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Fisheries

A Census of Fishes

AFS: The Common Denominator

The Benefits of Being Certified

The Future: Will We Be Ready?

Economic Impact of Fleet Reduction

First Call For Papers – Little Rock, Arkansas, 2013

American Fisheries Society • www.fisheries.orgVOL 37 NO 9 SEPT 2012

03632415(2012)37(9)

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Contents

Fisheries VOL 37 NO 9 SEPT 2012

President’s Hook387 Preparing for the Challenges AheadEducation, training, and mentoring will be the focus of the president’s agenda in the coming year.

John Boreman — AFS President

Guest Director’s Line424 Certification Benefits AFS Members Working in the Private SectorThe benefits of earning an AFS professional certification.

James M. Long and Joe E. Slaughter IV

COLUMNS

388 Eels Benefit From Dam Removal; Floating Dock from Japan Tsunami Carries Potential Invasive Species; EPA Releases Study of Bristol Bay Watershed; Severe Bottom Fishing Closure Lifted; Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge Prepares for Sea Level Rise.

HEADLINERS

Aquaculture390 AFS and Aquaculture—Addressing the High Stakes of a Sustainable Seafood SupplyAFS is the common denominator for all those interested in aquaculture, fisheries, and related fields.

Jesse Trushenski, Lorenzo Juarez, Gary L. Jensen, Mike Freeze, Michael Schwarz, Jeff Silverstein, Joel Bader, Jill Rolland, and Michael Rubino

Fish Census 398 A Census of Fishes and Everything They Eat: How the Census of Marine Life Advanced Fisheries Science Fish have to eat as well as be eaten.

Ron O’Dor, Andre M. Boustany, Cedar M. Chittenden, Mark J. Costello, Hassan Moustahfid, John Payne, Dirk Steinke, Michael J. W. Stokesbury, and Edward Vanden Berghe

Sustainability 410 A Retrospective Evaluation of Sustainable Yields for Australia’s Northern Prawn FisheryA case study in Australia on fleet reduction.

You-Gan Wang and Na Wang

FEATURES

426 North American Journal of Fisheries ManagementVolume 32, Number 4, August 2012

JOURNAL HIGHLIGHTS

428 September 2012 Jobs

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Ocean Tracking Network (OTN) Canada student, Will Rob-erts, holds an Atlantic sturgeon (Acipenser oxyrinchus) with a surgically implanted VEMCO coded acoustic telemetry tag. [Photo credit: Montana McLean.]

NEW AFS MEMBERS 425

427 Fisheries Events

CALENDAR

402

UNIT NEWS

Better Know a Hatchery420 Wild Rose State Fish Hatchery

422 Department of Fisheries and Allied Aquacultures, Auburn University

Cover: Census investigators explored on and beneath polar ice. Photo credit: E. Paul Oberlander, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. (See page 409 for full explanation of procedure.)

FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS

418 2013 Annual Meeting—Little Rock, Arkansas

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Fisheries • Vol 37 No 9• September 2012• www.fisheries.org 386

MEMBERSHIP TYPE/DUES (Includes print Fisheries and online Membership Directory)

Developing countries I (Includes online Fisheries only): N/A NORTH AMERICA; _____$10 OTHERDeveloping countries II: N/A NORTH AMERICA; _____$35 OTHERRegular: _____$80 NORTH AMERICA; _____$95 OTHERStudent (includes online journals): _____$20 NORTH AMERICA; _____$30 OTHERYoung professional (year graduated): _____$40 NORTH AMERICA; _____$50 OTHERRetired (regular members upon retirement at age 65 or older): _____$40 NORTH AMERICA; _____$50 OTHERLife (Fisheries and 1 journal): _____$1, 737 NORTH AMERICA; _____$1737 OTHERLife (Fisheries only, 2 installments, payable over 2 years): _____$1,200 NORTH AMERICA; _____$1,200 OTHER: $1,200Life (Fisheries only, 2 installments, payable over 1 year): _____ $1,000 NORTH AMERICA; _____$1,000 OTHER

JOURNAL SUBSCRIPTIONS (Optional)

Transactions of the American Fisheries Society: _____$25 ONLINE ONLY; _____$55 NORTH AMERICA PRINT; _____$65 OTHER PRINT North American Journal of Fisheries Management: _____$25 ONLINE ONLY; _____$55 NORTH AMERICA PRINT; _____$65 OTHER PRINT North American Journal of Aquaculture: _____$25 ONLINE ONLY; _____$45 NORTH AMERICA PRINT; _____$54 OTHER PRINT Journal of Aquatic Animal Health: _____$25 ONLINE ONLY; _____$45 NORTH AMERICA PRINT; _____$54 OTHER PRINT Fisheries InfoBase: ____$25 ONLINE ONLY

Recruited by an AFS member? yes noName

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FisheriesAmerican Fisheries Society • www.fisheries.org

EDITORIAL / SUBSCRIPTION / CIRCULATION OFFICES5410 Grosvenor Lane, Suite 110•Bethesda, MD 20814-2199(301) 897-8616 • fax (301) 897-8096 • main@fisheries.org

The American Fisheries Society (AFS), founded in 1870, is the oldest and largest professional society representing fisheries scientists. The AFS promotes scientific research and enlightened management of aquatic resources for optimum use and enjoyment by the public. It also encourages comprehensive education of fisheries scientists and continuing on-the-job training.

Fisheries (ISSN 0363-2415) is published monthly by the American Fisheries Society; 5410 Grosvenor Lane, Suite 110; Bethesda, MD 20814-2199 © copyright 2012. Periodicals postage paid at Bethesda, Maryland, and at an additional mailing office. A copy of Fisheries Guide for Authors is available from the editor or the AFS website, www.fisheries.org. If requesting from the managing editor, please enclose a stamped, self-addressed envelope with your request. Republication or systematic or multiple reproduction of material in this publication is permitted only under consent or license from the American Fisheries Society. Postmaster: Send address changes to Fisheries, American Fisheries Society; 5410 Grosvenor Lane, Suite 110; Bethesda, MD 20814-2199. Fisheries is printed on 10% post-consumer recycled paper with soy-based printing inks.

2012 AFS MEMBERSHIP APPLICATIONAMERICAN FISHERIES SOCIETY • 5410 GROSVENOR LANE • SUITE 110 • BETHESDA, MD 20814-2199

(301) 897-8616 x203 OR x224 • FAX (301) 897-8096 • WWW.FISHERIES .ORG

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All memberships are for a calendar year. New member applications received Janu-ary 1 through August 31 are processed for full membership that calendar year (back issues are sent). Applications received September 1 or later are processed for full membership beginning January 1 of the following year.

AFS OFFICERSPRESIDENTJohn Boreman

PRESIDENT ELECTRobert Hughes

FIRST VICE PRESIDENTDonna Parrish

SECOND VICE PRESIDENTRon Essig

PAST PRESIDENTWilliam L. Fisher

EXECUTIVE DIRECTORGhassan “Gus” N. Rassam

FISHERIES STAFFSENIOR EDITORGhassan “Gus” N. Rassam

DIRECTOR OF PUBLICATIONSAaron Lerner

MANAGING EDITORSarah Fox

EDITORSSCIENCE EDITORSMarilyn “Guppy” Blair Jim BowkerHoward I. BrowmanMason BryantSteven R. ChippsSteven J. CookeKen CurrensAndy DanylchukMichael R. DonaldsonAndrew H. FayramStephen FriedLarry M. GigliottiMadeleine Hall-ArborAlf HaukenesJeffrey E. HillDeirdre M. Kimball

DUES AND FEES FOR 2012 ARE:$80 in North America ($95 elsewhere) for regular members, $20 in North America ($30 elsewhere) for student members, and $40 ($50 elsewhere) for retired members.

Fees include $19 for Fisheries subscription.

Nonmember and library subscription rates are $157 in North America ($199 elsewhere).

Price per copy: $3.50 member; $6 nonmem-ber.

Denny LassuyJim LongDaniel McGarveyRoar SandoddenJeff SchaefferJesse TrushenskiUsha Varanasi Jack E. WilliamsJeffrey Williams

BOOK REVIEW EDITORFrancis Juanes

ABSTRACT TRANSLATIONPablo del Monte Luna

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Fisheries • Vol 37 No 9• September 2012 • www.fisheries.org 387

It is indeed an honor to serve the American Fisheries So-ciety (AFS) as president during the coming year. I now have a chance to pay back AFS for all the benefits I have gained by being a member, among which are leadership training, net-working with other scientists and educators, seeing how others are addressing the same problems I am facing, and staying in touch with the numerous colleagues with whom I have worked throughout my career. As an officer and member of the govern-ing board, I am in a position to play a key role in shaping the future of the society.

The AFS is constantly evolving in concert with the chang-ing nature of our profession. Initially created to address fish culture issues, AFS is now composed of over 9,000 members representing a wide range of scientific and managerial disci-plines organized into four regional divisions, 48 chapters, 55 student subunits, and 21 sections. The three elements of the AFS mission, advancing sound science, promoting professional de-velopment, and disseminating fisheries-related information, are interdependent. One element cannot exist without the other two if AFS is to remain relevant. My plan of work for 2012–2013 primarily focuses on promoting professional development, while still being attentive to the other two mission elements.

Professional development involves education, training, and mentoring, each of which plays a unique role in helping an in-dividual perform her or his duties with competence. Education, in the form of undergraduate and graduate degree programs, or more simply in the form of an individual’s quest for informa-tion on a particular topic, provides the basic building blocks of knowledge. On-the-job training enables the individual to acquire skills that are essential for performance of assigned du-ties. One-on-one mentoring provides immediate feedback on job- and career-related issues from someone who has had or is having similar experiences or who can share ideas for solv-ing problems. In recent years it is becoming more apparent that training and mentoring are just as important, if not more impor-tant, than basic education in the milieu of continuously evolving and expanding responsibilities of fisheries professionals.

Although my presidency is only for one year, there are sev-eral actions that I would like to see accomplished, or at least initiated, related to professional development. We should de-termine whether our colleges and universities are providing the coursework and classroom experiences that are relevant to the hiring needs of our profession. We may not need to go so far as instituting an accreditation program, but it should still be considered as one alternative for evaluating our profession’s educational support system. Furthermore, the evaluation of our educational support system should be tied closely to the educa-tional requirements of the AFS professional certification process.

We should ensure that AFS professional certification is relevant and rewarding and that the application and renewal processes for certification are conducted as efficiently as possible.

The society should also capitalize on the rap-idly developing field of web-based communica-tions technology. Conduct of virtual meetings should become a matter of routine practice for AFS. Support for travel to profes-sional meetings and training courses is becoming increasingly more difficult as federal and state operating budgets are reduced. Virtual meetings, although they do not have the interpersonal advantages of face-to-face meetings, can help alleviate the im-pacts of reduced travel allowances, especially for out-of-state professional meetings and training. I will be expanding on this topic in a future “President’s Hook.”

Additionally, we are lagging behind other natural resource societies in sponsoring distance learning opportunities for our membership. The AFS Continuing Education Committee has developed a distance education plan that lays out steps AFS should take to expand such opportunities, which the committee recommends be done “purposefully and strategically with con-tinuous measures of improvement or success.” With assistance from the committee, I would like to begin implementing this plan during the coming year.

Mentoring, training, and education also constitute one of the three overarching goals of the AFS Strategic Plan for 2010–2014: “AFS will facilitate life-long learning through world-class educational resources at all academic levels and provide training for practicing professionals in all branches of fisheries and aquatic sciences.” As stated in the AFS 2020 Vi-sion, the society has vowed to “support recruitment, training, and retention of fisheries professionals with a diverse array of technical skills to meet the needs for workforce continuity and adaptability.” Lifelong learning is a key to success for any pro-fessional, and the goal of my 2012–2013 plan of work is to reinforce and enhance the AFS commitment to its members to provide and support opportunities within and outside the soci-ety that will ensure that we are ready for the challenges ahead.

COLUMNPresident’s Hook

AFS President Boreman may be contacted at: John.Boreman@ncsu.edu

Preparing for the Challenges AheadJohn Boreman, President

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Fisheries • Vol 37 No 9• September 2012• www.fisheries.org 388

EPA Releases Study of Bristol Bay Watershed

According to a new study by the U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and National Park Service, and published in the September 2012 issue of Transactions of the American Fisheries Society, the removal of the Embrey Dam on the Rappah-annock River increased American eel numbers in headwater streams nearly 100 miles away, even though dams were originally thought to slow or even stop the migration. However, eel populations in the Shenandoah National Park streams show a significant rise beginning two years after the dam removal and nearly every year since.”Our study shows that the benefits of dam removal can extend far upstream,” said Nathaniel Hitt (AFS member, ‘10), a USGS biologist and lead author of the study. “American eels have been in decline for decades and so we’re delighted to see them begin to return in abundance to their native streams.” “This study demonstrates that multiple benefits can be realized by removing obsolete dams such as Embrey,” said Alan Weaver (AFS member, ‘91), fish passage coordinator for the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. Weaver said shad, herring and striped bass also have benefited from the dam removal, as their populations have grown.

N.P. Hitt, Eyler, S., and J.E.B. Wofford. 2012. Dam removal increases American eel abundance in distant headwater streams. Trans-actions of the American Fisheries Society 141:1171-1179.

HEADLINERS

Eels Benefit From Dam Removal

Floating Dock from Japan Tsunami Carries Potential Invasive SpeciesInitially scientists were worried that debris from the tsunami would be radioactive or contain harmful chemicals. However, the float-ing dock from Japan that recently washed ashore in Oregon has brought with it a different threat—invasive species. According to scientists at Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center, the cement float contained about 13 pounds of organisms per square foot and an estimated 100 tons overall. So far the scientists have gathered samples of four to six species of barnacles, starfish, urchins, anemones, amphipods, worms, mussels, limpets, snails, solitary tunicates, and algae.

AFS Policy Statement #32 —Study Report on Dam Removal for the AFS Resource Policy Committee“Migration cues may be lost for both upstream and downstream passage due to the change from a river environment to an im-poundment (NRC 1996). Non-diadromous (river) fish also may be harmed by dams that prevent access to habitat needed for different life history functions, such as spawning, nursery, foraging, and over-wintering areas and seasonal thermal refugia.” (fisheries.org/docs/policy_statements/policy_32f.pdf)

AFS Policy Statement #15—American Fisheries Society Position on Introductions of Aquatic Species“Introduction of any species into a novel environment may alter community trophic structure, and the nature and extent of such complex changes are complex and unpredictable.” (fisheries.org/docs/policy_statements/policy_15f.pdf)

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently released for public comment a draft scientific study of the Bristol Bay watershed and its natural resources. The report was in response to concerns raised by a number of stakeholders and members of the local community regarding large-scale mining in the watershed. Citing the Clean Water Act, the EPA stated that it had the authority and responsibility to protect the nation’s water and to perform scientific studies that enhance the agency’s and public’s knowledge of water resources. However, the agency made it clear that the assessment was scientific and technical and that it had made no judgments about the use of its regulatory authority under the Clean Water Act. Moreover, the EPA declared that the draft study in no way prejudges future consideration of proposed mining activities.

Key findings in EPA’s draft assessment were as follows:

• All five species of North American Pacific salmon are found in Bristol Bay; and the watershed supports the largest sockeye salmon fishery in the world.

• Bristol Bay’s wild salmon fishery and other natural resources provide at least 14,000 full and part-time jobs, and are valued at about $480 million annually.

• The average annual run of sockeye salmon is about 37.5 million fish.

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Fisheries • Vol 37 No 9• September 2012 • www.fisheries.org 389

AFS Policy Statement—#13: Effects of Surface Mining on Aquatic Resources in North America“The AFS [American Fisheries Society] endorses energy conservation, resource recycling, and alternative energy sources, par-ticularly solar power to reduce the need for mined minerals and fuel. However, when mining is inevitable, proper mine site selection, operation and reclamation can offer aquatic resource enhancement opportunities such as re-created wetlands, and reclaimed surface mine ponds, quarries, and gravel pits.” (fisheries.org/docs/policy_statements/policy_13f.pdf)

• Bristol Bay provides habitat for numerous animal species, including 35 fish species, more than 190 bird species and 40 animal species.

• There is potential for adverse impacts on the productivity and sustainability of the salmon fishery in the watershed due to certain activities associated with large-scale mining.

AFS Policy Statement—#28:Special Fishing Regulations for Managing Freshwater Sport Fisheries“Special fishing regulations are designed for site-specific application and should be considered when angling harvest of other factors prevent attainment of specific management goals which may be based on biological or socioeconomic needs. In every situation, the purpose of special fishing regulations should be clearly defined to avoid confusion and possible misapplication.” (fisheries.org/docs/policy_statements/policy_28f.pdf )

A ban on recreational and commercial fishing for deepwater snapper-grouper in depths greater than 240 feet in the South Atlantic was rescinded on May 10, 2012. The ban was originally instituted on January 31, 2011. At that time, a 240-foot closure was put in place to reduce bycatch of speckled hind and warsaw grouper, two species subject to overfishing. Critics of the ban had advised the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council and NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service that the deepwater recreational fishing ban was having a severe economic impact and strongly urged federal managers to lift it. After taking into consideration new economic and fisheries data, the South Atlantic Council determined that the ban was not necessary to achieve the goal of ending overfishing for speckled hind and warsaw grouper.

