Fisheries Sustainability and Ecosystem Management Working Group
- Introduction
- Approach
- Objectives
- Initiatives
- Documents
- Chairs
Introduction
Coral reefs and associated habitats provide important commercial, recreational, and subsistence fishery resources in the U.S. and around the world, and are a critical source of food for many developing countries. Fishing plays a central social and cultural role in many island communities. The rich biodiversity of reefs also supports a valuable marine aquarium industry and promises rich genetic resources for pharmaceuticals or other natural products, while also providing coastal protection from storm surge and sea level rise. However, these fishery resources and the ecosystems that support them are under increasing threat from overfishing and other impacts on habitats and ecosystems.
The Coral Reef Fisheries and Ecosystem Working Group was established in October 2020 to strengthen coral reef fisheries management efforts in the National Action Strategy. While coral reef fisheries management has always been a key priority for the USCRTF, it has been challenging to make progress given the complexities of the ecosystem and fisheries, traditional and community dependence on the resource, and dealing with data limitations and uncertainty. To promote collaboration and discussion among jurisdictional partners and federal agencies, the working group is co-chaired by a NOAA Fisheries representative and a jurisdictional representative. The working group takes a jurisdictionally-led, federally-supported approach to achieving sustainable coral reef fisheries.
Approach
The Coral Reef Fisheries & Ecosystem Working Group’s efforts focus on:
- Coral reef fish taxa with key ecological importance to reef conditions and vulnerability to overfishing.
- Collaborating and coordinating efforts with other USCRTF working groups that more directly address improving environmental conditions such as water quality and coral reef restoration.
- Supporting U.S. states, territories, and freely associated states to develop action plans that identify potential areas for federal support, helpful products and actions, and offer a way to share effective strategies across jurisdictions.
- Serving as a model for advancing similar international coral reef fishery management efforts through collaboration and coordination with existing groups and institutions.
- Facilitating support for sustainable fisheries plans, filling key data gaps for fisheries managers, improving data sharing, connecting management partners with successful tools and strategies for adaptive management and sufficient enforcement and compliance, and improving partner engagement.
Objectives
The Coral Reef Fisheries & Ecosystem Working Group supports the following objectives from the National Coral Reef Resilience Strategy.
Objectives under Fisheries Sustainability (FS) Strategy 1. Build Capacity for Coral Reef Fisheries Management:
- FS1.1: Ecosystem-based adaptive management processes are developed for fisheries managers to make evidence-based decisions about local fisheries management.
- FS1.2: Local communities, including Indigenous communities, are meaningfully engaged in all aspects of the adaptive management process to achieve collaborative fisheries management.
- FS1.3: Capacity needs for coral reef fisheries management have been identified and priority needs have been met to support effective coral reef fisheries management.
- FS1.4: Resources and solutions for fisheries enforcement and compliance have been identified and implemented by fisheries managers.
Objectives under Fisheries Sustainability (FS) Strategy 2. Provide Data Essential for Coral Reef Fisheries Management:
- FS2.1: Methods and data collected by coral reef fisheries monitoring programs are shared with the coral reef conservation community within each state and territory to increase comparability and integration at the state and territory level.
- FS2.2: Performance of biological and socioeconomic aspects of existing and potential place-based marine managed areas (MMAs) and marine protected areas (MPAs) is understood to inform adaptive management and siting.
- FS2.3: Manager-defined information needs on population status and ecology of coral reef fisheries taxa are addressed to advance the understanding of socio-ecological sustainability.
- FS2.4: A common understanding of the goals for and uses of fisheries-related data has increased with local community and fishing parties, including Indigenous peoples, and more local and traditional knowledge has been incorporated into fisheries data collection and analysis.
- FS2.5: Targeted outreach and communications products addressing the objectives of this strategy have been produced in co-creation with local communities.
- FS2.6: Fisheries and MPA managers have the tools, training, and technical assistance needed to consider ecological interactions when making management decisions for coral reef fisheries.
Initiatives
The Coral Reef Fisheries & Ecosystem Working Group achieves its goals through coordination of a number of initiatives and activities.
Initiative 1: Develop and implement an adaptive management process that assesses and reassesses the current state of fisheries-related information, management targets, ongoing or emerging data gaps, and communication and community engagement strategies.
Initiative 2: Engage local communities meaningfully throughout management planning and implementation and incorporate traditional and local knowledge into decision making processes.
Initiative 3: Prioritize capacity needs for ecosystem-based fisheries management, planning, biological and social science monitoring and assessment, evaluation, sustainable financing, and community engagement. Leverage tools and strategies to help meet those prioritized needs.
Initiative 4: Coordinate with fisheries managers and across the wider coral conservation community to identify resources (e.g., funding, capacity, technology), implement successful enforcement and compliance solutions (e.g., community-led monitoring and outreach, environmental courts), and share information.
Initiative 5: Work across programs within each state and territory to share coral reef fisheries monitoring methods and data with each other and the coral reef conservation community, and identify and implement options such as training, calibration studies, and databases.
Initiative 6: Conduct baseline and performance assessments and tracking of biological, socioeconomic, and cultural indicators for existing and potential place-based marine managed areas (MMAs) and marine protected areas (MPAs) to inform adaptive management and the siting of new areas.
Initiative 7: Prioritize, advocate for, and address manager-defined needs for research, monitoring, and data integration to provide information on population status and ecology of key coral reef fisheries taxa.
Initiative 8: Facilitate the coproduction of data, information, and knowledge with local community and fishing parties, including Indigenous peoples, to incorporate more local and traditional knowledge into data collection and analysis via cooperative research projects and information sharing.
Initiative 9: Identify priority coral reef fisheries management topics and produce targeted outreach and communications products from coral reef fisheries programs and projects and in co-creation with local communities.
Initiative 10: Develop assessment and decision-support tools (e.g., risk and vulnerability assessments, ecosystem and well-being indicators, management strategy evaluation, and ecosystem modeling) and provide training and technical assistance to fisheries and MPA managers on ecological interactions that affect coral reef fisheries sustainability and ecosystem function.
Chairs
The USCRTF Fisheries Sustainability and Ecosystem Management Working Group is led by:
- Chair: Chelsea Muna, Guam Department of Agriculture
- Co-Chair: Tauna Rankin, NOAA Fisheries
- Atlantic-Caribbean Basin Lead: Kelli O’Donnell, NOAA Fisheries
- Pacific Basin Lead: Kristine Bucchianeri, NOAA Fisheries