Cost-benefit analysis of ecosystem modeling to support fisheries management.

Mathematical and statistical models underlie many of the world's most important fisheries management decisions. Since the 19th century, difficulty calibrating and fitting such models has been used to justify the selection of simple, stationary, single-species models to aid tactical fisheries management decisions. Whereas these justifications are reasonable, it is imperative that we quantify the value of different levels of model complexity for supporting fisheries management, especially given a changing climate, where old methodologies may no longer perform as well as in the past.

Bottom trawl fishing footprints on the world's continental shelves.

Bottom trawlers land around 19 million tons of fish and invertebrates annually, almost one-quarter of wild marine landings. The extent of bottom trawling footprint (seabed area trawled at least once in a specified region and time period) is often contested but poorly described. We quantify footprints using high-resolution satellite vessel monitoring system (VMS) and logbook data on 24 continental shelves and slopes to 1,000-m depth over at least 2 years.