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USGS2017

Tambora and the mackerel year: Phenology and fisheries during an extreme climate event

Global warming has increased the frequency of extreme climate events, yet responses of biological and human communities are poorly understood, particularly for aquatic ecosystems and fisheries. Retrospective analysis of known outcomes may provide insights into the nature of adaptations and trajectory of subsequent conditions. We consider the 1815 eruption of the Indonesian volcano Tambora and its impact on Gulf of Maine (GoM) coastal and riparian fisheries in 1816. Applying complex adaptive systems theory with historical methods, we analyzed fish export data and contemporary climate records to disclose human and piscine responses to Tambora’s extreme weather at different spatial and temporal scales while also considering sociopolitical influences. Results identified a tipping point in GoM fisheries induced by concatenating social and biological responses to extreme weather. Abnormal daily temperatures selectively affected targeted fish species—alewives, shad, herring, and mackerel—according to their migration and spawning phenologies and temperature tolerances. First to arrive, alewives suffered the worst. Crop failure and incipient famine intensified fishing pressure, especially in heavily settled regions where dams already compromised watersheds. Insufficient alewife runs led fishers to target mackerel, the next species appearing in abundance along the coast; thus, 1816 became the “mackerel year.” Critically, the shift from riparian to marine fisheries persisted and expanded after temperatures moderated and alewives recovered. We conclude that contingent human adaptations to extraordinary weather permanently altered this complex system. Understanding how adaptive responses to extreme events can trigger unintended consequences may advance long-term planning for resilience in an uncertain future.

Maine, Massachusetts↗

USGS2020

Sustainable fisheries management: Pacific salmon

What has happened to the salmon resource in the Pacific Northwest? Who is responsible and what can be done to reverse the decline in salmon populations? The responsibly falls on everyone involved - fishermen, resource managers and concerned citizens alike - to take the steps necessary to ensure that salmon populations make a full recovery. This collection of papers examines the state of the salmon fisheries in the Pacific Northwest. They cover existing methods and supply model approaches for alternative solutions. The editors stress the importance of input from and cooperation with all parties involved to create a viable solution. Grass roots education and participation is the key to public support - and ultimately the success - of whatever management solutions are developed. A unique and valuable scientific publication, Sustainable Fisheries Management: Pacific Salmon clearly articulates the current state of the Pacific salmon resource, describes the key features of its management, and provides important guidance on how we can make the transition towards sustainable fisheries. The solutions presented in this book provide the basis of a strategy for sustainable fisheries, requiring society and governmental agencies to establish a shared vision, common policies, and a process for collaborative management.

Book↗

USGS2009

One Northwest community - People, salmon, rivers, and the sea: Towards sustainable salmon fisheries

Pacific salmon management is in crisis. Throughout their range, salmon and steelhead populations are being adversely affected by human activities. Without coordinated, effective, and timely action, the future of the Pacific salmon resource is most certainly in doubt. To address the challenges that are currently facing salmon management, concerned citizens representing a diverse array of government agencies and non-governmental organizations have agreed to cooperate in the development of a Sustainable Fisheries Strategy for west coast salmon and steelhead populations. The Strategy builds on the contents of this book, resulting from the Sustainable Fisheries Conference and subsequent community- and watershed-based citizen forums. This chapter presents the key elements of the Strategy including a common vision for the future, a series of guiding principles, and specific strategies for supporting sustainable fisheries. As such, the Strategy embraces an ecosystem-based approach to managing human activities, rather than the traditional egocentric approach to managing salmonid populations and associated habitats. A system of community-based, watershed-oriented councils, including all stakeholders and agency representatives, is proposed for effective transition to ecosystem-based salmon and steelhead management. It is our hope that everyone involved in Pacific salmon management will embrace both the spirit and the specific elements of the Sustainable Fisheries Strategy as we face the difficult challenges ahead.

Book chapter↗

USGS2022

FishStan: Hierarchical Bayesian models for fisheries

Fisheries managers and ecologists use statistical models to estimate population-level relations and demographic rates (e.g., length-maturity curves, growth curves, and mortality rates). These relations and rates provide insight into populations and inputs for other models. For example, growth curves may vary across lakes showing fish populations differ due to management actions or underlying environmental conditions. A fisheries manager could use this information to set lake-specific harvest limits or an ecologist could use this information to test scientific hypotheses about fish populations. The above example also demonstrates how populations exist within hierarchical structures where sub-populations may be nested within a meta-population. More generally, these hierarchical structures may be both biological (e.g., different lakes or river pools) and statistical (e.g., correlated error structures). Currently, limited options exist for fitting these hierarchical models and people seeking to use them often must program their own implementations. Furthermore, many fisheries managers and researchers may not have Bayesian programming skills, but many can use interactive languages such as R. Additionally, programs such as JAGS often require long run times (e.g., hours if not days) to fit hierarchical models and programs such as Stan can be more difficult to program because it is a compiled language. We created fishStan to share hierarchical models for fisheries and ecology in an easy-to-use R package.