Severe Bottom Fishing Closure Lifted

AFS Policy Statement #33f—Climate Change “Climate change and associated impacts should be considered when establishing goals for or funding of habitat protection and restoration activities. Care must be taken to ensure that environmental investments will yield expected results in the face of eco-logical transitions.” (fisheries.org/docs/policy_statements/policy_33f.pdf)

Prime Hook is one of the largest protected areas in the state of Delaware. In the 1980s, the Fish and Wildlife Service used the exist-ing dikes to make a wetland impoundment system. The agency managed the water levels to convert the once tidal saltwater marshes into freshwater marshes—which are better habitat for migrating ducks, geese, and shorebirds. But as the climate changes, the agency’s actions now make the refuge vulnerable to the effects of sea level rise and increased storm surge. Now the refuge has been working with the state of Delaware to plan how to slowly transition the freshwater reservoirs into more resilient saltwater systems to avoid a major loss from a future storm.

Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge Prepares for Sea Level Rise

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Fisheries • Vol 37 No 9• September 2012• www.fisheries.org 390

FEATUREAquaculture

AFS and Aquaculture—Addressing the High Stakes of a Sustainable Seafood Supply

The contents of this article are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the positions of their respective agencies or affiliations.

INTRODUCTION

The relationship between fisheries and aquaculture is a complex one: cooperative, adversarial, integrated, or isolated depending on the situation. The roles of the American Fisher-ies Society (AFS) and other stakeholder groups in supporting aquaculture are similarly complex. Although AFS has its histor-ical roots in aquaculture, starting in 1870 as the American Fish Culturists’ Association (AFCA), there are those who question the role of AFS in supporting the development of commercial aquaculture. From the early days to the present, the primary aquaculture constituency of the AFCA and now the AFS Fish Culture Section (FCS) has been in the public sector, supporting

Jesse TrushenskiFisheries and Illinois Aquaculture Center, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Carbondale, IL 62901-6511. E-mail: saluski@siu.edu

Lorenzo JuarezOffice of Aquaculture, National Marine Fisheries Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Silver Spring, MD 20910

Gary L. JensenNational Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agricul-ture, Washington, DC 20250

Mike FreezeKeo Fish Farm, Keo, AR 72083

Michael SchwarzVirginia Seafood Agricultural Research and Extension Center, Virginia Tech, Hampton, VA 23669

Jeff SilversteinAgricultural Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Beltsville, MD 20705

Joel BaderU.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Arlington, VA 22203

Jill RollandAnimal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Veterinary Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Riverdale, MD 20737

Michael RubinoOffice of Aquaculture, National Marine Fisheries Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

recreational and commercial fisheries or, increasingly, restor-ing threatened or endangered species. If we primarily represent fisheries professionals working with state and federal agencies, what is our responsibility and interest toward the development of the commercial aquaculture industry? In this article, we ex-plore the following:

• Why should AFS members be engaged in scientific research, policy development, management, and devel-opment of commercial aquaculture?

• The evolving roles of federal agencies, industry organi-zations, and professional societies who are involved in addressing aquaculture’s potential and challenges.

• The role that AFS and its members play in fostering the sustainable development of commercial aquaculture.

AFS currently represents many who culture fish in both the public and the private sectors and a great number of fisheries professionals who are involved in fish physiology, genetics, nu-trition, conservation, economics, ecology, and many other allied fields critical for advancing common fisheries and aquaculture interests. Even those fisheries professionals with no direct in-volvement in aquaculture per se undoubtedly have an interest in the biological and economic interactions between fisheries and aquaculture and ensuring that the use of wild and farmed fishes is governed with an eye to sustainability, ecosystem manage-ment, and minimizing adverse impacts from either sector.

THE FOOD IMPERATIVE: STATUS AND PROJECTIONS FOR WILD CAPTURES AND AQUACULTURE

In 2010, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO 2010) of the United Nations indicated that for world fisheries and aquaculture it is “… encouraging to note that good prog-ress is being made in reducing exploitation rates and restoring overfished fish stocks and marine ecosystems …” but it also notes that

… the declining global catch in the last few years, to-gether with the increased percentage of overexploited, depleted or recovering stocks and the decreased pro-portion of underexploited and moderately exploited species around the world, strengthens the likelihood that the production of wild capture fisheries will not be able to increase. …

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Fisheries • Vol 37 No 9• September 2012 • www.fisheries.org 391

This scenario of stable or decreasing seafood supply from wild fisheries presents a serious challenge in relation to project-ed increasing global demand for seafood. It has been estimated that food production will have to grow 70% by 2050 in order to keep up with population growth and increased per capita consumption (FAO 2009b). Seafood is an important source of highly valued protein, and the need to increase supplies is a major element of the global food security challenge. Global per capita consumption of seafood has broken the previous year’s record for more than 20 consecutive years and is currently at an all-time high, topping 17 kg per person per year (FAO 2009a). Given current rates of human population growth and the state of world fisheries, the contribution of aquaculture to global pro-tein demand and food security will continue to increase. Today, approximately half of the seafood that people consume is farm raised. Assuming that per capita consumption remains steady, aquaculture production must nearly double by 2030 just to keep up with population growth. The additional seafood we will need in the future could be provided by aquaculture operations or by capture fisheries. Aquaculture could provide the additional seafood needed, but placing more demands on wild capture fisheries would have serious, adverse consequences for already strained and limited wild stocks. Taking a broader view of pro-tein production, aquaculture is also likely to play an increasing role because it is one of the most resource-efficient ways to produce protein, generally much more so than terrestrial ani-mal production. Fish and shrimp are very efficient at converting feed-grade protein into food-grade protein, and mollusks and algae draw their nutrients from the aquatic environment, often increasing existing ecosystem services (Hall et al. 2011; Torris-sen et al. 2011).

THE STATE OF U.S. FISHERIES AND AQUACULTURE—THE NEED FOR LOCAL SEAFOOD PRODUCTION

The case for environmentally responsible growth and development of aquaculture in North America is compelling. More than 328,000 MT of food fish were raised in the United States in 2009 (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administra-tion [NOAA] 2011a), helping to meet the domestic demand for seafood. However, domestic aquaculture production is dwarfed by the volume of seafood the United States currently imports from more than 150 different countries. For example, in 2009, over 431,000 MT of salmon, tilapia, and trout alone were im-ported. On a global scale, the United States is the world’s second largest importer of seafood and ranks third in wild capture fish-ery landings but ranks 14th in aquaculture production (FAO 2010). Similarly, Canada ranks 26th among world aquaculture producers, and although the industry is growing, farmed fish represents only 14% of total seafood production in the country (Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Canada [DFO] 2012). In the past, the value of U.S. and Canadian seafood imports and exports added up to a seafood deficit of roughly US$8 bil-lion per year (FAO 2010), but more recent data (NOAA 2011b) indicate that the U.S. seafood trade deficit alone now exceeds US$10 billion per year.

This is worrisome because China and other growing econ-omies are quickly becoming net importers of seafood as their populations grow and become more affluent, which in turn will make imported seafood less available and more expensive to North American consumers.

American and Canadian reliance on imported seafood is also of concern to some, given that imported products could come from countries that may not have the same rigorous en-vironmental and food safety standards and regulations as the United States and Canada. Food safety has always been of ut-most importance to North American consumers, and seafood importers have financial and other incentives to meet U.S. food safety requirements. However, a recent Government Account-ability Office (GAO 2011) report noted a number of food safety concerns with imported seafood. In addition to following food safety requirements, food retailers increasingly seek wild and farmed seafood products that meet sustainability criteria asso-ciated with environmental, social, and ecological concerns. For North America, it is clear that domestic production must grow to fill the widening “seafood gap.” Though a similar seafood trade deficit is reported for Europe, other regions report siz-able seafood value surpluses, either through increasing harvest pressure on wild fisheries or through investing more in aquacul-ture development. Another reason to produce more seafood in North America is the creation of local jobs. Imported seafood involves North American jobs tied to exports of investment, trade, equipment, feed, processing, transport, and food services, but we are missing the all-important local production part of the value chain. Jobs in commercial aquaculture could be es-pecially important to traditional coastal seafood communities, many of which have seen declines in employment in commer-cial fishing.

FISHERIES AND AQUACULTURE—A LONG HISTORY AND TRADITION OF CONNECTIVITY

Aquaculture overlaps with fisheries due to the common medium of water, technologies, and species involved. Aqua-culture and fishing are part of a spectrum of technologies to produce seafood, and some seafood production methods are hybrid technologies; for example, hatchery-supported com-mercial salmon fisheries, tuna ranching (fattening wild-caught fish in nets), and lobster pot fishing, which involves feeding lobsters in traps with herring until they are harvested (Saila et al. 2011). There are interrelated commercial, ecological, and recreational imperatives that coexist within fisheries and aquaculture, and these shared imperatives form the common ground from which both sustainable aquaculture and steward-ship of natural resources can grow and flourish. Aquaculture is an important component of many aquatic resource management strategies. In 2004, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USF-WS) and state governments reared more than 20,000 MT of fish (equating to 1.75 billion fish) for fishery enhancement and res-toration activities (Halverson 2008). Hatcheries support capture and recreational fisheries, some of which would face collapse

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without supplemental stockings. For example, it is common to think of salmon as either wild or farmed. However, not all wild salmon are equally wild. A large share of the salmon return-ing to North American streams, and a large share of the salmon caught by North American commercial fishermen, are released from hatcheries and are considered ranched salmon (Knapp et al. 2007). In Alaska 49% of the commercial harvest origi-nates in hatcheries as part of the salmon enhancement program (White 2011). Although the FAO (2010) noted that it is difficult to assess the value of stocking in terms of returns and landings, most fisheries management agencies use supplemental stocking as part of comprehensive management plans to maintain and restore commercial and recreational fisheries.

Aquaculture can provide a reprieve from political pressure to overfished wild stocks by providing an acceptable alternate species to take the place of an overfished species. For exam-ple, the Striped Bass Emergency Act of 1983 and moratorium on Atlantic striped bass fishing fostered the development of propagation techniques for Morone spp. and the creation of the U.S. commercial hybrid striped bass industry. In turn, hybrid striped bass producers met continuing demand for striped bass, deflecting consumer demand and allowing restoration of these fisheries to proceed unfettered.

Aquaculture, fishing, and their hybrids, like any human activity, have environmental effects that need to be identified, addressed, and managed. The research that informs regula-tions and best management practices in fishing and aquaculture overlaps. In some cases, an ecosystem perspective is required to manage the interrelated effects of aquaculture and fishing. Accordingly, research, innovation, personnel, vessels, equip-ment, and other assets often flow back and forth between public and private fisheries, aquaculture, and aquatic resource man-agement. Many AFS fishery professionals involved with fish physiology, genetics, nutrition, conservation, economics, ecol-ogy, and other allied fields are directly or indirectly supported as a result of commercial aquaculture development. The re-search funding provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Regional Aquaculture Centers, NOAA’s National Sea Grant College Program and Saltonstall-Kennedy grant pro-gram, and the National Science Foundation are examples of such relationships. Conversely, advances that have been made in public hatcheries and research facilities have also benefited fish and shellfish culturists working in the private sector. Just as public aquaculture has led to the development of private aqua-culture, fisheries management has led to the development of private fisheries management and consulting companies. It is clear that the give-and-take between public and private entities in fisheries and aquaculture is fluid.

A SHOAL OF STAKEHOLDERS

Fisheries and aquaculture are not distinct entities, nor are they two sides of the same coin. Both represent a range of technologies that can be used for fish production and restora-tion of species and habitats. Fisheries and aquaculture and the various stakeholders associated with them are more like fish

in a shoal. Schooling fish move collectively in a single direc-tion in a coordinated manner, whereas shoaling fish behave somewhat independently but nonetheless function as a single cohesive unit (Figure 1). Aquaculture stakeholders cannot (and perhaps should not) function as a school of fish but, ideally, they should function as a shoal. Although different stakehold-ers may have distinct functions or capabilities, only when they function collectively, as a single, adaptive, responsive entity, will they be able to overcome challenges that they cannot ad-dress independently. There are numerous entities with a stake in aquaculture and fisheries that could work with AFS and its members in expanded partnerships. Several of these, in particu-lar federal agencies and industry and professional associations, are outlined below in terms of their independent directives and the ways they can partner together.

FEDERAL AGENCIES

In the National Aquaculture Act of 1980 the U.S. Congress declared aquaculture to be “in the national interest, and [that] it is the national policy, to encourage the development of aqua-culture in the United States.” Aquaculture is defined broadly in the National Aquaculture Act and subsequent federal policies to comprise both commercial and public (enhancement, restora-tion) purposes. Several federal agencies are concerned with the different aspects of this mandate, including implementing envi-ronmental and food safety regulations, conducting intramural and extramural research, supporting education and training, and implementing international treaty obligations. Several federal agencies are responsible for permitting and enforcement pro-grams (often in association with state agencies) to ensure that aquaculture farms are established, operated, and maintained in a manner that minimizes their environmental footprint and meets water quality requirements and food safety standards. These federal agencies benefit from partnering with AFS and its members to fulfill their stewardship, research, and develop-ment missions.

The National Aquaculture Act also set up the federal in-teragency coordinating Joint Subcommittee on Aquaculture (JSA), currently under the National Science and Technology Council and Office of Science and Technology Policy in the ex-ecutive branch of government. The purpose of this coordinating body is to increase the effectiveness of federal aquaculture re-search, technology transfer, and assistance programs. The JSA is chaired by the USDA and cochaired by the Departments of Commerce and Interior.

The USDA’s mission is to provide leadership on food, ag-riculture, natural resources, rural development, nutrition, and related issues based on sound public policy, the best available science, and efficient management. U.S. Department of Ag-riculture program assistance and service priorities are driven by diverse stakeholder input and include aquaculture as one of their focus areas. The Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) convene a national aquaculture stakeholder workshop every 5 years specifically designed to gather industry input on research and

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extension priorities and needs. The current ARS action plan in-cludes research priorities in genetics and genomics, physiology of reproduction, growth and adaptability, ingredient and diet development, rearing system innovations, and product devel-opment.

The USDA focuses on commercial aquaculture develop-ment, and most programs and services across a broad array of USDA agencies are available to support the long-term develop-ment of this specialized sector of agriculture. These programs include intramural research through the ARS and extramural funding for research, education, and extension through NIFA, including administration of the regional aquaculture centers. The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) serves both plant and animal aquaculture, especially prevention of diseases and pests, wildlife damage management, inspection of facilities, and import/export of aquaculture products. The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service takes the lead in collaborating with other federal, state, and tribal agencies in implementing the National Aquatic Animal Health Plan along with the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and the USFWS. Other USDA agencies offer support and programs for marketing research, statistical reporting on domestic production and imports, national organic standards, risk management tools, disaster assistance, national conservation practice standards, business loan guarantees, and rural development assistance.

As a federal agency under the U.S. Department of Com-merce, the NOAA has an active regulatory, management, and research role in aquaculture in state waters (for commercial, en-hancement, and restoration purposes) and an emerging role in regulating commercial aquaculture in federal waters. NOAA’s NMFS, National Sea Grant College Program, and other offices address aquaculture for food production, stock enhancement, and species and habitat restoration. The NOAA’s aquaculture engagement promotes employment and business opportunities in coastal communities; provides safe, sustainable seafood; and complements NOAA’s overarching strategy for maintaining healthy and productive marine populations, species, and eco-systems. This mission reflects NOAA’s strategy to meet the growing demand for healthy seafood through a combination

of sustainable commercial fisheries and robust domestic aqua-culture production. The statutory basis for NOAA’s regulatory activities stems from the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conser-vation and Management Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Coastal Zone Manage-ment Act, the National Marine Sanctuaries Act, and the Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act. Under these laws, the NOAA is responsible for preventing and/or mitigating the potential ad-verse environmental impacts of marine aquaculture through the development of fishery management plans, sanctuary manage-ment plans, permit actions, and permit consultations with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and other regulatory agencies at the federal, state, and local levels.

