Resource Ecology & Fisheries Management  (cont.)

Workshop on Models for Alternative Management Policies for Marine Ecosystems

Kerim Aydin and Sarah Gaichas attended the first meeting of the Working Group studying Models for Alternative Management Policies for Marine Ecosystems, funded by the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) in Santa Barbara, California. The Working Group is made up of participants from both national and international management agencies, and academic institutions involved in science and fisheries management in five North Pacific large marine ecosystems (eastern Bering Sea, Gulf of Alaska, California Current, eastern tropical Pacific, and central subtropical Pacific).

Each of these ecosystems has served as the focus of controversy over the ecological consequences of fishery management practices, protection for threatened or endangered species, and the relative importance of large-scale environmental variability, and each has been the focus of model development effort using the common framework of an Ecopath/Ecosim approach. By defining a common set of objective criteria for evaluating conservation strategies, economic goals and ecosystem management objectives, the workshop participants will employ these five models as the basis for evaluating policy outcomes, clarify theconflict of alternatives, and provide guidance to realistic expectation from management actions.

 
Scientific Activities of the North Pacific Marine Science Organization (PICES) in 2001

The PICES Annual meeting celebrating the organization’s tenth anniversary was held 5-13 October 2001 in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. The meeting attracted many scientists, including many who had been instrumental in the initial development of PICES as an organization.

Seven workshops, 12 topic sessions, and several working group meetings were conducted. The keynote lecture, “The first decade and beyond” by Dr. Warren S. Wooster, provided the historical context for the development of PICES as an organization and its broad areas of scientific focus over the past decade. The lecture was followed by the Science Board Symposium, “Ten years of PICES science: decadal-scale scientific progress and prognosis for a regime shift in scientific approach.”

The first annual Wooster Award was presented at the annual meeting to the late Professor Michael Mullin. The award is to be given annually to an individual who has made significant scientific contributions to North Pacific marine science. Based on the nominations received from the North Pacific marine science community, it was clear from the very beginning that the first award should go to Mike Mullin. Mike’s excellence in research and teaching and his broad involvement in North Pacific marine science spanned many nations and disciplines. The topic session held at PICES X on “plankton size classes, functional groups, and ecosystem dynamics: causes and consequences” and the special issue that will result from the session were dedicated to the memory of Mike. Dr. David Checkley, Jr., a colleague of Mike’s at Scripps Institution of Oceanography followed an example similar to one that Mike himself had set many years ago by completing a manuscript that Mike had nearly finished before his death and presenting it in Mike’s name at this PICES topic session.

The main scientific portion of the PICES meeting lasted 4 days, compared with 5-day meetings in previous years. The shorter meeting worked well and participants seemed pleased with the number and types of topic sessions offered. The Wednesday evening session, dedicated solely to posters including the TCODE electronic poster session, provided an excellent format for interaction and scientific discussions that we hope to continue at future meetings. Participants came from several nonPICES countries. Particular interest this year was the participation of Mexican scientists.

The year 2001 saw continued progress in the area of international collaborative field and laboratory work by the PICES scientific community. The Marine Environmental Quality (MEQ) committee’s practical workshop on HAB species identification provided practical training to scientists from PICES member nations. The Iron Fertilization Experiment Advisory Panel reported results from an iron fertilization experiment in the western North Pacific and discussed progress in implementing an experiment for the eastern North Pacific. Finally, the PICES-GLOBEC Climate Change and Carrying Capacity Program (CCCC) continued its 2-year study to initiate continuous plankton recorder (CPR) monitoring in the North Pacific and showed further results with regard to a latitudinal gradient in maturation timing for winter-spring dominant copepods.

PICES international collaborations are expanding. PICES designed and produced the poster and first announcement for distribution of the ICES/PICES/GLOBEC cosponsored symposium on zooplankton ecology to be held 20-23 May 2003 in Gijon, Spain. PICES agreed to be a cosponsor of a symposium on the causes of marine mortality of salmon in the North Pacific and North Atlantic Oceans and in the Baltic Sea to be held 14-15 March 2002 in Vancouver, British Columbia with cosponsoring organizations NPAFC, NASCO, IBSFC, and ICES. PICES is continuing scientific interactions with Mexican marine scientists through cosponsorship of a symposium on North Pacific transitional areas in spring 2002 in La Paz, Mexico.

Many PICES scientific efforts were published in 2001. Four volumes of the PICES Scientific Report series were produced in 2001: Volume 16 contains the final report of WG 8 on Practical Assessment Methodology, Volume 17 is the annual report of the CCCC Program activities, Volume 18 has the results of the PICES/CoML/IPRC workshop on Impact of climate variability on observation, and prediction of ecosystem and biodiversity changes in the North Pacific, and Volume 19 contains the results of the 1999 and 2000 intercomparisons for carbonate parameters. Many papers presented at the Beyond El NiZo Conference in La Jolla, USA in March 2000 were recently published in a special issue of Progress in Oceanography, Vol. 49, entitled “Climate variability and marine ecosystem impacts, from the tropics to the Arctic.”

The PICES XI annual meeting will be held 18-26 October 2002 in Qingdao, the People’s Republic of China, with the theme of technological advances in marine scientific research. A 1-day Science Board Symposium is dedicated to the potential for implementation of technology to enhance the scientific activities conducted by PICES researchers. 

By Pat Livingston.

Next >>>

AFSC Quarterly
Research Reports
Oct-Dec 2001