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The Sea Around Us Project Newsletter

Issue 53 – May/June 2009

The Chesapeake Bay isthe largest estuary inthe continental United

States, located midwayalong the Atlantic coast.Because of its location nearWashington, DC, theChesapeake ecosystem isnot only importantecologically, but also thesubject of much politicalconcern. Thus, quantitativetools with user-friendlyoutputs to help understandthe implications ofmanagement actions andhuman behaviour on theecosystem are useful forproviding information to awide-ranging audience.Researchers at the SeaAround Us project and the

Life in Chesapeake Bay: ananimated documentary

by Villy Christensen, Sherman Lai, Mike Pan, DalaiFelinto and Howard Townsend

US National Marine FisheriesService are en route todeveloping such tools usingthe gaming interface of thenew version 6 of theEcopath with Ecosimapproach and software. Asan intermediate step, wehave developed a 6-minutedocumentary of life inwaters of the ChesapeakeBay. The documentary isdeveloped using a 3Dgaming engine, and tellsthe story of how the oysterpopulations haveplummeted, gives viewersan idea of the current state,and it finishes with a‘dream-scene’ expressinghow the Bay may look inthe future if we were able

Screenshot `dream-scene’ of Chesapeake Bay from the animated documentary.

Continued on page 2 - BayContinued on page 2 - BayContinued on page 2 - BayContinued on page 2 - BayContinued on page 2 - Bay

to restore it. The power ofthe animation is that we areable to communicatescientific information to amuch wider range ofpeople than what ournormal scientific productsallow. We believe that thisform for communicationhas a very strong potentialin an educational setting,and anticipate that theunderlying methodology –which includes linking ascientific ecosystem modelof the Chesapeake Bay to agaming engine – will be avery powerful tool forcommunicating scientificsimulations in amanagement context.

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The Sea Around UsSea Around UsSea Around UsSea Around UsSea Around Us project newsletter ispublished by the Fisheries Centre at theUniversity of BritishColumbia. Includedwith the FisheriesCentre’s newsletterFishBytes, sixissues of thisnewsletter arepublished annually.Subscriptions are freeof charge.

Our mailing address is: UBC FisheriesCentre, Aquatic Ecosystems ResearchLaboratory, 2202 Main Mall, Vancouver,British Columbia, Canada, V6T 1Z4. Our faxnumber is (604) 822-8934, and our emailaddress is SeaNotes@fisheries.ubc.ca. Allqueries (including reprint requests),subscription requests, and address changesshould be addressed to Megan Bailey, SeaAround Us Newsletter Editor.

The Sea Around Us website may be foundat www.seaaroundus.org and contains up-to-date information on the project.

TTTTThe he he he he Sea Around Us Sea Around Us Sea Around Us Sea Around Us Sea Around Us project is a scientific collaborationproject is a scientific collaborationproject is a scientific collaborationproject is a scientific collaborationproject is a scientific collaborationbetween the University of British Columbia and the Pewbetween the University of British Columbia and the Pewbetween the University of British Columbia and the Pewbetween the University of British Columbia and the Pewbetween the University of British Columbia and the PewEnvironmental Group.Environmental Group.Environmental Group.Environmental Group.Environmental Group. The Trusts support nonprofit activities

in the areas of culture, education, the environment, healthand human services, public policy and religion. Based inPhiladelphia, the Trusts make strategic investments to helporganizations and citizens develop practical solutions todifficult problems. In 2000, with approximately $4.8 billion inassets, the Trusts committed over $235 million to 302 nonprofitorganizations.

ISSN 1713-5214 Sea Around Us (ONLINE) ISSN 1713-5214 Sea Around Us (ONLINE) ISSN 1713-5214 Sea Around Us (ONLINE) ISSN 1713-5214 Sea Around Us (ONLINE) ISSN 1713-5214 Sea Around Us (ONLINE)

... sharks andrays, andgiantsturgeonsused toroam thewaters inabundance.

Interestingly, on May 12 anExecutive Order was issued byPresident Obama for the US'sfederal agency, the NationalOceanic and AtmosphericAdministration (NOAA), "tostrengthen scientific support fordecision-making on Bayrestoration issues" (seewww.chesapeakebay.net/news_execorder.aspx?menuitem=36188).

NOAA Chesapeake Bay, a closeand long-standing partner to theFisheries Centre, has includedLenfest Ocean Futures Program's(LOFP) group decision support forstakeholders as one of thesolutions to this Executive Order.This is a timely Order, as ShermanLai will be demonstrating adevelopment concept of theLOFP decision support systemduring the Ecopath 25 Yearsconference to be held at the UBC

Fisheries Centre in August.

Viewers of the animateddocumentary, which can beviewed at www.ecopath. org/LifeInTheChesapeakeBay/, will betreated to life-like animations ofthe underwate ecosystem, andinteresting facts about the Bay. Itsvast watershed covers 64thousand square miles and isshared by six states. It is estimatedthat over 16 million people liveand work in this region. The Bay isone of the country's mostvaluable natural treasures,offering rich recreationalopportunities and supplyingmillions of pounds of seafoodevery year.

