Ecosystem-based fisheries management forestalls climate-driven collapse.

Climate change is impacting fisheries worldwide with uncertain outcomes for food and nutritional security. Using management strategy evaluations for key US fisheries in the eastern Bering Sea we find that Ecosystem Based Fisheries Management (EBFM) measures forestall future declines under climate change over non-EBFM approaches. Yet, benefits are species-specific and decrease markedly after 2050.

Development of a predation index to assess trophic stability in the Gulf of Alaska.

Predation can have substantial and long-term effects on the population dynamics of ecologically important prey. Diverse predator assemblages, however, may produce stabilizing (i.e.

Rapid assessment of management options for promoting stock rebuilding in data-poor species under climate change.

The development of species recovery plans requires considering likely outcomes of different management interventions, but the complicating effects of climate change are rarely evaluated. We examined how qualitative network models (QNMs) can be deployed to support decision making when data, time, and funding limitations restrict use of more demanding quantitative methods. We used QNMs to evaluate management interventions intended to promote the rebuilding of a collapsed stock of blue king crab (Paralithodes platypus) (BKC) around the Pribilof Islands (eastern Bering Sea) to determine how their potential efficacy may change under climate change.

Energetically relevant predator-prey body mass ratios and their relationship with predator body size.

Food web structure and dynamics depend on relationships between body sizes of predators and their prey. Species-based and community-wide estimates of preferred and realized predator-prey mass ratios (PPMR) are required inputs to size-based size spectrum models of marine communities, food webs, and ecosystems. Here, we clarify differences between PPMR definitions in different size spectrum models, in particular differences between PPMR measurements weighting prey abundance in individual predators by biomass ( ) and numbers ( ).

Spatial match-mismatch between juvenile fish and prey provides a mechanism for recruitment variability across contrasting climate conditions in the eastern Bering Sea.

Understanding mechanisms behind variability in early life survival of marine fishes through modeling efforts can improve predictive capabilities for recruitment success under changing climate conditions. Walleye pollock (Theragra chalcogramma) support the largest single-species commercial fishery in the United States and represent an ecologically important component of the Bering Sea ecosystem. Variability in walleye pollock growth and survival is structured in part by climate-driven bottom-up control of zooplankton composition.

Interacting effects of translocation, artificial propagation, and environmental conditions on the marine survival of Chinook salmon from the Columbia River, Washington, U.S.A.

Captive rearing and translocation are often used concurrently for species conservation, yet the effects of these practices can interact and lead to unintended outcomes that may undermine species' recovery efforts. Controls in translocation or artificial-propagation programs are uncommon; thus, there have been few studies on the interacting effects of these actions and environmental conditions on survival. The Columbia River basin, which drains 668,000 km(2) of the western United States and Canada, has an extensive network of hydroelectric and other dams, which impede and slow migration of anadromous Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.

Restoration through eradication? Removal of an invasive bioengineer restores some habitat function for a native predator.

Invasive aquatic macrophytes increase structural complexity in recipient systems and alter trophic and physical resources; thus, eradication programs that remove plant structure have potential to restore some impaired ecological functions. In this study we evaluate how an invasive ecosystem engineer, Atlantic smooth cordgrass (Spartina alterniflora), interferes with the movement and foraging activity of a mobile predator, Dungeness crab (Cancer magister), and whether removal of aboveground cordgrass structure rapidly reestablishes access to foraging habitats. By 2004, smooth cordgrass had invaded >25% of crab foraging habitat in Willapa Bay, Washington (USA), and transformed it into a highly structured landscape.