Under the authority of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Con-servation and Management Act, the NOAA advances scientific knowledge and develops appropriate technologies to support sustainable commercial marine aquaculture and restoration of wild stocks. The NOAA’s budget supports aquaculture research at NMFS regional science centers and other NOAA laborato-ries and several grant programs that fund aquaculture research at universities, nonprofit institutions, and private companies. Aquaculture science activities at NOAA laboratories include work on developing alternative aquaculture feeds; assessing and minimizing environmental impacts; assessing effects of climate change on shellfish production; hatchery research; dis-ease and genetics management; and stock enhancement to help restore depleted species and habitats. The NOAA conducts edu-cation and outreach activities, in part through the National Sea Grant College Program, to heighten the public’s awareness of issues related to marine aquaculture, and also manages a port-folio of aquaculture-related international activities, including coordination and exchange of information related to research, regulation, policies, and management of marine aquaculture and international treaty obligations.1

1 On June 9, 2011, the NOAA and the Department of Commerce released new national aquaculture policies that support sustainable marine aquaculture in the United States. The intent of these policies is to guide Commerce and NOAA’s actions and decisions and to pro-vide a national approach for supporting aquaculture (NOAA 2011c).

Schooling fish (left) swim in the same direction in a coordinated manner; shoaling fish (right) swim somewhat independently but nonetheless function as a cohesive unit. Images sourced via Wikimedia Commons.

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Under the U.S. Department of the Interior, the USFWS is charged with working with its partners to conserve, protect, and enhance fish, wildlife, plants, and their habitats for the con-tinuing benefit of the American people. The service oversees several aspects of aquaculture, under the authority of the Lacey Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the Migratory Species Act, and also administers provisions of the International Con-vention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) treaty.2

The USFWS supports aquaculture via a network of na-tional fish hatcheries, through technology development and transfer, and through fish health and fisheries management ac-tivities. The service’s fisheries program maintains the largest public aquaculture program in the United States. This system of 70 federal hatcheries cultures aquatic animals and plants in over 30 states and supplies aquatic species to other federal agencies, tribes, and states. National fish hatcheries have the broad mis-sion of culturing fish for restoration programs and for recovery of over 65 federally listed threatened and endangered species, including fish, mollusks, invertebrates, reptiles, amphibians, and plants. Service hatcheries also supply recreational fish to states, tribes, and federal partners.

In support of hatchery propagation and other aquatic man-agement issues, the service maintains a network of facilities and resources that focus on applied research and technology. Knowledge gaps related to propagation techniques, nutrient requirements, genetics, disease susceptibility, and drug effec-tiveness and safety are all addressed through the USFWS’s science mission. The service’s six fish technology centers maintain expertise in areas such as physiology, genetics, cryo-preservation, nutrition, and feed formulation and conduct basic research in support of public and private aquaculture. The USFWS research productivity has resulted in a number of aqua-culture benefits, such as new culture methods, feed formulations, genetic-based testing, and cryopreservation methods. Addition-ally, nine USFWS fish health centers provide diagnostic and health certification services to the National Fish Hatchery Sys-tem and their partners and are leaders in the science of aquatic animal diseases in wild and cultured populations. The service’s Aquatic Animal Drug Partnership program leads the effort to gain new drug approvals for aquaculture and also administers the National Investigative New Animal Drug Program, which benefits the aquaculture industry and hatcheries alike. Finally, the USFWS plays a service role to the aquaculture industry through its National Triploid Grass Carp Inspection and Certi-fication Program.

INDUSTRY ASSOCIATIONS

In addition to government agencies and universities, some AFS members belong to aquaculture industry associations. In particular, the mission of the National Aquaculture Associa-tion (NAA) is to provide a national voice for U.S. commercial aquaculture that ensures its sustainability, protects its profit-

2 Policies affecting aquaculture can be downloaded from the US-FWS’s website (USFWS 1995).

ability, and encourages its development in an environmentally responsible manner. There are also species-specific industry as-sociations (e.g., catfish, trout, striped bass, and shellfish), state aquaculture producer associations (e.g., Maine Aquaculture As-sociation), a supplier association, and others that represent the larger integrated seafood companies such as the National Fish-eries Institute and the Global Aquaculture Alliance. Sustainable farm management and regulatory compliance are not just about following the rules and avoiding fines—in the long term, it is also about economic sustainability and profitability. Industry associations have developed best management practices to help meet these objectives.

One of the major roles of industry groups is serving the aquaculture industry and other interested parties as a clear-inghouse of information about aquaculture. For example, the NAA serves as a direct source of information for the industry, as well as reporters, government agencies, teachers, students, seafood buyers, consumers, and others. Questions on current issues, trends, statistics, and other specifics about the domestic aquaculture industry and its products are answered or referred to a credible source. The NAA is also involved in education and outreach as a partner, along with the U.S. Aquaculture So-ciety (USAS) and the AFS FCS, to develop programming for Aquaculture America conferences that engage and inform both producers and researchers.

Another role of the NAA is to facilitate coordination and cooperation between regulatory agencies and the aquaculture industry to develop more efficient, effective regulatory out-comes. One such example is related to regulations that are intended to limit potential new invasive species because of their potentially devastating impacts on aquaculture as well as the environment. To this end, the USFWS, the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council, the NAA, and others are currently working on a memorandum of understanding to voluntarily restrict cer-tain nonnative species from commercial trade.

PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

The AFS has an opportunity to partner with other pro-fessional associations on commercial and public aquaculture issues. For example, the mission of the USAS, a chapter of the World Aquaculture Society, is to provide a national forum for the exchange of information within the U.S. aquaculture community. This is achieved in part through sponsorship of aquaculture workshops and annual conferences, fostering educational opportunities, and disseminating aquaculture-re-lated materials pertinent to U.S. aquaculture development. The USAS has between 800 and 1,000 members, representing all sectors of academia, government, industry, and other public and private organizations. Specifically, this mission is achieved through increasing U.S aquaculture community involvement in USAS; enhancing member benefits and services; focusing on and increasing student involvement in aquaculture; develop-ing partnerships, collaborations, and coalitions with and among other aquaculture-related organizations in the United States; as well as establishing and documenting efficient, effective, and high-quality business and management practices. As is readily

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apparent, the mission of the USAS is integrally connected to programming conducted by the USDA, NOAA, NAA, FCS, U.S. Aquaculture Suppliers Association, and others. Other professional associations including the National Shellfisheries Association and the North American Association of Fisheries Economists have similar missions and activities.

GREATER AFS ENGAGEMENT IN COMMERCIAL AQUACULTURE

The FAO (2010) made the following observations on effec-tive regulation of fisheries and aquaculture:

Where aquaculture governance has proved fruit-ful, it appears that governments have followed four main guiding principles, namely: accountability, ef-fectiveness and efficiency, equity, and predictability. Accountability would be reflected in timely decisions and would imply stakeholder participation in decision-making processes. Effectiveness and efficiency consist of making the right decisions and implementing them effectively in a cost-effective way. Equity requires that all groups, particularly the most vulnerable ones, have opportunities to improve or maintain their well-being through the guaranteeing of procedural fairness, distri-butional justice and participation in decision-making. Predictability relates to fairness and consistency in the application of laws and regulations and in the imple-mentation of policies.

Despite favorable demand and supply conditions, com-mercial aquaculture remains underdeveloped in some regions including the United Staets, in part because of regulatory com-plexities, occasional unfavorable public perception, conflicting uses of public waters and resources, and because the industry is relatively small and diverse. The AFS has a role and re-sponsibility to join stakeholders—including those mentioned above—to address the grand challenges of future seafood de-mand, maintenance of healthy ecosystems, and improved food security. What is the role of AFS? Our role is to speak on behalf of the resource and our profession and to partner with the agen-cies and stakeholder groups outlined above in supporting the growth of aquaculture in a way that maintains healthy ecosys-tems. There are many stakeholders in aquaculture, and we can facilitate meaningful, collaborative interactions between them by connecting the dots and filling the gaps.

Education and Professional Development

The AFS is already working in partnership with federal agencies and industry and professional associations on com-mercial aquaculture issues. For example, the AFS has long partnered with USFWS, NOAA, and others in sponsoring ses-sions at professional meetings on a range of topics, including aquaculture and the environment. An important issue affect-ing commercial and public aquaculture is the trend of reduced public funding for research, extension, and education-related programs, due in part to current economic and budgetary is-

sues. This trend may have a significant negative effect on future advancements of aquaculture-related programs in the United States. This recent decline is further exacerbated by a progres-sive reorientation of postsecondary institutions with traditional aquaculture training programs to other subject areas more ame-nable to future funding opportunities. A collaborative project between the AFS FCS, National Shellfisheries Association, USAS, and USDA NIFA is conducting national assessment of aquaculture education programs at postsecondary institu-tions in the United States. The primary goal is to document aquaculture-related instruction at postsecondary institutions in the United States to assess its current status, future trends, and critical needs for national readiness and capacity to support a world-class trained and educated workforce. The results from this collaborative project will allow multiple stakeholders in the aquaculture sector to not only leverage and maximize output from available resources and infrastructure but perhaps also to join together with a common voice to foster and advance aqua-culture in the United States.

Policies

Another way in which the AFS participates in the aqua-culture arena is the development of AFS policies related to aquaculture. Policy statements summarize the position of the AFS on particular issues related to aquatic resources, and be-cause they represent our membership of some 9,000 fisheries professionals and undergo a rigorous review process prior to acceptance, they can be very effective tools in communicating with decision makers and the general public in the common lan-guage of the best available science. There are currently 34 AFS policy statements, including a policy on commercial aquacul-ture (in place for many years and currently undergoing routine review by the Resource Policy Committee), and the recently adopted policy on the need for an immediate-release sedative for use in fisheries and aquaculture. Both serve as benchmarks of reasonable, scientifically justifiable interpretations of issues that, at times, can be controversial.

Outreach and Education

There are considerable overlaps in the interests and goals of commercial aquaculture, public aquaculture, and fisheries communities, especially in research, extension, and technol-ogy transfer. The AFS can play a more direct role in education and outreach by providing tools and resources to those working in the aquaculture field. Examples include the Guide to Using Drugs, Biologics, and Other Chemicals in Aquaculture and Companion Treatment Calculator (prepared by the FCS Work-ing Group on Aquaculture Drugs, Chemicals, and Biologics) (FCS 2012), “Approved Aquaculture Drugs and Biologics” posters (prepared and distributed by the USFWS in cooperation with the FCS, Fish Health Section, and American Veterinary Medical Association) (USFWS 2012a, 2012b), and the Guide-lines for the Use of Fishes in Research (prepared by the AFS in cooperation with American Institute of Fishery Research Biologists and the American Society of Ichthyologists and Her-petologists) (AFS/AIFRB/ASIH 2004). These resources, along

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with many others developed by the society, FCS, Fish Health Section, and other AFS units, provide aquaculturists and those working in allied fields with valuable guidance and tools for their work.

Creating a Forum

Perhaps the most important role of AFS is that of a facili-tator. Not everyone interested in aquaculture is a government employee, works on a commercial farm, or is necessarily ac-tively involved in aquaculture. Without a “home” or a national forum, how do these diverse individuals and interests interact with those who are part of a formally recognized stakeholder group? The answer is AFS. The AFS—representing all of the fisheries disciplines—is the common denominator for all those interested in aquaculture, fisheries, and related fields. At times, individual members and, indeed, the society as a whole have seemed reluctant, perhaps even recalcitrant, in accepting com-mercial aquaculture as a part of fisheries. But we cannot allow the complexities of independent actions and differing perspec-tives to dissuade or convince our society that this is anything but our most powerful role and greatest responsibility—to help create and shape the shoal of aquaculture stakeholders. The stakes for an increased sustainable seafood supply are high, and whether in the context of fisheries, aquaculture, or the continu-um between, there is no single issue more central to our society.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors thank Jim Bowker, president of the Fish Culture Section, for editorial guidance provided during the de-velopment of this article.

REFERENCES

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DFO (Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Canada). 2012. Aquacul-ture Canada: facts and figures. Available: http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/aquaculture/ref/stats/aqua-ff-fc-2009-eng.htm. Accessed 4 August 2012.

FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization). 2007. Report—aquaculture only way to fill the coming “fish gap.” Available: http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2007/1000701/. Accessed 4 August 2012.

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———. 2009b. 2050: A third more mouths to feed. Available: http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/35571/icode/. Accessed 4 Au-gust 2012.

———. 2010. The state of world fisheries and aquaculture 2010. Available: http://www.fao.org/docrep/013/i1820e/i1820e.pdf. Accessed 4 August 2012.

FCS (Fish Culture Section). 2012. Guide to using drugs, biologics, and other chemicals in aquaculture and companion treatment calcula-tor. Available: https://sites.google.com/site/fishculturesection/

resources/guide-to-using-drugs-biologics-and-other-chemicals-in-aquaculture. Accessed 4 August 2012.

GAO (Government Accountability Office). 2011. FDA needs to im-prove oversight of imported seafood and better leverage limited resources. Available: http://gao.gov/assets/320/317734.pdf. Ac-cessed 4 August 2012.

Hall, S. J., A. Delaporte, M. J. Phillips, M. Beveridge, and M. O’Keefe. 2011. Blue frontiers: managing the environmental costs of aqua-culture. The WorldFish Center, Penang, Malaysia. Available: http://www.worldfishcenter.org/resource_centre/WF_2818.pdf. Accessed 4 August 2012.

Halverson, M. A. 2008. Stocking trends: a quantitative review of governmental fish stocking in the United States, 1931 to 2004. Fisheries 33:69–75.

Knapp, G., C. Roheim, and J. Anderson. 2007. The great salmon run: competition between wild and farmed salmon. TRAFFIC North America. World Wildlife Fund, Washington, D.C. www.traffic.org/species-reports/traffic_species_fish25.pdf. Accessed 4 Au-gust 2012.

NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). 2011a. Fisheries of the United States 2010. National Oceanic and At-mospheric Administration, Current Fishery Statistics No. 2010, Silver Spring, Maryland. Available: http://www.st.nmfs.noaa.gov/st1/fus/fus10/FUS_2010.pdf. Accessed 4 August 2012.

———. 2011b. Imports and exports of fishery products annual sum-mary 2011. Available: http://www.st.nmfs.noaa.gov/st1/trade/documents/TRADE2011.pdf. Accessed 4 August 2012.

———. 2011c. Department of Commerce and NOAA Aquaculture Policies. Available: http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/aquaculture/policy/2011_policies_homepage.html. Accessed 4 August 2012.

Saila, S. B., S. W. Nixon, and C. A. Oviatt. 2011. Does lobster trap bait influence the Maine inshore trap fishery? North American Journal of Fisheries Management 22(2):602–605.

Torrissen, O., R. E. Olsen, R. Toresen, G. R. Hemre, A. Tacon, F. Asche, R. W. Hardy, and S. Lall. 2011. Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar): the “super-chicken” of the sea? Reviews in Fisheries Sci-ence 19(3):257–278.

USFWS (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service). 1995. Part 715 Aquacul-ture, Policies and responsibilities. Available: http://www.fws.gov/policy/715fw1.html. Accessed 4 August 2012.

USFWS (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service). 2012a. Approved drugs for use in aquaculture poster. Available: http://www.fws.gov/fisher-ies/aadap/Poster_introduction.htm. Accessed 4 August 2012.

USFWS (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service). 2012b. Approved vaccines for use in aquaculture poster. Available: http://www.fws.gov/fisheries/aadap/vaccines_poster_introduction.htm. Accessed 4 August 2012.

White, B. 2011. Alaska salmon fisheries enhancement program 2010 annual report. Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Fishery Management Report No. 11-04, Anchorage, Alaska. Available: http://www.adfg.alaska.gov/FedAidPDFs/FMR11-04.pdf. Accessed 4 August 2012.

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Join us at the

Scientists and agency professionals will share new research information on the biology, ecological

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From the Archives

You cannot often say that a species does not live in a certain stream. You can only affirm that you have not yet found it there, and you can rarely fish in any stream so long that you can find nothing that you have not taken before. Still more difficult is it to gather the results of scattered ob-servations into general statements regarding the distribution of fishes. The facts may be so few as to be mis-leading, or so numerous as to be con-fusing; and the few writers who have taken up this subject in detail have found both these difficulties to be se-rious. Whatever general propositions we may maintain must be stated with the modifying clause of “other things being equal”; and other things are never quite equal.

Jordan, D.S.(1888): The Distribution of Freshwater Fishes, Transactions of the American Fisheries Society, 17:1, 4-29.

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FEATUREFish Census

A Census of Fishes and Everything They Eat: How the Census of Marine Life Advanced Fisheries Science

Censo de peces y de todo aquello que comen: qué progreso aporta El Censo de la Vida Marina a la ciencia pesqueraRESUMEN: El Censo de la Vida Marina (Census, por su nombre en inglés) fue un esfuerzo internacional de investigación de diez años de duración diseñado para ex-plorar hábitats oceánicos poco conocidos y experimentar a gran escala con nueva tecnología. El objetivo de Cen-sus 2010, declarado en su misión, era describir “qué vive y que vivirá en los océanos”. Muchos de los hallazgos y técnicas generadas en Census pueden resultar valiosas para la transición de un manejo mono-específico a un manejo holístico, basado en el ecosistema; lo cual ha sido pública-mente aprobado por muchos gobiernos. Los investigadores de Census muestrearon los márgenes continentales, las cor-dilleras oceánicas del Atlántico, ventilas hidrotermales del fondo marino, planicies abisales y mares polares; de igual forma organizaron cantidades formidables de información, tanto pasada como actual, en una base de datos pública y en línea llamada Sistema de Información de Biogeografía Oceánica. Census describe y categoriza la biología de los montes submarinos a nivel mundial para poder estimar su vulnerabilidad a la pesca; realiza marcado a gran escala de organismos utilizando técnicas avanzadas con arreglos acústicos y marcas satelitales; expide la identificación de especies, incluyendo muestreo costero de corales y zoo-plancton, basado en código genético de barras y secuencias de piro-marcaje para microbios; así mismo contribuy-eron con el lanzamiento de la nueva disciplina “historia ambiental marina”. Pero sobre todo, Census mostró las rec-ompensas que deja la inversión en proyectos colaborativos de gran escala y la presentación pública de los resultados.

