Start Date

28-10-2024 3:45 PM

End Date

28-10-2024 5:00 PM

Access Type

Open Access

Abstract

The goal of fisheries management is to maintain sustainable fisheries and preserve their value. Fisheries management councils set fishing rules and regulations based on scientific advice in the form of a stock assessment. Stock assessments collect and analyze data, produce reports on the condition or status of an exploited stock, and estimate sustainable yield. Stock assessment scientists use analytical approaches and quantitative methods to develop stock assessment models that describe the population dynamics of a stock. Traditionally, stock assessments have not accounted for either ecological interactions, such as predation, or the environment. In this presentation, I will briefly describe the structure of federal fisheries management in the northeast US, which includes both the Mid-Atlantic and New England. Then I will talk about something called an Ecosystem and Socioeconomic Profile (ESP), which is both a process and a product created as part of an ongoing, national scale effort to include ecosystem information in fisheries management. I will highlight my current work with the Atlantic herring and will discuss past successes and remaining challenges in using the ESP to incorporate ecosystem considerations into the stock assessment process.

Biography

Dr. Molina is a stock assessment analyst at the Ecosystem Dynamics and Assessment Branch at NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center. She earned her BS from Brown University in 2012 and her PhD from Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences in 2022. During her tenure at SBU, she taught marine biology as an adjunct professor at Suffolk County Community College. Thereafter, she was a postdoc at the Rutgers University’s School of Environmental and Biological Sciences in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Natural Resources before joining NOAA as an affiliate in 2023. Her research focuses on the impact of ecological interactions and environmental conditions on marine fish and invertebrate populations with the goal of informing fisheries management and supporting the decision-making process with ecosystem context.

ORCID

0000-0002-2547-606X

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Oct 28th, 3:45 PM Oct 28th, 5:00 PM

Incorporating ecosystem information into the federal fisheries management process

The goal of fisheries management is to maintain sustainable fisheries and preserve their value. Fisheries management councils set fishing rules and regulations based on scientific advice in the form of a stock assessment. Stock assessments collect and analyze data, produce reports on the condition or status of an exploited stock, and estimate sustainable yield. Stock assessment scientists use analytical approaches and quantitative methods to develop stock assessment models that describe the population dynamics of a stock. Traditionally, stock assessments have not accounted for either ecological interactions, such as predation, or the environment. In this presentation, I will briefly describe the structure of federal fisheries management in the northeast US, which includes both the Mid-Atlantic and New England. Then I will talk about something called an Ecosystem and Socioeconomic Profile (ESP), which is both a process and a product created as part of an ongoing, national scale effort to include ecosystem information in fisheries management. I will highlight my current work with the Atlantic herring and will discuss past successes and remaining challenges in using the ESP to incorporate ecosystem considerations into the stock assessment process.