There is a sizeable menhadenfishery active in and around theBay. It is believed that the fisherymay be removing too much ofthis prey species that it isimpedeing the recovery of one of

Bay - Continued from page 1Bay - Continued from page 1Bay - Continued from page 1Bay - Continued from page 1Bay - Continued from page 1

Screenshot of a degraded Chesapeake Bay ecosystem from the animateddocumentary.

its main predators, striped bass.

Some surprising species wereonce abundant in ChesapeakeBay. A seemingly-unlimited supplyof oysters once provided jobs andfood to many, and the oysterswere actually considered a hazardto marine navigation. Today, thoseoyster beds are virtually non-existent, which has rendered theecosystem far less productivethan it once was.

Marine mammals, such as themanatee and gray whale, as wellas sea turtles, also used to callChesapeake Bay home.Furthermore, sharks and rays, andgiant sturgeons used to roam thewaters in abundance. It is obviousthat the ecosystem has changed,and the combination of gamingvisualization with ecosystemmodelling will most likely be avaluable tool to decisionmakers in the area.

Page 3 Sea Around Us – May/June 2009

Help the Sea Around Us improve:A questionnaire

The Sea Around Us project iscurrently reviewing howproject information iscommunicated to the public.This review includes evaluatingthis newsletter, includingdecisions regarding print versuselectronic format. Below wehave prepared 6 questions forour readers. We would greatly

1) Over the past year, have you read at least one issue of the Sea Around Usnewsletter in its entirety?

2) Would you prefer to read the Sea Around Us newsletter online or in print?

3) Would you continue to read/examine the newsletter if it was only availableelectronically?

4) In the newsletter, what do you enjoy most (please rank)?articles about project membersarticles about project researcharticles about conferencessmall blurbs on recent happenings/additions to the project

5) Are there types of articles you would like to see more of?

6) Please list other types of media (digital or print) and/or specific newsletters youread:

THANK YOU!

appreciate reader input, in aneffort to provide a valuableand enjoyable news source.Please respond to these 6questions by filling out theprinted questionnaire andmailing it to Jennifer Jacquet,Sea Around Us Project,Fisheries Centre, 2202 MainMall, University of British

Columbia, Vancouver, BC, V6T1Z4, Canada. Alternatively,readers can respond online atwww.seaaroundus.org/news.htm. The Sea Around Usproject appreciates yoursupport of and participation inthis review process. We hopeyou continue to read and enjoyour newsletter.

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... the waywe interactwith naturehas beensimplified(“eat it”),and we areat the onsetof acatastrophicdecline ofmarinebiodiversity.

Toward a conservation ethic for the sea:Steps in a personal and intellectual

odyssey1

by Daniel Pauly

Since 1971, when I didmy firstintercontinental travel

(from Germany, where I wasstudying, to Ghana, to do thefield work for my Masters), I havehad the privilege ofexperiencing a multitude ofcountries, cultures, and modes ofexploiting aquatic ecosystems inAfrica, Asia, Oceania and theAmericas. (This came along witha huge carbon footprint, as I nowknow.)

As a student, I learnt that we can‘manage’ fisheries, and hence Isaw my role as fisheries scientist(but also as a citizen of theworld) and contributing to theprogressive mastery that suchmanagement implies. Suchmastery, one should think,should lead to a mosaic ofmanagement outcomes,depending on the local culture,and hence managementchoices. The resource declines Isaw in various countries wereboringly similar betweencountries, however, except forthe fact that they sometimes

were lagging in time, dependingon the country’s level ofdevelopment’.

The 1980s and 1990s were alsothe period when scienceestablished the recentemergence of Homo sapiens,along with the descent of allnon-Africans, from a small groupwhich left Africa some 70,000years ago. This re-enforced mybelief in a basic similarity of theway humans interact with nature(“eat it if you can”), beyondsuperficial differences due tolocal constraints.

Now that our technology hasessentially removed allconstraints (distance offshore,depth, unpredictable storms,perishability of the catch, inabilityto accumulate capital, etc.)which earlier, along with limitedmarkets, limited fisheries, theway we interact with nature hasbeen simplified (“eat it”), and weare at the onset of a catastrophicdecline of marine biodiversity.

We are, however, a species that

believes in and acts on myths (asevidenced by those that defineour tribal, ‘racial’ or religiousidentity), and I believe that wewill get out of the biodiversitycrisis we are in only if we embedthe fauna and flora around usinto a mythology, a shared ethicsof the sea, one that could beshared among all people onEarth, and which also couldmotivate political action (asmyths generally do). This, Isuggest, has the potential toreach beyond narcissisticconsumers in rich countries, thepresent targets of our ‘market-based’ initiatives. This is where Iam now.FootnoteFootnoteFootnoteFootnoteFootnote1 This is the abstract of a Keynoteaddress from the InternationalMarine Conservation Congress,given at the, Baird Auditorium,Smithsonian Museum of NaturalHistory, May 20, 2009. I did itwithout PowerPoint for achange, and the result was fun.Try it! (See also:http://scienceblogs.com/guiltyplanet/2009/05/daniel_pauly_keynote_imcc.php.)

