Robustness of Potential Biological Removal to Monitoring, Environmental, And Management Uncertainties

A team led by Dr. André Punt and Dr. Tessa Francis has published new research testing the robustness of potential biological removal (PBR) under potential challenges to management goals for marine mammal populations, including climate change and fisheries bycatch. The team used modelling for two pinniped and two cetacean species to understand the management consequences of uncertainties previously not included in management simulations, such as catastrophic changes in abundance and spatial differences in the PBR implementation. Researchers found that the following variables reduced PBR performance and the probability of achieving conservation management goals:

• Unintentional bias when estimating population abundance in monitoring surveys
• Not managing bycatch mortality in all major fisheries that impact a marine mammal population
• The life history type of a marine mammal species and variation in survival rates, for example, due to changing environmental conditions

Their results further demonstrate that while PBR is robust, it cannot guarantee that conservation and management goals of the MMPA will be achieved under evolving scenarios. Therefore, managers should consider this when determining PBR (e.g., by substantially reducing the recovery factor - a numerical value symbolizing the population’s ability to recover).

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Reference

1. Punt, A.E., Siple, M., Francis, T.B., Hammond, P.S., Heinemann, D., Long, K.J., Moore, J.E., Sepúlveda, M., Reeves, R.R., Sigurðsson, G.M., Vikingsson, G., Wade, P.R., Williams, R., Zerbini, A.N. (2020). Robustness of potential biological removal to monitoring, environmental, and management uncertainties. ICES Journal of Marine Science. https://doi.org/10.1093/icesjms/fsaa096