Ron O’DorBiology Department, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. B3H 4R2. E-mail: Ron.ODor@Dal.Ca

Andre M. BoustanyNicholas School of the Environment, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708

Cedar M. ChittendenDepartment of Arctic and Marine Biology, University of Tromsø, 9037, Tromsø, Norway

Mark J. CostelloLeigh Marine Laboratory, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

Hassan MoustahfidU.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System, National Oceanic and Atmo-spheric Administration, Silver Spring, MD 20910, USA

John PaynePacific Ocean Shelf Tracking, Vancouver Aquarium, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada V6G 3E2

Dirk SteinkeUniversity of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada N1G 2W1

Michael J. W. StokesburyDepartment of Biology, Acadia University, Nova Scotia, Canada B4P 2R6

Edward Vanden BergheOcean Biogeographic Information System, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08904

ABSTRACT: The Census of Marine Life was a 10-year, inter-national research effort to explore poorly known ocean habitats and conduct large-scale experimentation with new technology. The goal of Census 2010 in its mission statement was to de-scribe what did live in the oceans, what does live in the oceans, and what will live in the ocean. Many of the findings and tech-niques from census research may prove valuable in making a transition, which many governments have publicly endorsed, from single-species fisheries management to more holistic eco-system management. Census researchers sampled continental margins, mid-Atlantic ridges, ocean floor vents and seeps, and abyssal plains and polar seas and organized massive amounts of past and new information in a public online database called the Ocean Biogeographic Information System (www.iobis.org). The census described and categorized seamount biology

worldwide for its vulnerability to fishing, advanced large-scale animal tracking with acoustic arrays and satellite archival tags, and accelerated species identification, including nearshore, coral reef, and zooplankton sampling using genetic barcoding and pyrotag sequencing for microbes and helped to launch the exciting new field of marine environmental history. Above all, the census showed the value of investing in large-scale, collab-orative projects and sharing results publicly.

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INTRODUCTION

The Census of Marine Life was originally conceived as a Census of Fishes (Ausubel 1997). Organizers quickly realized that the effort required to census fishes globally could concur-rently census everything else in the ocean. If an icebreaker were sent to Antarctica, it could sample everything, not just fishes. After all, fisheries harvest a wide range of species, from inver-tebrates to mammals. Understanding fisheries dynamics in the ocean requires knowing what animals eat and what eats them. Thus, the Census of Fishes became the Census of Marine Life in 2000. On 22 May 2012 the census was the focus of the Unit-ed Nations’ International Day for Biological Diversity.

This review highlights some of the most important fish-re-lated findings of the census. In a report for the census, Eschmeyer et al. (2010) recently cataloged 16,764 species of marine fishes and estimated that there are still about 5,000 species to be dis-covered, mostly from the unexplored depths (Figure 1). This number is independently supported by statistical modeling of fish species description rates (Costello et al. 2012). Although taxonomic description takes too long to be able to attribute a number of new species directly to the census, it has been esti-mated that 100–150 new fish species per year were described during the census’s decade of discovery (Ausubel et al. 2010). The census recognized this limitation from the beginning and adopted the “Barcode of Life” as an interim technology for dis-tinguishing species using a short DNA sequence while waiting for taxonomy to catch up (Bucklin et al. 2011). The census’s data system, the Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS), contains 14 million distribution records for 17,000 fish species, of which over 7,000 species have been barcoded (Fig-ure 2), including 62 previously overlooked species, since 2005 (Table 1). Although fish sampling has been biased to northern and coastal seas (Figure 2a) the selection of samples for barcod-ing has been more uniform and global (Figure 2b).

In addition to OBIS, the census included 14 field and two interdisciplinary projects (see www.coml.org, which defines the 17 projects in a few words; projects are indicated in the text below using capital letters). Twelve of the field projects were oriented toward discovering biodiversity (i.e., taxonomy) and especially toward quantifying biodiversity in the least-sampled parts of the ocean, including continental margins, the mid-Atlantic ridge, the abyssal plains, and seafloor vents and seeps. Two of the field projects focused on tracking the movements of fish and top marine predators. Interdisciplinary projects included Oceans Past, focused on historical records from diverse sources to estimate past abundances of exploited species, and Oceans Future, which modeled movements and the future abundances of exploited species. Hundreds of publica-tions detail the census results (e.g., McIntyre [2010] contains downloadable project chapters) and many summarize it (Crist et al. 2009; O’Dor et al. 2009, 2010; Knowlton 2010; Snelgrove 2010). This fish-focused review is an effort to bring attention to results that may be useful steps toward ecosystem-based management, so that we can avoid future fisheries crises as eco-systems respond to global climate change.

Figure 1. Red fish, blue fish, lots of new fish. (a) A new species of scorpi-on fish, Scorpaenopsis vittapinna, found in the Indo-Pacific area, one of a rapidly growing list of more than 17,000 marine fish species now logged in the Census of Marine Life database. [Photo credit: Bill Eschmeyer and John E. Randall] (b) An intensely blue fish that lives below 120 m, the newly discovered species Chromis abyssus was so named by scientists in recognition of its color and deep habitat and to honor the BBC docu-mentary film project—Pacific Abyss—that supported the expedition to the Caroline Islands. [Photo credit: Richard Pyle, Bishop Museum.]

BIG FISH

Little is known about the ecology of even the most in-tensively harvested large marine fish species because of the difficulty in studying fast-moving, wide-ranging animals in the ocean. However, a combination of tagging technologies is now increasingly being used to gain an understanding of fish move-ment, migration, and ecological interactions throughout their life cycle. The census created two overlapping projects in the Pacific to test and demonstrate these technologies on a wide scale (Figure 3).

Tagging animals with electronic archival tags that are returned after capture or disengage from the animal, float to the surface of the ocean, and transmit data to satellite systems provides data that is not biased by fishing effort. The census sup-ported the largest archival tagging program to date, driven over the decade largely by the Tagging of Pacific Predators (TOPP) project, which examined the environmental basis for the move-ment and behavior of large pelagic animals in the Pacific Ocean (Block et al. 2011). Tag technologies now allow researchers to monitor movement and distribution of animals at sea and simul-taneously sample the physical properties of the water column

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(Costa et al. 2010). Tags have been used to provide information on stock structure that has proven important to management (Block et al. 2005) and to record animal interactions (see Cooke et al. 2011). Future technological developments may make it possible for ecological information from numerous organisms to be brought to shore by a few individuals (Stokesbury et al. 2009), generating biological economies of scale.

Economies of scale are critical when studying mobile re-sources in the ocean because simultaneous tagging of many species across a huge geographic area has indicated that ani-mals are concentrated in distinct diversity hotspots in the open ocean. The California current is a hotspot for animals that range from the United States to Japan and from the tropics to the Gulf of Alaska. Gathering information from animals in these hotspots not only generates oceanographic information from undersampled areas but identifies multispecies critical habitat (McIntyre 2010). Another remarkable example of a general be-havioral pattern that was only discovered because of extensive, simultaneous tagging of many species is that site fidelity and

round-trip migrations are shown by most top predators, includ-ing great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias), which occupy a common area offshore but return to coastal home territories (Jorgensen et al. 2010).

The TOPP project helped to advance the industrial en-gineering of tagging technology, including validation and

standardization of data, which are necessary to answer applied questions in fisheries science. An example of the contribution of TOPP to applied fisheries science was the determination of migration routes and fishing mortality rates for Pacific bluefin tuna (Thunnus orientalis). TOPP has tagged 663 Pacific bluefin tuna to date, beginning in 2002, including a dozen individual tuna tracks lasting over 3 years that cross the Pacific. This tuna has one of the largest individual home ranges of any fish species (Collette and Nauen 1983). The only known spawning grounds for Pacific bluefin occur in the East China Sea

and Ryukyo Islands in the spring and in the Sea of Japan in the summer months (Chen et al. 2006). Bluefin tagged off the Mexican and Southern Californian coasts show movements up and down the coast associated with seasonal peaks in primary productivity and sardines (Kitagawa et al. 2007; Boustany et al. 2010). Some bottom-up forcing was apparent: phytoplankton blooms had an aggregating effect on bluefin, with densities of tagged fish increasing in areas and times of high productivity and dropping as productivity subsided and fish dispersed. Blue-fin feed in the eastern Pacific for several years before heading west after age 4 to 5 (Boustany et al. 2010). Beyond movement patterns, tagging studies have allowed examination of exploita-

Study Sample Size/No. of Species Overlooked Species Barcode of Life DatabaseProject Codea

Fishes of Australia 754/207 5 FOA

Sharks/rays of Australia 945/210 4 FOASR

Fishes of Pacific Canada 1225/201 2 TZFPC

Reef associated fishes 1638/390 7 TZAIC

Arctic fishes of Western Pacific 684/114 3 DSFAL

Western Atlantic Starksia 59/13 7 STARK

Canadian skates 301/14 1 SCFAC

Antarctic fishes CEAMARC 538/68 2 EATF

Western Pacific Chromis N/A 5 RPCHR

Southern Ocean skates 76/10 1 FNZC

Southern Ocean Macrourus 141/3 1 RATSO

Morid cods 62/4 1 HALAR

Fish North Atlantic/Australia 149/15 2 DSNSF

Asian sea bass 21/2 1 FOAGB

Australian Squalus 127/16 10 FOAS

South African and Australian fish 229/35 10 TZSAA

Total 62

TABLE 1. Overview of fish barcoding studies showing the number of overlooked species that were flagged by DNA barcoding and then corroborated through morphological, geographical, and ecological data.

aData and associated publications can be accessed through the respective public projects on BOLD: www.boldsystems.org; Ratnasingham and Hebert (2007).

Further investment in tagging technolo-gies will help to alleviate our fundamental ignorance about movement patterns and ecological interactions and contribute to the development of management strategies that are robust to environmental change.

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tion levels of Pacific bluefin, with estimated fishery mortality rates (0.02–1.92 quarter−1) two to six times higher than natural mortality rates (Whitlock et al., 2012).

Further investment in tagging technologies will help to al-leviate our fundamental ignorance about movement patterns and ecological interactions and contribute to the development of management strategies that are robust to environmental change.

SMALL FISH

Small fish, including the juveniles of larger species, are abundant, important in oceanic food chains, and particularly difficult to study in situ. A recent report by the Lenfest Founda-tion suggested that forage fish may be overharvested worldwide (Pikitch et al. 2012). The other census tracking project, Pacific Ocean Shelf Tracking (POST), pioneered the use of large-scale arrays of acoustic receivers to study the movements of fish (McIntyre 2010). The research was driven at first by the de-

Figure 2. (a) On 20 November 2011, OBIS contained 13,691,333 fish records for 17,001 valid marine species in 536,412 unique locations, mapped in one-degree squares. Dark blue, one location per square; dark red, 17 locations per square. (b) For 7,279 of these species the Barcode of Life is also known, from locations shown as brown dots, plus an additional 4,721 freshwater fish species.

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sire to understand the mortality patterns of juvenile Pacific salmon, because many salmon stocks in the Pacific Northwest are threatened or endangered. Salmonids as small as 10 cm in length were tagged with acoustic tags transmitting individual ID numbers, and several individual salmon were tracked over 2,500 km from release sites far inland on rivers, up the con-tinental shelf to Alaska. A baseline collection of early marine mortality estimates was collected for a large group of salmon stocks in Canada and the United States for the first time (Mel-nychuk 2009; Welch et al. 2011). The results suggest that large arrays can be used to estimate mortality of migrating fish with acceptable accuracy and may improve our understanding of where and why mortality occurs, especially when the arrays are used in conjunction with manipulative experiments (Donalsdon et al. 2008). Although salmon behavior was plastic and mor-tality patterns were inconsistent between stocks and years, a core message was that juvenile salmon often suffered signifi-cant mortality far into the open ocean. This preliminary finding complicates efforts to predict the size of returning salmon co-horts, because it suggests that we require more information on salmon offshore.

During the census, the POST array tracked 18 marine species, big and small (Figure 3). Interesting results includ-ed discovery of surprisingly extensive movements in green

sturgeon (Acipenser medirostris), which was central to legal designation of critical habitat for that species; exploratory studies of sixgill sharks (Hexanchus griseus), salmon sharks (Lamna ditropis), Humboldt squid (Dosidicus gigas), and other predators; and studies of bottom fish, including rockfish, ling-cod (Ophiodon elongates), and English sole (Parophrys vetulus; McIntyre 2010).

A series of studies used the POST array to estimate tag effects (Melnychuk 2009), evaluate the impact of management actions in a hydropower system, and examine the differences between hatchery-raised and wild fish. An investigation into the genetic and environmental effects of hatchery rearing on young coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) found that rearing environment had much more of an effect on phenotype than any genetic differences between hatchery- and wild-born fish (Chittenden et al. 2010a, 2010b) and that various physical dif-ferences were correlated with the timing of their ocean entry and migration routes in the ocean (Chittenden et al. 2008).

In sum, the advent of large-scale acoustic arrays has cre-ated exciting new research opportunities to study the movement and mortality of fish, both small and large.

MANAGING HUMANS IN ECOSYSTEMS RATHER THAN FISH

The census made significant contributions in relation to (1) poorly explored habitats; (2) baseline (historical, pre-fishery) abundances of populations; (3) the distributions and movements of marine species and the forces that drive those patterns; (4) abundances, distribution, and biology of species not targeted by fisheries; (5) species interactions; (6) how species respond to multiple impacts (e.g., how distributions, migration timing, and available habitat may shift in response to climate and thereby change an ecosystem’s vulnerability to human exploitation; Cooke et al. 2011); and (7) how to manage multiple human activities that affect species and ecosystems simultaneously at many scales.

Poorly Explored Habitats

The census emphasized exploration of the unknown, with many projects that collected fauna from poorly sampled habitats. One project with major implications for fisheries was Seamounts, which coordinated and facilitated research glob-ally. Seamounts have become a target for fisheries worldwide, and researchers created the first integrated public database of global seamount biological data (Seamounts Online 2012). They compiled available data, new surveys, and the latest modeling methods in the first global seamount classification identifying regions most vulnerable to fishing and climate change (Tittensor et al. 2009; Clark et al. 2011). Their data showed that seamount communities are vulnerable to fishing and that these communities, particularly those with hard corals, have high sensitivity and low resilience to bottom trawling. In addition, there was plausible evidence that seamounts are step-

Figure 3. Ocean Tracking Network (OTN) Canada student, Will Roberts, holds an Atlantic sturgeon (Acipenser oxyrinchus) with a surgically im-planted VEMCO coded acoustic telemetry tag that could last up to 10 years. He will add a one-year Wildlife Computer MK10 Popup Archival Tag (PAT) tag to combine short-term, high-resolution information with long-term patterns in a Bay of Fundy tidal hydropower study off the coast of Nova Scotia by Acadia University. OTN and other telemetry networks around the globe are building on ground-breaking research performed by POST and TOPP during the Census of Marine Life (Cooke et al. 2011). [Photo credit: Montana McLean.]

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ping stones for dispersal, oases of abundance and biomass, and hotspots of species richness. They supported emerging theories that individual seamount communities are structurally unique, that populations of invertebrates on seamounts are the source of propagules for nearby margins, and that seamounts can act as biological refugia from large-scale catastrophic environmental events (Rowden et al. 2010).

Baseline Data

The Oceans Past project gleaned data on the past abundance of marine species from archeological digs of bones and shell middens, fish-scale records from sediment cores, and thousands of historical documents, including catch and trade records, restaurant menus, and whaling logs. They were pioneering in showing that such data can provide credible estimates of fish harvest and sometimes abundance (Starkey et al. 2008). Several examples of major resource extraction dating back more than 2,000 years were found in heavily populated areas such as the Mediterranean and demonstrated that preindustrial technolo-gies could put marine animal populations under severe stress. A review of 256 exploited marine populations estimated that, on average, those populations had declined 89% from historical abundance levels (Lotze and Worm 2009). Historically, anthro-pogenic threats to ocean ecosystems were local or regional, but they are now pervasive and compounded by the global threat of climate change.