Journal of Open Source Software↗

USGS2020

Resilience management for conservation of inland recreational fisheries

Resilience thinking has generated much interest among scientific communities, yet most resilience concepts have not materialized into management applications. We believe that using resilience concepts to characterize systems and the social and ecological processes affecting them is a way to integrate resilience into better management decisions. This situation is exemplified by inland recreational fisheries, which represent complex socioecological systems that face unpredictable and unavoidable change. Making management decisions in the context of resilience is increasingly important given mounting environmental and anthropogenic perturbations to inland systems. Herein, we propose a framework that allows resilience concepts to be better incorporated into management by (i) recognizing how current constraints and management objectives focus on desired or undesired systems (specific fish and anglers), (ii) evaluating the state of a system in terms of how both social and ecological forces enforce or erode the desired or undesired system, (iii) identifying the resilience-stage cycles a system state may undergo, and (iv) determining the broad management strategies that may be viable given the system state and resilience stage. We use examples from inland recreational fisheries to illustrate different system state and resilience stages and synthesize several key results. Across all combinations of socioecological forces, five common types of viable management strategies emerge: (i) adopt a different management preference or focus, (ii) change stakeholder attitudes or behaviors via stakeholder outreach, (iii) engage in (sometimes extreme) biological intervention, (iv) engage in fishery intervention, and (v) adopt landscape-level management approaches focusing on achieving different systems in different waters. We then discuss the challenges and weaknesses of our approach, including specifically the cases in which there are multiple strong social forces (i.e., stakeholders holding competing objectives or values) and situations where waters are not readily divisible, such as rivers or great lakes, and in which spatial separation of competing objectives will be difficult. We end with our vision of how we believe these types of operationalized resilience approaches could improve or transform inland recreational fisheries management.

Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution↗

USGS2023

Survey evaluation of Florida’s freshwater fisheries long-term monitoring program

Natural resource monitoring programs benefit from routine evaluation. Here, Florida’s statewide Freshwater Fisheries Long-Term Monitoring (LTM) program is used to show how stakeholder surveys can be integral to this process. In 2022, an online questionnaire was sent to internal stakeholders, i.e., state agency personnel who collect, enter, or use freshwater fisheries data for fisheries and habitat management purposes. The survey’s primary objective was to evaluate the program at its 15-year mark; secondary objectives were to compare results with a similar survey conducted at the 4-year mark, compare results among respondents based on experience and functional role, and develop recommendations for strategic initiatives to further improve the program. The survey consisted of 43 questions across six sections of program evaluation: demographics; field sampling; data entry, summary, and reporting; management decision support; programmatic views; and additional input. Respondents generally had positive views of the LTM program, but the survey revealed differences among respondents with different functional roles (e.g., fisheries researchers and managers viewed the decisional value, priority, and sample sizes of LTM data more favorably than habitat managers) while highlighting high-priority future initiatives (e.g., database development). Our results demonstrate the utility of stakeholder surveys as an important step in evaluating monitoring programs.

Florida↗

USGS2020

Vulnerability of resource-users in Louisiana’s oyster fishery to environmental hazards

Knowledge of vulnerability provides the foundation for developing actions that minimize impacts on people while maximizing the sustainability of ecosystem goods and services. As a result, it is becoming increasingly important to determine how resource-dependent people are vulnerable to environmental hazards. This is particularly true in coastal Louisiana where the current era of rapid land loss has the potential to undermine oyster fisheries. Yet, little is known about how such environmental change might differentially impact resource-users and stakeholders. We examined social components of vulnerability to environmental hazards using indicators of susceptibility and adaptive capacity within the oyster fishery of Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana. Specifically, we used structured interviews to compare three resource-user roles: oyster fishers, oyster fishers/lease owners, and oyster lease owners only. Results indicated that oyster fishers/lease owners were highly dependent and thus susceptible to changes in the fishery due to high levels of occupational identity. The same people, however, were the most adaptable to change, which was reflected in their willingness to learn about new practices and evolve over time; higher susceptibility in this group was offset by an increased ability to adapt, cope, and respond to changes in the environment. In contrast to these findings, oyster fishers that did not own any portion of a lease or business in which they operated were bad at coping with change and frequently held negative or fatalistic views on financial planning. These attributes made them the most vulnerable to environmental hazards. Overall, the most vulnerable participants in the Terrebonne Parish oyster fishery were those with low to moderate levels of personal and financial buffers and trust, coupled with high occupational identity and a low motivation to change. Local policy actions that target these attributes are likely to be the best entry points to reducing vulnerability of stakeholders to hazards.

