Recent Work

• Working Group to Develop Recommendations to Estimate Bycatch for the Marine Mammal Protection Act Import Provisions

  • Fact Sheet
  • Developing Recommendations to Estimate Bycatch for the Marine Mammal Protection Act Import Provisions

  For decades, the United States (U.S.) government has fostered practices to estimate and reduce marine mammal bycatch in U.S. fisheries. Now, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has issued the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) Import Provisions, a new rule requiring nations that export fish and fish products to the U.S. to adhere to bycatch standards comparable to those of... Read More

• A Blueprint for Next-Generation Fishery Ecosystem Plans

  • Published Paper
  • Lenfest Fishery Ecosystem Task Force

  This 2018 paper in Marine Policy sets forth a blueprint for fishery managers in the United States and elsewhere to create fishery ecosystem plans (FEPs). The blueprint was first introduced in a 2017 report by the Lenfest Fishery Ecosystem Task Force, a team of 14 researchers pre-eminent in the sciences that inform fisheries management. Read More

• Study Links Diversity to Ecosystem Stability in a Fish Community

  • Published Paper
  • Developing and Empirical Dynamic Framework for Gulf Menhaden

  This 2018 study of a community of fish species uses an emerging method called empirical dynamic modeling to confirm the theory that more species-rich ecosystems are also more stable. Surprisingly, it also suggests that both diversity and stability change far more frequently than previous studies had recognized. This finding could lead to methods that better anticipate, and help managers prevent,... Read More