Distribution and Movements

As described briefly above, the POST and TOPP tagging projects showed that large-scale use of electronic tags was cost effective. Oceanographic data collected by animals wearing so-phisticated new tags will help to explain the preferences and physiological limits that drive changes in animal distributions, as species respond to changes such as shoaling and expansion of the oxygen minimum layer in the central Pacific and increas-ingly acidic ocean waters.

Biology of Nonexploited Species

The U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service reported that 60% of exploited stocks (545 stocks) lacked assessments suffi-cient to evaluate stock status relative to overfishing (Mace et al. 2001), and the situation for nonexploited stocks is undoubtedly worse. The census made huge contributions to basic taxonomic exploration of lesser-known species and habitats and to the development of techniques such as standardized sampling (McIntyre 2010) and genetic barcoding (Table 1), but the ba-sic biology and abundance of most nontarget species remains poorly known.

Species Interactions

Genetic barcoding, plankton surveys (McIntyre 2010), and taxonomic work of the census all contribute to the ability to in-terpret diet studies. The POST and TOPP tagging projects hint at the possibility of using tags to study species interactions on a

larger scale in the future, in part by using large-bodied species to monitor small species (Cooke et al. 2011). Another census project recently pioneered a new use of waveguide sonar tech-nology that made it possible to instantaneously visualize all of the fish in an area 250 miles on a side. The school of 250 mil-lion Atlantic herring (Clupea harengus) described in the Gulf of Maine represented the largest assembly of animal biomass ever recorded on earth (Makris et al. 2009). Nevertheless, to study species interactions on a large scale will require the best of our existing genetic, taxonomic, and telemetry technologies, and tagging and acoustic technology will have to be advanced significantly before the dream becomes a reality.

How Species Respond to Multiple Impacts

Recent high-profile papers have called for more holis-tic approaches to marine resource management and adoption of ecosystem-based management (EBM; Larkin 1996; Link 2010). EBM differs from traditional resource management, de-fining management strategies for entire systems, not individual components of the ecosystem (Link 2010). Central to this eco-system-based perspective is accounting for all factors that can influence a fisheries stock, including ecological interactions.

Forage fish species (prey) can occupy middle trophic levels that link lower trophic level energy or biomass to upper trophic levels by being common prey for a range of species. They can be an important source of standing biomass in an ecosystem and are often subject to both predation pressure and commercial harvesting. Various authors have found that when consumption of particular forage species is calculated, the predation mortal-ity for the species that had been assumed as a part of the total natural mortality in traditional stock assessments was underes-timated (e.g., Hollowed et al. 2000; Moustahfid et al. 2009b). Unsurprisingly, predation mortality is temporally and ontoge-netically variable as well (Tsou and Collie 2001).

Another consensus among scientists is that for forage species in particular, careful examination of traditional as-sumptions regarding predation mortality is needed because the abundance of their major predators (e.g., demersal fish, large pelagics, marine mammals, birds, etc.) can reasonably be ex-pected to increase in the next several years as stocks are rebuilt to meet legal requirements (e.g., Overholtz et al. 2008; Mous-tahfid et al. 2009a). Figure 4 illustrates the trade-offs between predators and fisheries to be made when managing forage spe-cies like the longfin squid (Loligo pealeii) in the North Atlantic. It is clear that if timing of high commercial exploitation and predatory removals are out of sync and dynamic over the year, traditional single-species models that assume constant natural mortality rates will overestimate the stock’s recovery potential (e.g., Moustahfid et al. 2009a, 2009b).

Managing Multiple Human Impacts

One census legacy was the exchange of ideas and expe-riences. It became clear to the thousands of participants that human impacts on the ocean are increasing (Costello et al.

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2010b). Although exploitation is certainly important, par-ticipants realized the need to acknowledge other influences, including increased noise, light, ship traffic, chemical pollu-tion, agricultural runoff and siltation, species introductions, oil exploration and extraction, undersea mining, tourism, heat and CO2 transfer from the atmosphere, temperature change, and acidification, among myriad factors.

FISH, FISH FOOD, AND EVERYTHING ELSE

A census is the most basic step toward understanding an ecosystem: it answers the question “What are the system’s bio-logical components?” From census results we know we cannot answer that question definitively for most marine ecosystems. Because the depth of less than 10% of the ocean seabed has been measured from ships (Costello et al. 2010a), we may assume that significantly less seabed biodiversity has been sampled. About 75% of the ocean area is between 3,000 and 6,000 m depth and yet most sampling is along shallow coasts (Figure 2a). Even some deepwater habitats that are more acces-sible are poorly known: in recent samples from the Australian continental margins, 90% of 365 species of eastern slope iso-pods and 30% of western slope decapods were new to science. In some cases, we cannot yet come close to naming species. Coral reefs have been estimated to contain over one third the diversity of all marine life, but the Reefs project was unable to even estimate the number of unknown species by the end of its 10-year mission because their new data showed the inadequa-cy of existing sampling. They found little overlap in species composition between adjacent sites, and 40% to 60% of reef species in most samples and sites were represented by a single specimen (McIntyre 2010). The finding that “rare is common” became a census theme that the Reefs project showcased better than any other, illustrating the extreme need to develop taxo-nomic expertise.

In microbial communities, where individuals are abundant and difficult to define as species, researchers found a long tail of rare DNA-defined taxa (McIntyre 2010). Although microbes are key components of geochemical cycles, we do not under-stand how their communities will respond to climate change, but we do know that rare kinds include a variety of recently discovered metabolic pathways and that a major turnover in species could alter ecosystem functioning and impact fish and fisheries.

Fish Diversity in Perspective

The major effort of the census to count and identify organ-isms from lower taxa helped to put the taxonomic diversity of fishes in perspective with diversity in the lower orders that are fish prey and was also the basis for revised estimates of total biodiversity on Earth. Fish are by far the most diverse chordates, inhabiting all habitats in the oceans and most in freshwaters. After birds, mammals, and reptiles, they are among the best known groups on Earth, particularly because of their impor-tance as food for humans. Yet, in the ocean, there are already far

more species of crustaceans, molluscs and other invertebrates, and plants known to science (around 240,000; Appeltans et al. 2011), and the proportion of undiscovered species in these groups is far higher than it is for fish (Figure 5).

Fish prey constitute essentially all taxonomic groups that are smaller-bodied than fish. Most fish are dietary generalists that eat anything that fits in their mouths, and many prey species are so small that they are only eaten by planktonic fish larvae. The census helped to highlight challenges faced in estimating the distributions of small organisms. The microbes and at least some of the meiofauna are unlike larger species in several re-spects. Bacteria exchange DNA both frequently and rapidly, which helps them adapt to new situations. This means that the species concept, as applied to multicellular organisms, does not apply well. There may be millions of kinds of bacteria but there appear to be only thousands of species that do not interbreed.

Because of their small size, bacteria, single-celled organ-isms, and some multicelled organisms are easily dispersed by air, water, and larger animals (O’Dor et al. 2009). If they can survive environmental conditions that are not ideal during dispersal, they may proliferate when they arrive in a suitable location, thus giving the appearance of a discontinuous distri-bution. High dispersal rates and adaptability to poor conditions also allow organisms to be cosmopolitan, occurring wherever environmental conditions are suitable (Patterson and Lee 2000).

A key aspect of landscape (and seascape) ecology is the relationship of local to regional diversity. For a given regional number of species (i.e., gamma diversity), a taxon may show (1) high alpha- (local) but low beta- (between-location dif-ferences) diversity or (2) low alpha- but high beta-diversity. Microbes may be a good example of (1) and invertebrates of (2). Beta-diversity is closely related to diversity of habitats in a landscape. Failing to appreciate these patterns is a reason some authors extrapolated from high alpha-diversity to estimate that many millions of species may exist (reviewed by Costello and Wilson 2011; Costello et al. 2012).

The resilience of microbes to environmental stressors means that they have low extinction rates. One may thus expect there to be an enormous number of microbial species because they have lived longer on Earth than any other organisms. However, their good dispersal means that populations regularly interbreed and so new species are not formed (similar mecha-nisms also affect animals and plants). One of the reasons there are fewer species in the ocean than on land is that there are fewer barriers to dispersal and ocean currents disperse eggs, larvae, and adults. Thus, there are relatively few planktonic and pelagic species, compared to a larger number of stationary benthic species (Gibbons et al. 2010). The formation of new species requires some separation of populations, typically by a physical barrier such as distance or a land bridge separating oceans or, alternatively, microhabitat specialization.

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Figure 4. Fish predation on longfin squid, a case study. (a) Consumption estimates, (b) predation mortality versus fishing mortality (Lenfest Ocean Program Research Series, June 2011; Moustahfid et al. 2009a), and (c) projected quarterly yield (thousands of metric tons, mt) of Northwest Atlantic longfin squid in the fishery (light blue) and in predation removals (dark blue) for the 5-year average of total mortality (Moustahfid et al. 2009a).

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Marine Species Diversity as a Component of the Earth’s Total Species Diversity

Fish are diverse in species, but their food is almost 10 times more diverse. Marine species discovery rates have been relatively high compared to terrestrial discovery rates since the 1950s, and the number of scientists involved in describing spe-cies has never been so great (Eschmeyer et al. 2010; Costello et al. 2012). The apparent linear trend in the rate of description of new marine species may be due to increased taxonomic effort offsetting an increasing difficulty in discovering species new to science. The continued high rate of species description may reflect scientists’ improved abilities to sample new habitats, remote locations, and/or more taxonomically difficult taxa, rather than an unending supply of species waiting to be discovered.

Of the estimated 1.5 million de-scribed species, only about 240,000 are marine (Costello et al. 2012). We suggest that this relatively low proportion of marine species reflects reality, not an artifact of the oceans being less explored. The ocean has fewer species than land for two primary reasons. First, plants have provided a complex, long-lived habitat and food source that cov-ers much of the land and enabled the evolution of insects, which comprise about 60% of all species on Earth (Hamilton et al. 2010). In contrast, the insects’ ancestors in the oceans, the crustaceans, find large plants (seaweeds) only around the coastline; these plants feed only a few herbivorous species. Second, the greater dispersal of organisms in the oceans (Kinlan and Gaines 2003) mitigates against forming new species.

Recent studies suggest that once we include the as-yet-undis-covered species, there may be as few as 5 plus or minus 3 million species on Earth and fewer than 1 million in the oceans (Hamilton et al. 2010; Costello et al. 2012). These estimates are far lower than

previous estimates of 10–100 million marine species alone (Costello and Wilson 2011). These are still ex-traordinary numbers of species that amaze the public, but providing exaggerated estimates of undiscovered diversity can make efforts to discover all species appear

futile. They can also exaggerate estimates of the rate of spe-cies extinction, because these are partly based on the estimated number of all species on Earth (Stork 2010). By using more realistic estimates of biodiversity, it becomes possible to pre-pare a plan to explore, discover, and describe all biodiversity, including fish, within this century. During the census decade, the World Register of Marine Species has recorded descriptions of almost 2,000 new marine species each year (Appeltans et al. 2011). The last decade had nearly as many species described as the same decade a century earlier. The census was not able

Figure 5. Species representation by phylum in OBIS in 2010. Most species biodiversity falls into a dozen groups, including crustaceans and molluscs, fewer fishes, and only 2% other vertebrates (mainly whales, seals, and walruses). Not surprisingly, new species discoveries were more common among small organ-isms than large, but each image is a new census species (Costello et al. 2010b). [Photo credits: Russ Hopcroft, Gary Cranitch, Julian Finn, Larry Madin, John Huisman, Katrin Iken, Bernard Picton, and Piotr Kuklinski.]

Fish are diverse in species, but their food is almost 10 times more diverse.

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to involve all countries or regions of the world (Costello et al. 2010b), but given improved coordination and greater participa-tion, the next few decades could result in such progress that it will become demonstrably harder to discover new species in the oceans. Such a situation will enable better understanding of ocean ecosystems and resources and vastly improve com-munication to explain what needs conservation and why. It is difficult to argue for the protection of species that have not been shown to exist.

SUMMARY

The census repeatedly showed the value of investing in in-tegrated, large-scale efforts such as the global seamount survey, the acoustic and satellite tagging efforts, the drive to barcode all marine species, and the value of sharing expertise and data. It found that human impacts are everywhere: Census researchers found more garbage than life in some deep-sea trawls (McIntyre 2010). It is also clear that humans impacted ocean biodiversity significantly earlier than previously thought and that there is not an endless supply of biodiversity. Reefs, deep-sea, Arc-tic, and Antarctic systems are particularly in need of work due to changing climate. It is clear that many large species need protection but also that species can rebound when given the op-portunity. Many species may have homing behavior that makes them susceptible to harvesting, and we are beginning to identify concentrations of high species abundance where conservation efforts may yield larger-than-expected dividends. The cen-sus helped to advance technologies such as automated image processing, acoustic tracking of small fish on the continental shelves, satellite archival tags that allow large fish to collect environmental data, acoustic imaging of huge areas, genetic barcoding to speed up species identification in samples, and in-tegrated data management. It seems that we are closer than ever to being able to do some of the things we have only dreamed of for generations, such as tracking species interactions in situ.Although many census projects could have succeeded on local scales with national funding, the census enabled collaboration in marine biology on a global scale, demonstrating the scientific benefits and cost efficiencies of international collaboration. It is the hope of all of us who were touched by the census that science institutions and countries will continue to explore and discover ocean biodiversity by collaborating internationally.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to the 2700 scientists who brought the census to-gether. Ron O’Dor was invited to produce this article as its first senior scientist, but he hopes that his next-generation coauthors (listed in alphabetical order) will produce another census in 2020.

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From the Archives

Bordering the Great Lakes are six States having a population of about fourteen millions of people. The fish-eries of these Great Lakes, as their product enters into the general com-merce of the country, cannot be re-garded as the concern of the six States--they are of national impor-tance. If the fish captured in these lakes were consumed along their shores I grant that the States would have no special claim upon the general Govern-ment for taking part in maintaining such fisheries, or helping in any way to their re-establishment. This was the condition of affairs once; but with the modern facilities of rapid communication and improved methods of transportation, their product is mar-keted all over the country, and for that reason the States bordering the Great Lakes have, in my judgment, as good a right to assistance from the General Government, in the directions I shall presently mention, as the fisheries of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Bissell, J.H. (1888): Co-operation in Fish-culture, Transactions of the American Fisheries Society, 17:1, 89-100.

COVER ILLUSTRATIONCensus investigators explored on and beneath polar ice. Their aircraft remotely sensed animals through proper-ties of scattered light. Marine animals carried tags that stored records of their travels and dives and commu-nicated with satellites. Fish carried tags that revealed their migration past acoustic listening lines. Sounds that echoed back to ships portrayed schools of fish as-sembling, swimming, and commuting up and down. Standardized frames and structures dropped near shores and on reefs provided information for comparing diver-sity and abundance. Manned and unmanned undersea vehicles plus divers photographed seafloors and cliffs. Deep submersibles sniffed and videotaped smoking sea-floor vents. And, nets and dredges still caught specimens, shallow and deep, for closest study. Photo credit: E. Paul Oberlander, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

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FEATURESustainability

A Retrospective Evaluation of Sustainable Yields for Australia’s Northern Prawn Fishery

Evaluación retrospectiva de rendimien-tos sostenibles de la pesquería de camarón del norte de AustraliaRESUMEN: El objetivo principal del manejo pesquero es determinar el esfuerzo óptimo que produzca la captura sostenible de un recurso renovable. El objetivo actual de manejo de la pesquería de camarón del norte de Australia es maximizar el retorno económico neto en el largo plazo bajo los términos de la política del gobierno australiano, tomando en cuenta que los niveles actuales de captura de camarón ascienden a 1,250 toneladas, cuando la máxima captura sostenible, de acuerdo a varios estudios, es de 3,000 a 4,700 toneladas. También se evalúa la ganancia neta bajo la suposición de que no existió un esquema de recompra en 2005 y que la flota pesquera se mantuvo en 89 embarcaciones desde 2005. Se concluye que se pudo haber ganado, en promedio, un 40% más de captura (2006-2009) y una ganancia adicional total de A$17 millones (excluy-endo el gastos de la tripulación) con respecto a los muchos millones de dólares que se ahorraron con el esquema de re-compra. Estos resultados tienen implicaciones importantes para el futuro manejo en Australia y en otros lugares dado que existe una preocupación a nivel mundial por la sobrex-plotación pesquera.

You-Gan WangCentre for Applications in Natural Resource Mathematics (CARM), School of Mathematics and Physics, The University of Queensland, Queensland 4072, Australia. E-mail: you-gan.wang@uq.edu.au

Na WangCentre for Applications in Natural Resource Mathematics (CARM), School of Mathematics and Physics, The University of Queensland, Queensland 4072, Australia

ABSTRACT: The fundamental aim in fisheries management is to determine an optimal fishing effort for sustainably har-vesting from a replenishable resource. The current management objective of Australia’s Northern Prawn Fishery is to maximize the long-term net economic return following Australian gov-ernment policy, resulting in an average recent catch of tiger prawn species of about 1,250 tons only. However, the maximum sustainable catch stated from different studies is around 3,000–4,700 tons. We also evaluated the net profit assuming that there was no buyback scheme in 2005 and the fishing fleet was kept at 89 vessels since 2005 and concluded that 40% more catch on average (2006–2009) and an additional total profit of A$17 million (excluding crew cost) could have been gained in addi-tion to the many millions of dollars of savings in the buyback scheme. These findings have great implications for future man-agement in Australia and elsewhere because there is a grave concern of overfishing worldwide.