Louisianna↗

USGS2014

Inter-sectoral conflict and recreational fisheries of the developing world : opportunities and challenges for co-operation

The recreational fishing sector is growing rapidly in the developing world with the potential to realize economic benefits estimated at tens of billions of dollars annually. These opportunities are accompanied by numerous ecological risks such as overfishing and habitat disturbance. To date, there has been little focus on sociological issues surrounding the growth of recreational fisheries in these areas. This chapter examines sources of potential conflict among small-scale fishing sectors in the developing world with particular attention paid to identification of key issues constraining stewardship of recreational fisheries. We identified conflicts related to fisher competition for access to resources, socio-demographic change, cultural differences, and governance as areas of concern among small-scale fisheries, and offer examples of successful and failed attempts to reduce, mitigate or solve these conflicts. The reality of limited resource availability will require that communication, proactive management strategies and cooperation be encouraged among sectors to maximize resiliency of the social-ecological system and to promote sustainability of fishing practices. We recommend stewardship initiatives that include avenues for stakeholder participation and establishing adaptive management strategies, particularly for emerging recreational fisheries in the developing world.

Book chapter↗

USGS2012

Trends in fishery agency assessments of black bass tournaments in the southeastern United States

Studies conducted during the last 30 years have identified benefits and adverse impacts and have documented increased frequency of fishing tournaments. This study used information provided by state fisheries management agency administrators to measure the frequency of black bass (Micropterus spp.) tournaments in southeastern states and assessed how reported changes in tournament frequency have impacted fisheries management. The average annual number of black bass tournaments reported by 14 southeastern states for 2009-2011 was 41,939, which was a 124% increase from the average annual number of tournaments for all freshwater species reported by southeastern states for 2002-2004. Despite this considerable increase, agencies reported that tournaments were generally beneficial. The highest ranking benefit factors (developed from factor analysis of 21 potential benefits) were unchanged from the same survey administered in 2005 and included the benefits of promotion of fishing, specific fisheries, and agency programs. Similarly, the highest ranking adverse-impact factors developed from 29 potential problems (resource overuse and user-group conflicts) were also consistent with the 2005 survey. Black bass tournaments offer benefits to fisheries management that could be better realized. The persistence and consistently high impact ratings of resource overuse and user-group conflicts along with generally low incidence of monitoring tournaments suggests that the negative impacts have become part of contemporary recreational fishing and are not problems that require management solutions.

Southeastern states↗

USGS2010

Fisheries indicators, freshwater

Freshwater fisheries exist among diverse ecosystems and fauna, provide societal benefits, and are influenced by human activities. Fisheries scientists assess the status and sustainability of fisheries by multiple approaches, including abundance and condition indices, population parameters, community indices, modeling, and surveys of habitat and human dimensions. The future sustainability of freshwater fisheries is limited not by available methods but by society’s will.

Book chapter↗

USGS2015

Drivers and synergies in the management of inland fisheries: Searching for sustainable solutions

Freshwater is a shared resource. Water challenges (i.e., too much, too little, too dirty) are recognized to have global implications. Many sectors rely upon water and, in some cases, the limited availability of water leads to tough decisions. Though inland fish and fisheries play important roles in providing food security, human well-being, and ecosystem productivity, this sector is often underappreciated in water resource planning because valuation is difficult and governance is complex, unclear, or non-existent. Additionally, inland fisheries are an economically small sector and, in most cases, the value of inland fisheries will never be the main driver of decision making. At the 2015 Global Conference on Inland Fisheries, we convened a Drivers and Synergies panel and working group to discuss competing sectors (e.g., hydropower, transportation, agriculture, mining and oil and gas extraction, forestry, tourism and recreation, and aquaculture) and large-scale drivers which exist predominately outside of the water sectors (e.g., economic growth, diversifying economies, population growth, urbanization, and climate change). Drivers will influence these sectors and tradeoffs will be made. Management of sustainable inland water systems requires making informed choices emphasizing those services that will provide sustainable benefits for humans while maintaining well-functioning ecological systems.

