respond adaptively, as a group, to their environment (including policy constraints). This conceptual model captures qualitatively a wide range of empirically observed fleet behaviour, in response to a broad set of policies. Within this framework, we define policy objectives (of arbitrary complexity) and use Bayesian optimization over multiple model runs to find policy parameters that best meet the goals. The trade-offs inherent in this approach are explored explicitly. Taking this further, optimization is used to generate novel hybrid policies. We illustrate this approach using simulated examples, in which policy prescriptions generated by our computational methods are counterintuitive and thus unlikely to be identified by conventional frameworks

Data-driven approach for highlighting priority areas for protection in marine areas beyond national jurisdiction

One of the aims of the United Nations (UN) negotiations on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ) is to develop a legal process for the establishment of area-based management tools, including marine protected areas, in ABNJ. Here we use a conservation planning algorithm to integrate 55 global data layers on ABNJ species diversity, habitat heterogeneity, benthic features, productivity, and fishing as a means for highlighting priority regions in ABNJ to be considered for spatial protection. We also include information on forecasted species distributions under climate change. We found that parameterizing the planning algorithm to protect at least 30% of these key ABNJ conservation features, while avoiding areas of high fishing effort, yielded a solution that highlights 52,545,634 km2 (23.7%) of ABNJ as high priority regions for protection. Instructing the planning model to avoid ABNJ areas with high fishing effort resulted in relatively minor shifts in the planning solution, when compared to a separate model that did not consider fishing effort. Integrating information on climate change had a similarly minor influence on the planning solution, suggesting that climate-informed ABNJ protected areas may be able to protect biodiversity now and in the future. This globally standardized, data-driven process for identifying priority ABNJ regions for protection serves as a valuable complement to other expert-driven processes underway to highlight ecologically or biologically significant ABNJ regions. Both the outputs and methods exhibited in this analysis can additively inform UN decision-making concerning establishment of ABNJ protected areas

Data-driven approach for highlighting priority areas for protection in marine areas beyond national jurisdiction

One of the aims of the United Nations (UN) negotiations on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ) is to develop a legal process for the establishment of area-based management tools, including marine protected areas, in ABNJ. Here we use a conservation planning algorithm to integrate 55 global data layers on ABNJ species diversity, habitat heterogeneity, benthic features, productivity, and fishing as a means for highlighting priority regions in ABNJ to be considered for spatial protection. We also include information on forecasted species distributions under climate change. We found that parameterizing the planning algorithm to protect at least 30% of these key ABNJ conservation features, while avoiding areas of high fishing effort, yielded a solution that highlights 52,545,634 km2 (23.7%) of ABNJ as high priority regions for protection. Instructing the planning model to avoid ABNJ areas with high fishing effort resulted in relatively minor shifts in the planning solution, when compared to a separate model that did not consider fishing effort. Integrating information on climate change had a similarly minor influence on the planning solution, suggesting that climate-informed ABNJ protected areas may be able to protect biodiversity now and in the future. This globally standardized, data-driven process for identifying priority ABNJ regions for protection serves as a valuable complement to other expert-driven processes underway to highlight ecologically or biologically significant ABNJ regions. Both the outputs and methods exhibited in this analysis can additively inform UN decision-making concerning establishment of ABNJ protected areas