INTRODUCTION

The Australian federal government is in the process of introducing maximum economic yield (MEY)-based manage-ment for 26 fish species. The Northern Prawn Fishery (NPF), one of Australia’s most valuable fisheries in terms of gross production value, has been managed under the MEY objective since 2006. However, it is not clear whether the MEY objec-tive is actually beneficial to Australia at all. Bromley (2009) has provided rigorous justification for why MEY is not the same as “making society better off.” This article aims to present an NPF case study to support the claims of Bromley (2009) that other researchers (and politicians) might not expect.

As a multispecies fishery targeting mainly prawns, the NPF also takes scampi, squid, scallops, and bugs. The NPF prawn catch consists of nine prawn species, among which three spe-cies—brown tiger prawns (Penaeus esculentus), grooved tiger prawns (Penaeus semisulcatus), and banana prawns (Penaeus merguiensis)—account for almost 80% of the annual average

catch (Wang and Die 1996). The catch and effort data recorded in the NPF are separated by commercial species groups (ba-nana prawn, tiger prawn, endeavour prawn, and king prawn) and thus do not distinguish between the two species of tiger prawn. Much work was carried out using data from commer-cial catches, scientific trawls, and tagging experiments to study growth, mortality, and movement of these key species (Lucas et al. 1979; Somers and Wang 1997; Punt et al. 2009). In particu-lar, Somers and Wang (1997) used a multispecies bioeconomic simulation model to evaluate different management strategies by incorporating factors such as seasonal effects in price and catchability, and the net revenue was estimated as $40–50 mil-lion in 1993 Australian dollar currency. There are two fishing seasons each year; the first season is from April to early June, when most banana prawns are caught, and the second season is from August to November, when most tiger prawns are caught. The seasonal closures were introduced to ensure good sizes at harvest and for protection of spawners of tiger prawns (Somers 1990; Somers and Wang 1997). Since 2006, the length of the banana prawn season has been set to depend on whether or

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not catches meet a predetermined decision rule (Hohnen et al. 2008). The banana prawn season was extended by 2 weeks in 2007 and was once again extended in 2008 and 2011 (Table 1).

The NPF gross value of catch has been the highest of any of the commonwealth fisheries in recent years. Over the period 1989–1999, the estimated gross values varied between $102 million and $149 million. There was a downward trend over the period 2000–2008, with the lowest value of $62.3 million in 2006 compared with the peak of $164.7 million in 2000 (Table 1). The currency unit used throughout the article is the Austra-lian dollar. The reduction in gross revenue resulted from mainly the decrease in catch levels, as well as the drop in prawn prices due to prawn supplies mainly from farming and appreciation of the Australian dollar (Pascoe et al. 2011). The net revenue was around $20 million in the 1990s (Kompas et al. 2010) and dropped to −$13.9 million (a loss) for 2004–2005 due to in-creasing costs in labor and fuel. By 2007–2008, the net revenue had become positive at $8.1 million, which was largely due to the higher catches of banana prawns.

The NPF is a limited-entry, input-controlled fishery and is managed by the Australian Fisheries Management Authority (AFMA). The inputs under the NPF Plan 1995 are the number of vessels in the fishery, vessel size, and engine power. Under this plan, the NPF fishing fleet was assigned two classes of statutory fishing rights (SFRs): gear SFRs, which are based on vessel size and engine power, and B SFRs, which determine the number of vessels (Jarrett 2001). In 2000, gear SFRs were changed to be measured in terms of total headrope length for the fleet (Dichmont et al. 2006a). A system of individual trans-ferable quota (ITQs) will be implemented in 2012 (Pascoe et al. 2011). For years, restriction of gear SFRs has been an im-portant management tool in reducing fishing effort. In 2008, a 33% increase in total gear for the 2008 tiger prawn season was accepted by AFMA to help achieve MEY for the fishery.

An increase of about 20% in vessel engine power in the long run was estimated by Pascoe et al. (2011) under expected price conditions, which suggests that larger vessels may appear under the new ITQ system.

Actions have also been taken with respect to Class B SFRs. Over the last decade, two vessel buyback schemes have reduced the fleet. The second buyback reduced the fleet from 89 vessels in 2005 to 55 (52 B SFRs) in 2009, mainly to achieve the MEY objective (Dichmont et al. 2006a; Pascoe et al. 2011). In 2004, a new target level of catch for MEY was accepted by the AFMA, replacing maximum sustainable yield (MSY) because MEY was regarded as a biologically more conservative target than MSY in this fishery (Larcombe 2008; Evans 2010; Kompas et al. 2010). This can be compared with the peak of about 300 ves-sels in the early 1980s.

Management of this fishery was based on results from yield-per-recruitment analysis until the stock–recruitment rela-tionship (SRR) was established by Wang and Die (1996) for the two tiger prawn species (P. esculentus and P. semisulca-tus). This has led to a significant development in managing this fishery because a framework was established in deriving the sustainable catches and efforts. Wang and Die (1996) obtained the MSY as 1,900 tons for P. esculentus and 2,200 tons for P. semisulcatus when assuming a 5% increase in fishing power. Because no SSRs were found for banana prawns, the total effort for the NPF could be adjusted based on the historical split be-tween the tiger and banana prawns efforts (Wang and Die 1996; Kompas et al. 2010). The other reason for doing this is that ef-fort cannot be practically controlled at species level or targeted on the banana prawn fisheries alone. The work of Wang and Die (1996) was further extended by Dichmont et al. (2003) us-ing a Deriso-Schnute delay–difference model. A management strategy evaluation (MSE) framework was conducted to evalu-ate management strategies using input controls for the prawn

Year Gross Value of Product(A$, millions)

No. of Vessels

Fishing Effort of Fishing Days for

Banana Prawnsboat-days

Tiger Prawnsboat-days Banana Prawns Tiger Prawns Total

2000 164.7 121 3,697 12,736 31 105 136

2001 135 118 6,247 10,440 53 88 141

2002 82.5 114 4,148 8,718 36 76 113

2003 74 97 4,114 8,503 42 88 130

2004 65 96 3,985 7,793 42 81 123

2005 72.8 89 3,364 7,967 38 90 127

2006 62.3 77 3,283 6,983 43 91 133

2007 74 51 2,696 4,829 53 95 148

2008 73 52 3,347 4,556 64 88 152

2009 — 52 3,095 4,889 60 94 154

2000–2009 Average — 87 3,798 7,741 44 89 133

TABLE 1. Gross value of product, Class B SFRs (denoted by number of vessels [nv], fishing efforts [Ey], and corresponding fishing days [Ey/nv])for tiger prawn and banana prawn in the NPF, by financial year from 2000 to 2009.

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fishery (Dichmont et al. 2006b). The MSY estimate was 1,418 tons for P. esculentus and 1,709 tons for P. semisulcatus. More recently, Punt et al. (2010) provided an extended bioeconomic study incorporating the two tiger species and the blue endeav-our prawn (Metapenaeus endeavouri) and provided the MEY estimates for the three species. The MEY estimate for P. escul-entus was 1,231 tons and for P. semisulcatus it was 1,447 tons.

In this article, we assess the economic effectiveness in rela-tion to yield, revenue, and net revenue for tiger prawns in the NPF and demonstrate that a broader socioeconomic definition of the fishery should be considered for the purposes of calculat-ing MEY. We also quantify the potential gain in this fishery if no buyback scheme had occurred in 2005. Our results indicate that there could be a gain if there had been no such fleet reduc-tion scheme.

METHODS

The analysis is based on weekly catch and effort data. The biological year is assumed to range from week 40 until week 39 of the following year (Wang and Die 1996; Dichmont et al. 2006b). The sex ratio for each tiger prawn species is assumed to be 1:1. The estimates of annual recruitment and spawning stock indices are based on an age-structured population model (Wang and Die 1996; Somers and Wang 1997). The SRR, re-cruitment–spawning stock relationship (RSR), and catch–effort relationship are used to obtain the sustainable catch for a given fishing mortality. A broader revenue function was applied to as-sess the economic effectiveness of inputs (mainly the number of vessels) in relation to yield and net revenue.

The annual catch in tons, denoted as Yy, is modeled using the catch–effort relationship (Somers and Wang 1997):

Yy=a3 Ry(1–exp(–b3 Fy )),

where Ry is the recruitment number in year y, and Fy is the fishing mortality in year y (proportional to the effort, defined below). The SRR is modeled using Ricker’s equation,

Ry=a1 Sy-1exp(–b1Sy-1),

where Sy-1 is the spawning stock index of previous year. The RSR is modeled by (Somers and Wang 1997):

Sy=a2 Ryexp(–b2Fy).

The optimal F that maximizes the Y satisfies F = AD/(1+D), where A= log(a1 a2 )/b2 and D=b2+b3 exp(–b3F)/(1–exp(–b3 F)).

The fishing mortality, Fy, is expressed as

Fy=qEy=q × days × nv.

where q is the catchability, Ey is the fishing effort of year y, days is the number of fishing days, and nv is the number of vessels.

By taking into consideration the impact due to techno-logical changes, effective effort rather than nominal effort is applied to the tiger prawn fishery (Robins et al. 1998; Bishop et al. 2000). Two scenarios are set to measure the impact of changes in fishing efficiency over time based on the work of Robins et al. (1998) and Kompas et al. (2010). In scenario 1, we assume an annual increase of 2.5% for years before 1988 and after 1992 and 5% for 1988–1992. The significant improvement in fishing power from 1988 to 1992 was largely due to the us-age of Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and plotters, and the measurements of the impact of GPS and plotters are based on the analysis of commercial catch data (Robins et al. 1998). In scenario 2, we allow an annual increase of 2.5% before 1988 and 5% for 1988–1992 and then variable effort creep (with an average of 1.5% annually) is applied to years after 1992 using values obtained from Kompas et al. (2010).

The economic status of the NPF is measured by the total revenue and the net revenue. Based on the economic param-eters used by Somers and Wang (1997) and Punt et al. (2010) and assuming that the price is unaffected by the yield Y and a fixed number of fishing days per year, the annual net revenue for the NPF is approximately (Wang and Wang 2012)

R(Y)=PY – c1Y – c2 E,

where P is the average price, $19.85/kg; c1 includes crew cost, 0.23P ($/kg), and packaging cost, $0.98/kg; and c2 is the cost associated with each of the E vessels including repairs and fuel, annual permit cost, annual depreciation, and opportunity cost. In the case of NPF, the daily operating cost (repairs and fuel) is $2,321 and the average fishing days is 135 days per year (Punt et al. 2010). The average capital cost per vessel is $727,184. The opportunity cost is assumed to be 5% and the an-nual depreciation of the capital is 3.7%. There is also an annual fishing permit cost of $56,116 per vessel. Therefore, we have c2 = 2,321 × 135 + 727,184 × (5% + 3.7%) + 56,116 = 432,716 per vessel per year. More details are given in table 2 of Punt et al. (2010).

From a broader societal perspective, the labor cost (often related to yield/revenue) is actually income for crews; therefore, there is no cost or gain because the entities include both the ves-sel owners and crews. The license fee is also income for the government (which has great implications for research funds). Opportunity cost does not seem to apply here because the ves-sels have already entered this fishery; on the contrary, shadow profit (savings from government) should be considered because removal of a vessel (buyback) is costly (A$400,000 per ves-sel), and government assistance may be needed for crews (three crews per vessel) if unemployed (A$11,856 per person per year). We therefore adopt a broader revenue function (to reflect a broader societal perspective) that includes the shadow profits such as the potential unemployment benefit and exit benefit (as-

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suming 5% of the buyback cost), c2 = 2,321 × 135 + 727,184 × 3.7% − 11,856 × 3 − 400,000 × 5% = A$284,673 per vessel per year. The daily operating cost ($2,321/day for the first term in c2) dominates the total cost, which makes accurate estimates of the other economic parameters relatively unimportant. Actu-ally, the cost ($2,321/day) also includes normal profits by other sectors. More interesting discussion on this complex issue can be found in Christensen et al. (2011) and Bromley (2009).

When computing the catch losses due to underfishing, the new inputs are the number of fishing days and the number of vessels, which will result in changes in fishing mortality. To adjust for the impact on fishing mortality, we use

Fy* = Fy (Ey

*/Ey)=Fy (days*×nv*)/(days×nv),

where days * and nv* are the hypothesised fishing days and

number of vessels, Ey* is the new estimated effort, and Fy

* is the new estimated fishing mortality. Accordingly, the spawning stock of the same year is adjusted using

Sy* = Sy (Ry

*/Ry)exp (–b2Fy*–b2Fy),

and the number of recruits in the following year is conse-quently adjusted to

Ry* = Ry (Sy

*/Sy-1)exp (–b1S*y-1–b1Sy-1),

The estimated catch in tons is finally calculated as

Yy* = Yy (R

*y/Ry)(1–exp(–b3F

*y))/(1–exp(–b3Fy)).

Note that R*y = Ry for the estimation for the first year.

RESULTS

Long-Term Yields—Optimal and Sustainable

The equilibrium yield estimates for P. semisulcatus and P. esculentus in the NPF for the two scenarios are shown in Fig-ure 1. The peak of each curve indicates the MSY. Overfishing occurs when the effective fishing efforts exceed EMSY, and re-building happens when the effective fishing efforts stay below the critical value.

For the period 2005–2009, the exploitation levels remain far lower than EMSY for both species. It appears that the NPF has undergone an unnecessary rebuilding period over recent years from an MSY perspective. The status of the NPF is further illus-trated by plotting the time series of estimated spawning index relative to SMSY and adjusted effort relative to EMSY for both tiger prawn species in the NPF (Figure 2).

Both P. esculentus and P. semisulcatus were previously judged as being overfished in 2002 (Dichmont 2006b), and stocks responded and rebounded to much higher levels due to substantial reduction in fishing effort within a few years, espe-cially for P. esculentus. However, the status of both tiger prawn species appears to be quite healthy under scenario 2, which is deemed as most realistic. Based on this scenario, current level of fishing effort (52 vessels in 2009) could have been main-tained at the 2005 level and the buyback scheme might be unnecessary.

We assume that each vessel fishes for 135 days per year and two thirds of these fishing days are spent on tiger prawn fishery (Punt et al. 2010). Then, the number of vessels (nv) needed in the NPF is calculated as Ef /(135 × 2/3); Ef is the total fishing effort (in 2009 boat-day unit). The estimated optimal numbers

Figure 1. Estimated equilibrium yields for two tiger prawn species in the NPF under the two scenarios. Fishing effort is in 2009 boat-day unit. Dark points show the landings and corresponding effective fishing efforts for the recent 5 years (2005–2009).

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of vessels under different scenarios as well as other target levels are shown in Table 2.

What if there had been no buyback?

Now we let the number of vessels be fixed at 89 for the pe-riod 2005–2009 to assess the effect on fishery status in relation to catch (tons) and net revenue (A$, millions). The simulated vessels are supposed to be, on average, identical to those that remained in the fishery in terms of headrope length and other characteristics. The recruitment and spawning indices of each year were recalculated corresponding to the new changed fishing mortality. The results are shown in Table 3. Roughly speaking, there would be an additional 2,000 tons of catches from 2006 to 2009. This 40% potential additional catches rep-resent quite a substantial gain in terms of food and employment opportunities.

DISCUSSION

The general perception of trawling (which is the case in the NPF) is that it has a devastating effect on the ecosystem. Roughly 30% of world fisheries are overexploited (Branch et al. 2011). However, this does not necessarily mean that all fish-eries need to greatly reduce fishing effort, especially for those regarded as having a healthy status. In this short article, we have provided a quick assessment of the NPF. The method is simple and calculation is straightforward. These estimates should be sufficient to draw the conclusions, although more accurate esti-mates may be sought that would require incorporation of more relevant information. The results are not contrary to those in Punt et al. (2010) and Norman-López and Pascoe (2011). In Norman-López and Pascoe (2011), the net profit was evaluated at a baseline and the MEY level. For example, our calculation indicates that their net profit could go even higher if fishing ef-fort were set at 10% more than their MEY level. If the crew cost is revenue share based, the increased profit in our hypothesized case (without buyback in 2005) is more than the corresponding

Figure 2. Time series of (a) effective fishing effort relative to EMSY and (b) estimated spawning index relative to SMSY for both tiger prawn species in the NPF for scenario 2.