Conference Paper↗

USGS1973

Federal Great Lakes fishery research objectives, priorities, and projects

Fishery productivity of the Great Lakes has declined drastically since settlement of the area. Premium quality fishes of the Great Lakes such as whitefish, lake trout, and walleyes have been replaced by less desired species. This change is attributed to selective overfishing, pollution, and the extreme instability of fish populations. Sea lamprey predation is still a vexing problem but progress is being made in controlling this parasite. The federal fishery research program with headquarters in Ann Arbor, Michigan, has the objective of providing baseline information, needed in resource use decisions, about the fishes of the Great Lakes. Studies of the habitat requirements of fish are high priority. The program includes fish population assessments, studies of the effects of mercury and other contaminants on fish, thermal effects studies, and general investigation of the impact of engineering projects on Great Lakes fisheries. The work is closely coordinated with state and Canadian agencies through the Great Lakes Fishery Commission. Four small research vessels and four field stations are utilized with a staff of 90 and an annual budget of about $1.5 million.

Conference Paper↗

USGS2025

Fisheries research and monitoring activities of the Lake Erie Biological Station, 2024

A comprehensive understanding of fish populations and their interactions is the cornerstone of modern fishery management and the basis for Lake Erie’s Fish Community Objectives (FCOs) developed in 2020 (Francis et al. 2020). The 2024 U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Lake Erie Biological Station Annual Report is responsive to these FCOs and the USGS obligations via a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU 2017) with the Great Lakes Fishery Commission (GLFC) Council of Lake Committees (CLC) to provide scientific information in support of fishery management. Goals for the USGS Great Lakes Deepwater Fish Assessment and Ecological Studies were to monitor long-term changes in the fish community and track population dynamics of key fishes of interest to management agencies. Specific to Lake Erie, expectations were sustained investigations of native percids, prey fish populations, and Lake Trout. All work was conducted as part of the Deepwater Science Program under the authority of the Great Lakes Fishery Research Authorization Act of 2019 (16 USC §941h). The USGS 2024 Deepwater Science Program fieldwork began in Lake Erie in March and concluded in December, using trawl, gill net, hydroacoustic, lower trophic sampling devices, and telemetry methods. This work resulted in 44 bottom trawls covering 41 ha of lake bottom and catching 48,936 fish totaling 995 kg in the West Basin of Lake Erie, with detailed results described below. Overnight gill net sets (n=25) for coldwater species were performed in the East Basin of Lake Erie. A total of 8 km of gillnet was deployed during these surveys, which caught 106 fish, 92 of which were native coldwater species: Lake Trout, Burbot, and Lake Whitefish. Results from coldwater species assessments will be reported in the Coldwater Task Group report to the GLFC and the CLC (CTG 2025). These reports are used to inform Lake Trout stocking decisions and direct lamprey control measures (16 USC §939a). USGS hydroacoustic sampling included twenty-six 5-km transects (130 km total) in the Central Basin as part of a collaborative lake-wide survey with details and results reported by the Forage Task Group (FTG 2025). Lower trophic sampling provided data from zooplankton samples (n=12) and water quality profiles (n=12) to populate a database maintained by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources (MDNR), Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources (OMNR), Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR), Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission (PFBC), and New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC). USGS also assisted CLC member agencies with deployment and maintenance of Great Lakes Acoustic Telemetry Observation System (GLATOS) infrastructure throughout all three Lake Erie basins and tributaries, supporting multiple coordinated telemetry investigations. This report presents biomass-based summaries of fish communities in western Lake Erie derived from USGS bottom trawl surveys conducted from 2013 to 2024 during June and September. The survey design compliments the August ODNR- OMNRF effort by reinforcing stock assessments with more robust data. Analyses herein evaluated trends in total biomass, abundance of dominant predator and forage species, non-native species composition, biodiversity, and community structure. Data from this effort are accessible for download (Keretz et al. 2025)

Lake Erie↗

USGS1996

Commercial Fisheries Surveys

In this chapter, we describe methods for sampling commercial fisheries and identify factors affecting the design of sampling plans. When sampled properly, commercial fisheries can provide important information on the response of aquatic organisms to exploitation; such information can be used by management agencies to develop regulations for ensuring long-term production of the resource and long-term economic benefit. Fishery statistics are typically used to estimate abundance, mortality, recruitment, growth, and other vital characterisitcs of populations. Fishery statistics can also be used to study changes in fish community composition resulting from differential exploitation of species.

