berisman
commented
7 years ago I'm very interested in this project, as our work on fish spawning aggregations includes elements associated with EBFM. Specifically, spawning aggregation sites are essential fish habitat, which is a focal point of federal and state fisheries management. The characterization, monitoring, management, and restoration of specific spawning aggregation sites (which will support spawning aggregations of several to dozens of species at the same location) requires data on bathymetry, environmental variables, behavior (e.g. through video), etc. Habitat mapping is essential for spawning aggregations, as species are very predictable in terms of their preference for specific habitat types with specific geomorphological features. In fact, simply locating areas with the known geomorphological features suited for particular aggregations has been used to find new, undocumented aggregations and sites.
ailich
Author: Alexander Ilich Topics: Fisheries
Background
Currently there is a push to move fisheries management from single species management to a more holistic ecosystem based approach. Ecosystem Based Fisheries Management is a spatial approach to management that manages an entire geographic area as a system rather than each species individually. This type of framework can account for many interactions fish have with their surrounding environment in a way that a single species approaches cannot. Since this is a spatial approach many academic and governmental institutions have started habitat mapping in order to acquire the spatial data necessary for this new type of management framework. These projects are very disparate though and employ different methodologies and classification schemes. The Coastal and Marine Ecological Classification Standard (CMECS) was approved in 2012 by the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) as the official national framework for marine habitats in the United States, and has helped alleviate the latter concern. However, there is little guidance on how to implement this common scheme among different projects that are classifying habitat at different scales, at different times, and with different types of data and equipment.
Synthesis Summary and Significance
I propose a synthesis project that would gather various types of data including but not limited to underwater video, bathymetry, environmental variables, water chemistry, and satellite data. For each of these different types of data, we would develop best practices on how to apply CMECS to classifying habitats as well as how to integrate these different types of data into one cohesive habitat map that is useful for fisheries and environmental management. This would provide much needed guidance on how to apply the CMECS framework in different scenarios and help unify many disparate mapping efforts in the Gulf of Mexico. This would also be a step forward towards implementing ecosystem based fisheries management. This project could also result in proposing additions and modifications to improve the CMECS framework in the future. This synthesis project would require the use of multivariate statistics such as cluster analysis and ordination as well as the use of spatial statistics and software such as ArcGIS.