Assessing fishery and ecological consequences of alternate management options for multispecies fisheries

Demands for management advice on mixed and multispecies fisheries pose many challenges, further complicated by corresponding requests for advice on the environmental impacts of alternate management options. Here, we develop, and apply to North Sea fisheries, a method for collectively assessing the effects of, and interplay between, technical interactions, multispecies interactions, and the environmental effects of fishing. Ecological interactions involving 21 species are characterized with an ensemble of 188 plausible parameterizations of size-based multispecies models, and four fleets (beam trawl, otter trawl, industrial, and pelagic) characterized with catch composition data. We use the method to evaluate biomass and economic yields, alongside the risk of stock depletion and changes in the value of community indicators, for 10 000 alternate fishing scenarios (combinations of rates of fishing mortality F and fleet configuration) and present the risk vs. reward trade-offs. Technical and multispecies interactions linked to the beam and otter trawl fleets were predicted to have the strongest effects on fisheries yield and value, risk of stock collapse and fish community indicators. Increasing beam trawl effort led to greater increases in beam trawl yield when otter trawl effort was low. If otter trawl effort was high, increases in beam trawl effort led to reduced overall yield. Given the high value of demersal species, permutations of fleet effort leading to high total yield (generated primarily by pelagic species) were not the same as permutations leading to high catch values. A transition from F for 1990 to 2010 to FMSY, but without changes in fleet configuration, reduced risk of stock collapse without affecting long-term weight or value of yield. Our approach directly addresses the need for assessment methods that treat mixed and multispecies issues collectively, address uncertainty, and take account of trade-offs between weight and value of yield, state of stocks and state of the environment

Spatial separation of catches in highly mixed fisheries

Abstract Mixed fisheries are the dominant type of fishery worldwide. Overexploitation in mixed fisheries occurs when catches continue for available quota species while low quota species are discarded. As EU fisheries management moves to count all fish caught against quota (the “landing obligation”), the challenge is to catch available quota within new constraints, else lose productivity. A mechanism for decoupling exploitation of species caught together is spatial targeting, which remains challenging due to complex fishery and population dynamics. How far spatial targeting can go to practically separate species is often unknown and anecdotal. We develop a dimension-reduction framework based on joint dynamic species distribution modelling to understand how spatial community and fishery dynamics interact to determine species and size composition. In application to the highly mixed fisheries of the Celtic Sea, clear common spatial patterns emerge for three distinct assemblages. While distribution varies interannually, the same species are consistently found in higher densities together, with more subtle differences within assemblages, where spatial separation may not be practically possible. We highlight the importance of dimension reduction techniques to focus management discussion on axes of maximal separation and identify spatiotemporal modelling as a scientific necessity to address the challenges of managing mixed fisheries

Workshop on Unavoidable Survey Effort Reduction 2 (WKUSER2)

The Workshop on Unavoidable Survey Effort Reduction 2 (WKUSER2) focused on best-available approaches that can minimize information loss and ensure continuity in survey time series when unavoidable changes to survey effort occur. WKUSER2 recognised that reductions, reallocations, or increases in survey effort present similar set of problems, and therefore concentrated on all aspects of survey effort changes. The workshop reviewed available research, current practices, and recommended future directions on four key topics: (i) key elements of flexibility of a survey, (ii) why and how to combine data from different sources (e.g. surveys, fishery sampling) and deal with survey gaps, (iii) how to configure estimation and simulation models, and (iv) review existing tools and technology to evaluate consequences of survey effort changes.Road maps were developed for the key topic areas i, ii, iii, and iv, whenever possible, to assist scientists and survey managers in making decisions on how to evaluate and mitigate the impact of survey effort changes on data and advice quality. Many tools are available or are being developed for that purpose, but the group recognized two important needs during the workshop: i) defining clear objectives and priorities of a survey, which are essential to properly evaluate con- sequences of survey changes; and ii) making all tools accessible, reproducible, and transparent to benefit the whole community. This requires organisational and cultural shift to create support systems that ensure the development and sustainability of such tools in the future