Book chapter↗

USGS2019

Ethical guidelines for publication of fisheries research

In 2000, the Governing Board of the American Fisheries Society (AFS) approved the first Guidelines for Authorship (GFA) in AFS publications, developed by the AFS Publications Overview Committee (POC) chaired by Mary Fabrizio. This version of the GFA document provided guidance for fisheries science publications for nearly two decades. The 2015 AFS President Donna Parish charged the POC to revise the document to improve the quality of AFS publications. With guidance from Mary Fabrizio and the AFS staff, the POC and chair Emmanuel Frimpong revised, updated, and clarified the GFA document. This revised fisheries research publication document provides guidance for all persons involved in the publication process including authors, reviewers, and editors. This version of the GFA document is not a guide for style or content in AFS publications, but rather provides substantial changes including clarification on what constitutes authorship versus acknowledgment and determining authorship order, including deceased authors. This version was adopted by the AFS Governing Board and is presented verbatim as it appears in the AFS Procedures Manual.

Fisheries↗

USGS2020

Trends in inland commercial fisheries in the United States

Inland fisheries, defined as finfish caught in lakes, rivers, and other water bodies, provide economic value and a source of protein at local and international levels. However, no comprehensive compilation of U.S. inland commercial fisheries exists. We sought to obtain data across all 50 states during 1990–2015 and noted a small, but significant, decline in harvest. The minimum harvest averaged 41,427 tonnes during 2009–2015 and peaked in 1995 with a minimum harvest of 49,951 tonnes. During 2009–2015, harvest and taxonomic composition varied regionally: eastern interior (the highest regional harvest, dominated by coregonines and carp), western interior (carp and Clupeidae), Gulf (catfish and Clupeidae), Pacific (salmonines), and Atlantic (the lowest regional harvest, dominated by catfish and Clupeidae). Our data compilation of commercial landings was more than double the current limited national inland harvest statistics, which might be indicative of an under appreciation for the value of inland fisheries that can have consequences when policy decisions are made regarding competing sectors for water usage.

Fisheries Magazine↗

USGS2020

Themes of contemporary inland fisheries goals

Goals are important for the effective execution of public trust responsibilities by state inland fisheries bureaus, but formulating meaningful goals is not simple. Often bureaus look to their past and to their sister bureaus in neighboring states when crafting goals for their own freshwater resources. Herein, we review the goal themes of fisheries bureaus using publicly available documents and guided by previous literature. We test whether goals exhibit geographic patterns presuming that differences and similarities in climate, natural resources, and people determine, to various degrees, the goal themes across the U.S. We identified nine distinct goal themes but found that they do not form clear geographic patterns, which contrasts with a similar analysis conducted in the 1970s. Since the 1970s, fisheries bureau goals have expanded and regionalism in goals has vanished. We suggest that changes in perspectives and communication technology, as well as provisions within nationwide funding mechanisms have led to goals becoming more homogenous across the U.S. and more diverse within each bureau.

Fisheries Magazine↗

USGS2019

Evaluating the sustainability of a cisco fishery in Thunder Bay, Ontario, under alternative harvest policies

Sustainable management of fish stocks is promoted through the application of management strategy evaluations (MSEs), providing information to managers on the relative performance of alternative management approaches (strategies) while accounting for uncertainty. In this study, we developed a simplified MSE of a stock of Cisco Coregonus artedi in Thunder Bay, Ontario, to determine both the sustainability of the current harvest control rule (i.e., a constant exploitation rate [ U ] of 10%) and the performance of alternative harvest control rules in meeting fishery objectives. Success in meeting fishery objectives was evaluated through attained yields, interannual variation in yields, magnitude of spawning stock biomass (SB), and the risk of reaching low SB—performance metrics established based on consultation with an advisory group to Lake Superior fishery managers. Our simulations explicitly accounted for uncertainty in the frequency of strong year‐classes being produced by Cisco, the stock–recruit relationship, stock abundance, and the sex‐specific nature of roe harvest. Assuming that future productivity is similar to the productivity observed over the period from 1985 to 2015, results suggest that the current U of 10% is sustainable in terms of maintaining SB above 20% of the unfished level. Variants of constant U control rules that included thresholds defining when U is to decrease as a function of SB increased yield, decreased risk, and increased the magnitude of SB at the end of the simulation period. However, these advantages came at the expense of greater interannual variation in yield. Constant catch control rules greatly underperformed constant U control rules in terms of magnitude in yield; however, they did reduce interannual variation in yield compared to constant U control rules. Furthermore, conditional versions of constant catch control rules (i.e., threshold stock sizes below which the catch limit was reduced) mitigated risks of staying at low stock size.

Thunder Bay↗