FishBytes print version will ceaseIn 2010, FishBytes, a newsletter published by the Fisheries Centre, will be going fullyelectronic. We want to thank all of our readers for their continued support over the years. Wekindly request those readers who are receiving hard copy versions of our FishBytes and SeaAroud Us newsletters to email the editor, at FishBytes@fisheries.ubc.ca, with their electronicaddress, if they wish to continue reading FishBytes. The Sea Around Us is also reviewing theirnewsletter distribution. Please see the questionnaire on page 3. Having a fully electronicnewsletter will allow us to use colour for visual aides to communicate with our readers, such asphotos and graphs. We appreciate your cooperation and patience as we make this transition.We hope you will continue to read and enjoy FishBytes! If you have any comments orsuggestions for us regarding this transition, please email the editor atFishBytes@fisheries.ubc.ca.

Page 6Sea Around Us – May/June 2009

Publications Mail Agreement No: 41104508

In fisherieseconomics,game theorycame ontothe scene in1979...sincethen, over150 articleshaveappeared...

Global games: FAME hosts game theoryworkshopby Megan Bailey

Game theory is a tool foranalyzing strategicinteraction. The famous

John Nash, a Nobel Prize winner(1994) for his work oncooperative and non-cooperative games in the 1950s,brought this theory from thedepths of esotericism, to thelight of the practical day. Wellkind of. It has been applied tomilitary planning, businesssituations, political science,evolutionary biology andeconomics, including resourceeconomics. But like mosttheories, it has requried time tobe accepted by the generalpublic as a worthy approach tobe taken seriously.

In fisheries economics, gametheory came onto the scene in1979, when Gordon Munro,Professor Emeritus in theEconomics Department at UBC,and Associate Professor at theFisheries Centre, published thefirst application1. Since then, over150 articles have appeared thatapply game theory, bothanalytically and empirically, tomany fisheries worldwide (seewww.mm.helsinki.fi/~mjlindro/gamefish.html for a list of thesepublications). Game theory is avalid tool to apply to fisheriesbecause many of the world’sfisheries are targetted by more

Rashid Sumaila (left) and Megan Bailey (right) give talks at the FAME Game Theoryand Fisheries workshop in Esbjerg, Denmark. Photo by Thong Tien Nguyen.

Workshop attendees are treated to a boattrip around Ho Bay.

Photo by Thong Tien Nguyen.

than one country, and the fishingactions of one country affect thethe actions taken by othercountries. This is known asdynamic externality.

In June, the Fisheries andAquaculture Management andEconomics group (FAME), based inDenmark, hosted a game theoryand fisheries workshop thatbrought together some of theleaders in the field to share theirwork and methods with students.The Sea Around Us project’sRashid Sumaila gave a keynotelecture outlining the generalideas behind the application ofgame theory to fisheries. Otherkeynote presentations were givenby Lone Kronbak (University ofSouthern Denmark), and PedroPintasillgo (University of Algarve),both of whom, along with MarkoLindroos from the University ofHelsinki, and our own GordonMunro, are really pushing the fieldforward. These individuals arecombining forces with gametheorists in other fields, to findbetter approaches to facilitatecooperative management ofinternationally -shared fish stocks.

All workshop attendees wereencouraged to give presentationsof their work. It was during thesetalks that we learned just howglobal the application of gametheory to fisheries is. I presented

on our work, funded by WorldWildlife Fund and Pew CharitableTrusts, which is applying gametheory to skipjack, yellowfin, andbigeye fisheries in the Westernand Central Pacific Ocean. Weheard how game theory could beapplied to studying egalitarianfisher cooperatives in Japan. Twopresentations focused on applyingthe theories to the use ofterritorial use rights in fisheries(TURF) schemes in Europe and inChile. We also saw a presentationoutlining an analytical model ofapplying game theory to theeffective use of marine protectedareas (MPAs) by multiplecountries. Game theory has alsobeen applied to fisheries inCanada, the US, in the Baltic andBarents Seas, in the Patagonianecosystem, and to the NorthernAtlantic bluefin tuna andNorwegian spring-spawningherring fisheries, among manyothers. It is truly a theory that hasbeen picked up by fisherieseconomists and applied to someof the biggest challenges infisheries management: namelyhow to cooperatively share a jointa resource.FootnoteFootnoteFootnoteFootnoteFootnote1Munro, G. 1979. The optimal

management oftransboundary renewableresources. The CanadianJournal of Economics12: 355-376.