Patterns and emerging trends in global ocean health.

International and regional policies aimed at managing ocean ecosystem health need quantitative and comprehensive indices to synthesize information from a variety of sources, consistently measure progress, and communicate with key constituencies and the public. Here we present the second annual global assessment of the Ocean Health Index, reporting current scores and annual changes since 2012, recalculated using updated methods and data based on the best available science, for 221 coastal countries and territories. The Index measures performance of ten societal goals for healthy oceans on a quantitative scale of increasing health from 0 to 100, and combines these scores into a single Index score, for each country and globally. The global Index score improved one point (from 67 to 68), while many country-level Index and goal scores had larger changes. Per-country Index scores ranged from 41-95 and, on average, improved by 0.06 points (range -8 to +12). Globally, average scores increased for individual goals by as much as 6.5 points (coastal economies) and decreased by as much as 1.2 points (natural products). Annual updates of the Index, even when not all input data have been updated, provide valuable information to scientists, policy makers, and resource managers because patterns and trends can emerge from the data that have been updated. Changes of even a few points indicate potential successes (when scores increase) that merit recognition, or concerns (when scores decrease) that may require mitigative action, with changes of more than 10-20 points representing large shifts that deserve greater attention. Goal scores showed remarkably little covariance across regions, indicating low redundancy in the Index, such that each goal delivers information about a different facet of ocean health. Together these scores provide a snapshot of global ocean health and suggest where countries have made progress and where a need for further improvement exists

Strong fisheries management and governance positively impact ecosystem status

Bundy, Alida ... et al.-- 28 pages, 6 figures, 8 tables, supporting information https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/faf.12184Fisheries have had major negative impacts on marine ecosystems, and effective fisheries management and governance are needed to achieve sustainable fisheries, biodiversity conservation goals and thus good ecosystem status. To date, the IndiSeas programme (Indicators for the Seas) has focussed on assessing the ecological impacts of fishing at the ecosystem scale using ecological indicators. Here, we explore fisheries ‘Management Effectiveness’ and ‘Governance Quality’ and relate this to ecosystem health and status. We developed a dedicated expert survey, focused at the ecosystem level, with a series of questions addressing aspects of management and governance, from an ecosystem-based perspective, using objective and evidence-based criteria. The survey was completed by ecosystem experts (managers and scientists) and results analysed using ranking and multivariate methods. Results were further examined for selected ecosystems, using expert knowledge, to explore the overall findings in greater depth. Higher scores for ‘Management Effectiveness’ and ‘Governance Quality’ were significantly and positively related to ecosystems with better ecological status. Key factors that point to success in delivering fisheries and conservation objectives were as follows: the use of reference points for management, frequent review of stock assessments, whether Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) catches were being accounted for and addressed, and the inclusion of stakeholders. Additionally, we found that the implementation of a long-term management plan, including economic and social dimensions of fisheries in exploited ecosystems, was a key factor in successful, sustainable fisheries management. Our results support the thesis that good ecosystem-based management and governance, sustainable fisheries and healthy ecosystems go togetherThis is a contribution to the IndiSeas Working Group, which, by the time of the study, was cofunded by IOC-UNESCO (www.ioc-unesco.org), EuroMarine (http://www.euromarinenetwork.eu), the European FP7 MEECE research project, the European Network of Excellence Eur-Oceans and the FRB EMIBIOS project (contract n°212085)Peer Reviewe

Optimal harvest responses to environmental forecasts depend on resource knowledge and how it can be used

Managing natural resources under large-scale environmental fluctuations like the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is likely to become increasingly important under climate change. Forecasts of environmental conditions are improving, but the best response to an unfavorable forecast remains unclear; many practitioners advocate reducing harvest as a more precautionary approach, while prior economic theory favors increasing harvest. Using logistic and age-structured fisheries models, we show that informational constraints — uncertain stock estimates and restrictions on harvest policies — play a central role in choosing how to respond to a forecasted shock. With perfect knowledge and no policy constraints, risk-neutral managers should increase harvest when a negative shock is forecast. However, informational constraints may drive the optimal response to a forecast of a negative shock toward or away from precaution. Precautionary forecast responses arise when informational constraints make the harvest policy insufficiently sensitive to the true resource status. In contrast, uncertainty about the stock size can lead to more aggressive forecast responses when stock dynamics are nonlinear and not all fish are susceptible to fishing

Optimal harvest responses to environmental forecasts depend on resource knowledge and how it can be used

Managing natural resources under large-scale environmental fluctuations like the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is likely to become increasingly important under climate change. Forecasts of environmental conditions are improving, but the best response to an unfavorable forecast remains unclear; many practitioners advocate reducing harvest as a more precautionary approach, while prior economic theory favors increasing harvest. Using logistic and age-structured fisheries models, we show that informational constraints — uncertain stock estimates and restrictions on harvest policies — play a central role in choosing how to respond to a forecasted shock. With perfect knowledge and no policy constraints, risk-neutral managers should increase harvest when a negative shock is forecast. However, informational constraints may drive the optimal response to a forecast of a negative shock toward or away from precaution. Precautionary forecast responses arise when informational constraints make the harvest policy insufficiently sensitive to the true resource status. In contrast, uncertainty about the stock size can lead to more aggressive forecast responses when stock dynamics are nonlinear and not all fish are susceptible to fishing