Evaluating adaptive management frameworks for data-limited crustacean fisheries.

Crustacean fisheries represent an increasingly important contribution to global landings, food security and economic growth, especially in developing countries. However, many productive and valuable crustacean fisheries in Asian countries are characterized by limited data availability, scientific capacity, and fisheries management. Adaptive management frameworks, which use past and emerging information to provide stock status information and management advice, have been touted as particularly applicable for managing capacity- and data-limited fisheries because they employ methods that can improve data collection and result in evaluations of stock and ecosystem status with varying levels of data and capacity.

Quantifying fish range shifts across poorly defined management boundaries.

Management regimes of marine resources that rely on spatial boundaries might be poorly adapted to climate change shifts in species distributions. This is of specific concern for the management of fish stocks that cross management jurisdictions, known as shared stocks. Transitioning to dynamic rules in spatial management has been suggested as a solution for mismatches between species distributions and the spatial boundaries.

A transactional and collaborative approach to reducing effects of bottom trawling.

Private-sector financial and legal transactions have long been used to protect terrestrial habitats and working landscapes, but less commonly to address critical threats in marine environments. Transferrable and marketable fishing privileges, including permits and quotas, make it possible to use private-sector transactions as conservation strategies to address some fishery management issues. Abating the effects of bottom trawling on the seafloor and bycatch and discard associated with the practice has proven challenging.

Ecomarkets for conservation and sustainable development in the coastal zone.

Because conventional markets value only certain goods or services in the ocean (e.g. fish), other services provided by coastal and marine ecosystems that are not priced, paid for, or stewarded tend to become degraded.

A global map of human impact on marine ecosystems.

The management and conservation of the world's oceans require synthesis of spatial data on the distribution and intensity of human activities and the overlap of their impacts on marine ecosystems. We developed an ecosystem-specific, multiscale spatial model to synthesize 17 global data sets of anthropogenic drivers of ecological change for 20 marine ecosystems. Our analysis indicates that no area is unaffected by human influence and that a large fraction (41%) is strongly affected by multiple drivers.