Tiger Fishery Only NPR (Tiger and Banana Fisheries)

MSY MEY EMSY EMEY EMSY EMEY

Wang and Die (1996) 4,100 — 112 — 168 —

Dichmont et al. (2003) 3,127 — 98 — 147 —

Dichmont et al. (2010) — 2,905 — — — —

Punt et al. (2010) — 2,678 — 71 — 107

Scenario 1 Narrow 4,730 3,089 182 75 272 112

Broader — 4,330 — 129 — 194

Scenario 2 Narrow 4,734 3,102 180 74 271 111

Broader — 4,336 — 128 — 193

TABLE 2. Estimated optimal efforts expressed as number of vessels under different scenarios for the tiger fishery and the whole NPF (after adjusting for banana fishery). The MSY and MEY (in tons) are yields from the tiger prawns only. Effort unit is Year 2009 boat-days, and 135 fishing days per year, and a proportion of two-thirds fishing days for tiger prawns are assumed.

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increased crew share (around A$9 million) in the two scenarios (cf. Table 3). Our results show that this additional catch would lead to higher sustainable yield, which is arguably beneficial to the fishing industry and the society. An interesting question is whether this additional 40% of food (averaged over the last 4 years) should be caught. Society may demand less environ-mental effect on a fishery, and any effort reduction is therefore welcome (and the society may gain from a less disturbed en-vironment; Christensen and Walters 2004; Christensen and Maclean 2011). This is especially true in a prawn trawl fishery where the bycatch component is large (such as in the NPF).

Because the buyback program had already been carried out (2006–2008), it would be too costly to reestablish the fishery with 89 vessels. The other option is to extend the fishing sea-sons at both ends (earlier opening and later closure) as much as possible. However, an extended tiger season would also have a negative effect in protecting the spawners. An extended banana season implies that the smaller banana prawns would be caught from earlier opening days and smaller tiger prawns will be caught from later banana season because substantial effort on the tiger prawn species is deployed during banana prawn sea-son. On the other hand, because excessive fishing is often the key contributing factor to collapse of fisheries globally (Worm et al. 2009), overcaution may have been a reasonable choice. It should be noted that setting appropriate ITQ requires objec-tive functions with appropriate parameter values. We therefore strongly encourage being more careful in using the economic parameters in the gain function and fully investigating the im-plications of different choices.

Finally, is the fishery’s economic gain at society’s expense? The answer is yes, because all parts of our society are connected and maximizing one single component will be at the cost of sub-optimality of the others (Christensen 2010). The MEY approach is not to maximize the resource rent but the economic rent. The

subtle difference was well explained by Bromley (2009). The difference between resource rent and economic rent is clear; for example, the license fees are part of the resource rent for the Aus-tralian government but a cost in the MEY approach, which allows excess profit accrual to the lucky firms remaining in the fisher-ies. The economic loss due to buyback scheme since 2005 would be much larger if we considered beyond 2009 and multiplied the effects. Management strategies based on maximizing the net profit for the fishery alone would lead to undesirable social con-sequences when potential opportunities for other relevant sectors are ignored. In our objective functions, we have excluded employ-ment costs because we see them as labor opportunities.

On the other hand, some might argue that such expense was well spent as a premium cost for ensuring sustainability. The lower the fishing effort, the easier it will be to ride out spawn-ing/recruitment falls in bad years. Nevertheless, it is debatable whether the extra 40% catch is worthwhile when factoring in all the other costs, such as opportunity loss and ecosystem impacts, because dredging is quite damaging to the sea bottom and the bycatch/by-product is always quite substantial, which cannot be ignored. Because the catch comprises mixed sizes, and the prawn price is size dependent, more careful studies using a multispecies approach and biological and environmental impacts are still need-ed. Nevertheless, our illustration of the NPF clearly shows there may be great potential benefits when taking account of the whole of society’s interest. Perhaps there is a need to move from MEY/MSY to a society–ecosystem approach in fisheries management. This will further enlarge our inference domain to balance between the diverse societal objectives and maintaining healthy statuses of all components in the affected marine ecosystems. Research toward quantifying the impacts of fishing on degradation of eco-systems would be a great step forward (Christensen and Maclean 2011). Alternatively, one can consider spatial/temporal closures to complement the ecosystem and catches (Zhou et al. 2010; Little et al. 2011).

YearReal Status of Simulation Model Added Value of

Catch (tons) Effort (boat-days) Catch (tons) Effort (boat-days) Catch (tons) Catch (A$,

millions)Profit (A$, millions)

Scenario 1

2006 1,856 7,095 2,072 8,200 215 4.3 1.7

2007 1,304 5,402 1,994 9,427 690 13.7 4.5

2008 1,120 4,792 1,629 8,202 509 10.1 2.4

2009 1,171 4,730 1,749 8,096 578 11.5 3.8

Total 5,452 22,019 7,444 33,925 1,992 39.5 12.5

Scenario 2

<2006 1,856 6,618 2,085 7,649 228.5 4.5 2.1

2007 1,304 5,157 2,049 8,999 744.4 14.8 5.9

2008 1,120 4,682 1,694 8,014 574.1 11.4 3.8

2009 1,171 4,730 1,826 8,096 654.6 13.0 5.3

Total 5,452 21,187 7,653 32,758 2,202 43.7 17.1

TABLE 3. Actual estimates of catch (tons) and difference in profit (A$, millions), assuming a fixed number of 89 vessels in the years 2006–2009 for the two scenarios. Fishing days of each year are the same as recorded.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We are grateful for the referees’ very constructive com-ments, which led to a much improved article.

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Zhou, S., A. D. M. Smith, A. E. Punt, A. J. Richardson, M. Gibbs, E. A. Fulton, S. Pascoe, C. Bulman, P. Bayliss, and K. Sainsbury. 2010. Ecosystem-based fisheries management requires a change to the selective fishing philosophy. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 107:9485–9488.

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First Call For PaPers: little roCk 2013

The Arkansas Chapter of the American Fisheries Society is pleased to announce the first call for papers for the 143rd An-nual Meeting of the American Fisheries Society to be held in Little Rock, Ar-kansas! The meeting theme, “Preparing for the Challenges Ahead,” is likely to stimulate thoughts and presentations on challenges facing natural resource agen-cies regarding mandates to do more with fewer resources, challenges facing edu-cators regarding a growing knowledge base and changing student expectations, challenges facing students regarding their roles as future scientists and man-agers serving increasingly more diverse stakeholders, and other challenges that confront fisheries and natural resource professionals. AFS 2013 will take place on September 8-12 in Little Rock, at the Statehouse Convention Center located at the east end of President Clinton Avenue. The River Market District in Little Rock and the Argenta District in North Little Rock offer the best in dining, entertain-ment, museums, and shopping. Let Little Rock show you some southern hospitality next year.

GENERAL INFORMATIONFisheries and natural resource profes-sionals are invited to submit symposia proposals or abstracts for contributed oral and poster presentations that address the meeting’s theme, or on other issues and subjects pertinent to our field. We encourage state and federal fisheries

professionals, private biolo-gists, academics, and students to participate. There will be three types of sessions at the meeting: Symposia (oral presentations organized by individuals or groups with a common interest), Contributed Oral Presentations (grouped together into themes), and Con-tributed Poster Presentations (organized to coincide with either symposia or contributed oral presentations themes).

SYMPOSIAThe Program Committee in-vites proposals for Symposia. We are specifically requesting topics related to the meeting

theme. Topics not addressing the meet-ing theme should be of general interest to AFS members. Symposia that address challenges facing broad groups of fisher-ies professionals, along with solutions to specific challenges will receive priority.Symposium organizers are responsible for recruiting presenter, soliciting their abstracts, and directing them to submit their abstracts and presentations through the AFS online submission forms (fish-eries.org). Organizers are not required to recruit a full symposium at the time of proposal submissions. The Program Committee will work with symposium organizers to incorporate appropriate presentations that were submitted as con-tributed oral or poster presentations. A symposium should include a minimum of 10 presentations and we encourage organizers to limit their requests to 1-d symposia (about 20 oral presentations). Symposia with more than 20 presenta-tions will be strongly encouraged to convert some oral presentations to posters (see further information in Poster section below). Regular oral presentations are limited to 20 minutes, but double time slots (i.e., 40 minutes) may be offered to keynote speakers.

Symposium proposals must be submitted by January 11, 2013. All symposium pro-posal submissions must be made using the AFS online symposium proposal submis-sion form available on the AFS website (fisheries.org). The Program Committee

will review all symposium proposals and notify organizers of their acceptance or refusal by February 1, 2013. If accepted, organizers must submit a complete list of all confirmed presentations and titles by February 22, 2013. Symposium abstracts (in the same format as contributed oral or poster presentation abstracts; see below) are due by March 15, 2013.

The Program Committee is developing ways to increase the accessibility of sym-posia to all potential participants. See future calls for papers, e-mail messages, and the meeting web site for more details.

FORMAT FOR SYMPOSIUM PROPOSALS – (submit using AFS online symposium submission form: fisheries.orgWhen submitting your abstract, include the following:

1) Symposium title: Brief but descrip-tive2) Organizer(s): provide name, address, telephone number, and e-mail address of each organizer. Indicate by an asterisk the name of the main contact person.3) Description: In 300 words or less, describe the topic addressed by the proposed symposium, the objective of the symposium, and the value of the symposium to AFS members and meet-ing participants.4) Format and time requirements: Indicate the mix of formats (oral and poster). State the time required for regu-lar oral presentations (i.e. 20 minutes per speaker) and the time required for speed presentations and poster viewing (3 minutes per speaker plus one hour of poster viewing).5) Chairs: Supply name(s) of individual(s) who will chair the sympo-sium.6) Presentations requirements: Speakers should use PowerPoint for presentations.7) Audiovisual requirements: LCD projectors and laptops will be available in every room. Other audiovisual equip-ment needed for the symposium will be considered, but computer projection is strongly encouraged.8) Special seating requests: Standard rooms will be arranged theatre-style. Please indicate special seating requests (for example, “after the break, a panel

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discussion with seating for 10 panel members will be needed”).9) Lists of presentations: Please sup-ply information on potential presenters, tentative titles, and oral or poster desig-nations for each presenter.Sponsors: If applicable, indicate spon-sorship. Please note that a sponsor is not required.

CONTRIBUTED ORAL AND POSTER PRESENTATIONSThe Program Committee invites abstracts for contributed oral and poster presen-tations. Authors must indicate their preferred presentation format:

1)Contributed oral presentation only,2)Contributed poster presentation only,3)Contributed oral presentation preferred, but poster presentation acceptable.

Only one contributed oral presentation will be accepted for each senior author. Contributed oral presentations will be limited to 20 minutes (15 minutes for pre-sentation plus 5 minutes for questions). All oral presenters are expected to deliver PowerPoint presentations.

We encourage poster submissions be-cause of the limited time available for oral presentations. The program will include a dedicated poster session to encour-age discussion between poster authors and attendees. In addition, the Program Committee is exploring alternative pre-sentations methods for posters. For example, “Speed Presentations”, short oral presentations of poster highlights are being considered, as well as exhibiting symposium posters in the same room as oral symposium presentations. Decisions on these alternatives will be provided in the final call for papers.

STUDENT PRESENTERSStudent presenters must indicate if they wish their abstract to be considered for competition for a best student presenta-tion (i.e., paper or poster, but not both) award. If they respond “no,” the presen-tation will be considered for inclusion in the Annual Meeting by the Program Committee, but will not receive further consideration by the Student Judging Committee. If students indicate “yes,” they will be required to submit an appli-cation to the Student Judging Committee.

Components of the application will include an extended abstract and a check-off from their mentor indicating that the study is at a stage appropriate for consid-eration for an award.

ABSTRACT SUBMISSIONSAbstracts for contributed oral and poster presentations must be received by March 15, 2013. All submissions must be made using the AFS online abstract submission form, available at fisheries.org. When submitting your abstract:

1) Use a brief but descriptive title, avoid-ing acronyms or scientific names in the title unless the common name is not widely knows;2) List all authors, their affiliations, ad-dresses, telephone numbers, and e-mail addresses; and;3) Provide a summary of your findings and restrict your abstract to 200 words.

All presenters will receive an email con-firmation of their abstract submission and will be notified of acceptance and the designated time and place of their presen-tation by April 5, 2013.

The Program Committee will group con-tributed oral and poster presentations thematically based on the title and two or three keywords you will choose and prioritize during the abstract submission process.

Late submissions will not be accept-ed. AFS does not waive registration fees for presenters at symposia, work-shops, or contributed oral or poster presentation sessions. All presenters and meeting attendees must pay registration fees. Registration forms will be available on the AFS website (fisheries.org) in May 2013. There is a cost savings for register-ing early.

FORMAT FOR ABSTRACTSTitle: An Example Abstract for the AFS 2013 Annual MeetingFormat: OralAuthors: Lochmann, Steve. Aquaculture/Fisheries Center, University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, 1200 N. University Dr., Pine Bluff, AR 71601; 870-575-8165; slochmann@uaex.eduRacey, Christopher. Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, 2 Natural Resources

Drive, Little Rock, AR 72205; 501-223-6371; clracey@agfc.state.ar.usPresenter: Steve LochmannAbstract: Abstracts are used by the Pro-gram Committee to evaluate and select papers for inclusion in the scientific and technical sessions of the 2013 AFS An-nual Meeting. An informative abstract contains a statement of the problem and its significance, study objectives, prin-ciple findings, and applications. The abstract conforms to the prescribed for-mat. An abstract must be no more than 200 words in length. Student presenter: No

PROGRAM COMMITTEE CONTACTSProgram Chair:Steve Lochmann, University of Arkan-sas at Pine Bluff, slochmann.afs2013@gmail.com, 870-575-8165Contributed Oral Presentation Sub-committee Chair:Rick Eades, Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, rick.eades@nebraska.gov, 402-471-5445Contributed Poster Presentation Sub-committee Chair:Greg Summers, Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation, gsummers@odwc.state.ok.us, 405-325-7288Symposia Subcommittee Chair:Tom Lang, Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks & Tourism, tom.lang@ksoutdoors.com, 620-672-0722Committee Members:Amanda Rosenberger, USGS Missouri Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, rosenbergera@missouri.edu, 573-882-9653Nick Phelps, University of Minnesota – Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, phelp0830@umn.edu, 612-624-7450Quenton Fontenot, Nicholls State Uni-versity, quenton.fontenot@nicholls.edu, 985-449-7062Steve Sammons, Auburn University, sammosm@auburn.edu, 334-844-4058

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UNIT NEWSBetter Know a Hatchery

Interview by Brian Gause – Fisheries and Illinois Aqua-culture Center, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Carbondale, IL

What is the name of your facility, how did it get that name, and how long has it been in operation?

Wild Rose State Fish Hatchery is named so because we are only half a mile from the town of Wild Rose, Wisconsin. We have been in operation raising fish for the state of Wisconsin for 103 years.

What fish do you raise and approximately how many? We raise over 2 million cold- and coolwater fish species

each year, including Chinook and coho salmon, two strains of brown trout, northern pike, muskie, walleye, and lake sturgeon.

What are the fish you raise used for?Our fish are used for sport fish enhancement and restora-

tion efforts primarily in Lake Michigan.

What is the biggest challenge facing your facility today? What challenges do you foresee in the future?

Our biggest current challenge is being able to operate on a limited budget. The limited budget will likely continue to be a challenge for the future as well. In addition to budget issues and concerns, water use restrictions will likely be a challenge our hatchery will face in the future.

Any recent successes or news you can share? Since 2008, the entire facility has been completely rebuilt.

Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources now operates a modern state-of-the-art facility. This was built with energy and water conservation in mind, with emphasis on durability and low operating costs over the life expectancy of the facility.

Any interesting trivia/facts about your facility you wish to share?

Wild Rose is the largest salmon and trout hatchery operat-ed by the Wisconsin DNR. Wild Rose also helped pioneer lake sturgeon culture starting in the late 1970s and raises most of its esocids on dry, pelleted diets.

In one sentence, why is fish culture important? Since most of our fish are for stocking Lake Michigan,

we support a multi-million dollar sport fishing industry on the Great Lakes.

How can people reach you?Address: Wild Rose State Fish Hatchery, N5871 State Road 22, Wild Rose, WI 54984

Wild Rose State Fish Hatchery, Wild Rose, WI

Phone: (920) 622-3527E-mail: steven.fajfer@wisconsin.govWebsite: dnr.wi.gov/fish/wildrose/

To see the complete “Better Know a Hatchery” feature on Wild Rose State Fish Hatchery as well as features on other facilities, visit the Fish Culture Section Webpage at: sites.google.com/site/fishculturesection/home and click on the “Better Know a Hatchery” tab.

Aerial view of the coldwater facility, also newly renovated. Photo cour-tesy of HDR.

View inside the recently renovated coolwater facility. Photo courtesy of HDR.

Sample of northern pike raised at Wild Rose and ready for stocking. Photo courtesy of WI DNR.

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Aerial view of the recently renovated coolwater facility. Photo courtesy of HDR.

Fingerling walleye raised at Wild Rose and ready for stocking. Photo courtesy of WI DNR.

Employees clipping fins to mark hatchery-raised salmon ready for stocking. Photo courtesy of WI DNR.Dow

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Interview by Brian Gause – Fisheries and Illinois Aqua-culture Center, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Carbondale, IL

What is the name and location of your research unit/ department, and when was it established?

The Department of Fisheries and Allied Aquacultures is a part of Auburn University and is located in Auburn, Alabama. The program began in the early 1930’s. It became a department in 1971.

How many faculty and students are in your program?The department has 24 faculty and about 35 full-time

research support staff. At the start of fall 2011, we had 60 un-dergraduate students and 90 graduate students enrolled in the program. Half of the graduate students are enrolled in a mas-ter’s program and half in the doctoral program.

What fish species do you raise and what are your research interests?

In all, about 25 species of fresh and saltwater species are used in our research and teaching programs. Primary freshwa-ter species include: catfish, tilapia, bass, bream, several carps, crawfish, and freshwater prawns. Primary marine species in-clude: saltwater shrimp, oysters, red snapper, and pompano. Primary research areas include: aquaculture, fisheries man-agement, reproduction, hatchery management, physiology, behavior, ecology, nutrition, health management, and genetics.

What is the level of involvement in AFS in your department?Over the years, the department has been involved at most

every level of AFS. We currently have faculty serving as editors and associate editors of journals and chairs and key committees. We feel that professional societies play a very important role and we want to stay closely involved and encourage our stu-dents to get involved.

How are you better equipping your students with the knowledge and skills to be future successful fisheries profes-sionals?

We feel that our program has always had a very applied, practical focus. We work closely with agency and industry bi-ologists. We want to know their needs and to be able to help them solve problems. We also provide basic research support to help solve the more difficult problems. We feel that our classes and research opportunities provide our students with the latest basic and applied information.

Department of Fisheries and Allied AquaculturesAuburn University, Auburn, Alabama

What do you and your staff and students feel is the biggest challenge facing aquaculture and fish hatcheries now?

Our aquatic resources are some of our most important natural resources and the resource that our growing society is going to put greater and greater pressure and demands on. Wise management of our aquatic resources will be a huge challenge in the future. Aquaculture and hatchery management will be a vital part of the total resource management. We’ll see in-creasing demands in food production and stock enhancement for recreational species restoration efforts.

If you were trying to convince a student to choose your uni-versity and department what would you tell them to make them want to attend?

The Department of Fisheries at Auburn has the largest and most diverse aquaculture and fisheries program in the United States. In addition to our strong domestic programs, we also have a very active international program with faculty that are well traveled, and we have study abroad opportunities for stu-dents.

How can people reach you?Website: www.ag.auburn.edu/fish

To view the full version of Better Know a Hatchery for the Department of Fisheries and Allied Aquacultures, as well as features on other facilities, visit the Fish Culture Section Web-page at: http://sites.google.com/site/fishculturesection/home and click on the “Better Know a Hatchery” tab.

In our new Fish Culture Section series, “Better Know a Hatch-ery,” we are highlighting programs and facilities representing the wide diversity of fish culture operations. Do you work for a fish farm, hatchery, academic institution or other fish culture operation? Contact us and tell us about what you do and let others “better know” your program! Email Brian Gause at bgause1@siu.edu if you would like to participate. You can ac-cess all the “Better Know a Hatchery” features on the Fish Culture Section website at: http://sites.google.com/site/fishcul-turesection/home

Auburn students seining pond.

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Certification Benefits AFS Members Working in the Private Sector

COLUMNGuest Director’s Line

James M. LongChair, Membership Concerns Committee and Certified Fisheries Professional, and U.S. Geological Survey, Stillwater, OK 74078. E-mail: longjm@okstate.edu

Joe E. Slaughter IVFisheries Biologist, Georgia Power Company and Certified Fisheries Professional (and Certified Ecologist by Ecological Society of America), Smyrna, GA 30080

In May 2011, the Membership Concerns Committee dis-tributed a survey to the American Fisheries Society (AFS) membership to gauge interest in and benefits of professional certification. The committee delivered its report to the gov-erning board and a full article for publication in Fisheries is pending, but one highlight of this survey that the committee de-sired to report specifically was the perceived value provided to certified members working in the private sector. The survey was sent to 875 certified members, and we received 338 responses (34% response rate), 21% of whom reported working in the pri-vate sector, such as consulting.

Although personal satisfaction was commonly ranked the highest motivating factor to seek certification and a realized benefit after having received certification, those in private em-ployment tended to rank perceived expertise by the public and by peers as the primary motivating factor for seeking certifi-cation. These respondents also perceived greater benefits from having professional certification than those in other employ-ment categories (e.g., federal or state government). Those in private employment who responded to open-ended questions to clarify why they sought certification often stated perceived expertise or credibility by clients as important motivating fac-tors. When asked whether these members planned to renew their certification (or, for associates, seek certified status), 79% responded they would, with reasons such as “prestige” or “im-portance when testifying in public meetings.”

When AFS revamped its professional certification pro-gram, it sought to depart from the era where certification was “just another plaque on the wall” (McMullin 1997). It is grati-fying, then, to discover that the AFS certification program has some tangible benefits. A survey conducted after the new certi-fication program was put into place did not specifically analyze results according to employment sector, but it did suggest that certification could provide credibility when testifying at legal hearings (Pegg et al. 1999). As determined through our survey more than 10 years later, it is for those employed in the private sector that these benefits of credibility appear to be most real-ized.

In private industry, professional certification can play sev-eral roles. In professions such as engineering or accounting, certification implies that one not only possesses the requisite education but also has acquired a level of experience commen-surate with a standard for that profession. Both industry and their customers view fisheries professionals in much the same way and can require the validation of credibility that certifica-tion affords as a condition of employment or a requirement to bid on or obtain a project. Though AFS currently has no of-ficial stamp or seal associated with professional certification for use by certified individuals, in other professions work plans or products may not be considered complete until they are re-viewed and stamped by a certified professional. For example, a development project might include engineering drawings stamped by a design engineer, erosion and sediment control plans stamped by an environmental/civil engineer, and a plan for avoidance of protected species or riparian buffers stamped by a certified wetlands scientist.

Certification can also be a criterion for employment. Re-cruiting or human resource departments in industry often use professional certification as a cursory filter whereby a candi-date’s application is not even forwarded to the hiring manager unless some level of professional certification is shown. In other instances, companies may require new hires to achieve certifi-cation as a condition of employment, to satisfy a probationary appointment period, or as a part of one’s ongoing training and development. Certification can also affect the pay grade at which an employee is hired and that employee’s ability to ad-vance to higher pay grades in the future.

The need for a certified workforce from an industrial perspective is significant. Hiring and maintaining certified pro-fessionals increases credibility for both the individual and the organization. Because the certification process is built around professional activity and scientific involvement, an employer can be assured that its certified professionals are being ex-posed to the latest innovations in the field, networking with a diverse group of other professionals, and carrying the industry or company’s brand with them. As a result, certified profession-als are considered to be more in tune with technology and the fisheries industry, more committed to continued learning and

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personal development, and better billboards for their respec-tive companies or organizations than those without certification credentials. In a legal proceeding, professional certification is used as an indicator of an individual’s level of expertise as recognized by the society and his or her peers. Additionally, it is common that requests for bids on fisheries-related projects are only sent to individuals with professional certification, and consideration is only given to proposals from highly credible sources as denoted by certification.

REFERENCES

McMullin, S. L. 1997. The American Fisheries Society: “certifiably” more professional. Fisheries 22(8):10.

Pegg, M., K. Pope, and C. Guy. 1999. Evaluation of current profes-sional certification use. Fisheries 24(10):24–26.

NEW AFS MEMBERS

Nicholas AlbrechtKaren AlofsLouis AnninoRicardo ArguelloMicah BennettWilliam BernierJose BerriosCody BexKristen BlannStuart BorrettRobert BringolfReed BrodnikKarl BrookinsJed BrownRichard BruesewitzAnthony BrunoLarry BurnstadMatt BurtonStephanie CarmanAmbre ChaudoinJason ClingermanMark CornwellWesley DanielAdam DavisMicah DeanDamaris DelgadoDavid DowdsBrendan EbnerWilliam Edwards

John EnglishErika FellerEli FeltsJan FranssenJames GaravagliaIsabelle GirardJeffrey GoldsteinThomas GoszewskiTaylor GreveJeffrey GroteGretchen HansenKirk HansenPhilip HarrisonKyler HeckeWilliam HoffmanAngela HolzapfelAndrew HonseyJian HuangAmberly HuttingerTrisha HuusNilda JimenezBrett JohnsonRyan JohnstonByron KarnsJonathan KennenMeg KlineMatthew KornisKeith KoupalElizabeth Krafft

Hanna KruckmanTed LangeRobert LehmanVianey Leos BarajasYu LiangJustin LonderMadeleine LyttleDaniel MatosJoshua MaxwellCarlyle MeekinsAlex MillerRobert MollenhauerAndrea MuschKatsuki NakaiNicholas NelsonMichael O’BrienShannon J. O’LearyAllen PattilloNoemi PenaDirk PetersonOudom PhonekhampengToby PiddockeKimberly PollockHeather PoslusznySharon RayfordJosh ReffnerRyan RobertsAnthony RodgerGrisel Rodriguez

Vilmarie RomanAida RosarioJared RossCharles RoswellIdelfonso RuizCody SalzmannNicholas SardRoy SchiffJared SchillerKaitlin SchnellSusan SchroederCynthia SellsKelvin SerranoTimothy SesterhennStephen SiddonsDouangkham SinghanouvongMatthew SmithErin SnookJacqueline SorensenDonald SpellerElizabeth StauglerJuliane StruveBradley TaylorAmy TillmanElisa ToscanoKatherine TouzinskyEmily Tracy-SmithJoel Trexler

Keith TurnquistFarel Velazquez-CancelJeffrey VieserJames WamboldtDreux WatermolenMatthew WebergMatthew WesenerAmelia WhitcombDaniel WhitingJean-Claude WicksChristopher WilsonZeb WoiakThomas WorthingtonLi YangCheng YangTalia YoungMatthew YoungDavid Zanatta

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The Economic Value of Catching and Keeping or Releasing Saltwater Sport Fish in the South-east USA. David W. Carter and Christopher Liese. 32: 613–625.

Backwaters in the Upper Reaches of Res-ervoirs Produce High Densities of Age-0 Crap-pies. Jonah D. Dagel and L. E. Miranda. 32: 626–634.

Feeding Strategies and Diets of Young-of-the-Year Muskellunge from Two Large River Ecosystems. Kevin L. Kapuscinski, John M. Farrell, and Brent A. Murry. 32: 635–647.

[Management Brief] Observations of Hatchery-Reared Rio Grande Silvery Minnow Using a Fishway. Thomas P. Archdeacon and W. Jason Remshardt. 32: 648–655.

[Management Brief] Population Genetics of Southern Floun-der with Implications for Management. J. D. Anderson and W. J. Karel. 32: 656–662.

The Relationship between Age-0 Walleye Density and Adult Year-Class Strength across Northern Wisconsin. Jonathan F. Han-sen, Andrew H. Fayram, and Joseph M. Hennessy. 32: 663–670.

The Use of Fluorescent Randomly Amplified Polymorphic DNA Markers to Identify Hybrids: A Case Study Evaluating the Origins of Saugeye following the Cessation of Stocking in an Ohio Reservoir. Michael G. Sovic, Jonathan C. Denlinger, and Paul A. Fuerst. 32: 671–678.

Feeding Response of Sport Fish after Electrical Immobili-zation, Chemical Sedation, or Both. Kim T. Fredricks, Jeffery R. Meinertz, Ryan D. Ambrose, Leanna M. Jackan, Jeremy K. Wise, and Mark P. Gaikowski. 32: 679–686.

[Management Brief] Use of Night Video to Enumerate Adult Pacific Lamprey Passage at Hydroelectric Dams: Challenges and Opportunities to Improve Escapement Estimates. Tami S. Cl-abough, Matthew L. Keefer, Christopher C. Caudill, Eric L. Johnson, and Christopher A. Peery. 32: 687–695.

A Reward-Recovery Study to Estimate Tagged-Fish Report-ing Rates by Idaho Anglers. Kevin A. Meyer, F. Steven Elle, James A. Lamansky Jr., Elizabeth R. J. M. Mamer, and Arthur E. Butts. 32: 696–703.

JOURNAL HIGHLIGHTSNorth American Journal of Fisheries ManagementVolume 32, Number 4, August 2012

Preliminary Study of Trap Bycatch in the Gulf of Maine’s Northern Shrimp Fishery.

Cinamon Moffett, Yong Chen, and Margaret Hunter. 32: 704–715.

Visible Implant Elastomer (VIE) Tags for Marking Small Rainbow Trout. C. A. Leblanc and D. L. Noakes. 32: 716–719.

Comparison of Radiotelemetry and Microsatellites for De-termining the Origin of Yukon River Chinook Salmon. Blair G. Flannery, Penny A. Crane, John H. Eiler, Terry D. Beacham, Nick A. Decovich, William D. Templin, Ora L. Schlei, and John K. Wenburg. 32: 720–730.

Differences in Paddlefish Populations among Impoundments of the Arkansas River, Arkansas. Frank J. Leone, Joseph N. Stoeck-el, and Jeffrey W. Quinn. 32: 731–744.

Economic Values for Saltwater Sport Fishing in Alaska: A Stated Preference Analysis. Daniel K. Lew and Douglas M. Larson. 32: 74 –759.

Defining Economic Injury Levels for Sea Lamprey Control in the Great Lakes Basin. Brian J. Irwin, Weihai Liu, James R. Bence, and Michael L. Jones. 32: 760–771.

Should I Stay or Should I Go? The Influence of Genetic Origin on Emigration Behavior and Physiology of Resident and Anadromous Juvenile Oncorhynchus mykiss. Sean A. Hayes, Chad V. Hanson, Devon E. Pearse, Morgan H. Bond, John Carlos Garza, and R. Bruce MacFarlane. 32: 772–780.

Effects of Rotenone on Columbia Spotted Frogs Rana luteiventris during Field Applications in Lentic Habitats of South-western Montana. Hilary G. Billman, Carter G. Kruse, Sophie St-Hilaire, Todd M. Koel, Jeffrey L. Arnold, and Charles R. Peterson. 32: 781–789.

[Management Brief] Comparisons of Precision and Bias with Two Age Interpretation Techniques for Opercular Bones of Long-nose Sucker, a Long-Lived Northern Fish. Robert C. Perry and John M. Casselman. 32: 790–795.

[Management Brief] Evaluation of Osmotic Induction of Cal-cein Treatments for Marking Juvenile Walleyes. Dale E. Logsdon and Bruce J. Pittman. 32: 796–805.

Onset of Melanophore Patterns in the Head Region of Chinook Salmon: A Natural Marker for the Reidentification of In-dividual Fish. Joseph E. Merz, Paul Skvorc, Susan M. Sogard, Clark Watry, Scott M. Blankenship, and Erwin E. Van Nieuwenhuyse. 32: 806–816.

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CALENDARFisheries Events

To submit upcoming events for inclusion on the AFS web site calendar, send event name, dates, city, state/province, web address, and contact information to sgilbertfox@fisheries.org.

(If space is available, events will also be printed in Fisheries magazine.)

More events listed at www.fisheries.org

DATE EVENT LOCATION WEBSITESeptember 1–5, 2012 AQUA 2012 Prague, Czech

Republicwww.was.org/WasMeetings/meetings/De-fault.aspx?code=Aqua2012

September 17–21, 2012

ICES Annual Science Conference 2012 Bergen, Norway www.ices.dk

November 5–9, 2012 International Symposium on Fish Passages in South America

Toledo-Paraná, Brazil www.unioeste.br/eventos/sympass/

December 4–5, 2012 13th Flatfish Biology Conference Westerbook, CT http://mi.nefsc.noaa.gov/flatfishbiology-workshop

December 9–12, 2012 73rd Midwest Fish and Wildlife Conference Wichita, KS http://www.midwestfw.org/html/call.shtml

February 21–25, 2013 Aquaculture 2013 Nashville, TN www.was.org/WasMeetings/meetings/Default.aspx?code=AQ2013

April 8–12, 2013 7th International Fisheries Observer and Monitoring Conference (7th IFOMC)

Viña del Mar, Chile www.ifomc.com/

April 25–26, 2013 NPAFC 3rd International Workshop on Migration and Survival Mechanisms of Juvenile Salmon and Steelhead in Ocean Ecosystems

Honolulu, HI http://www.npafc.org/new/index.html

June 24–28, 2013 9th Indo-Pacific Fish Conference Okinawa, Japan http://www.fish-isj.jp/9ipfc

From the Archives

I think it is generally agreed, that fish-culture has passed its purely experimental stage. It is in fact fast becoming recognized as a practical art, and an estab-lished department of civil government, its definitely ascertained results, which are now unquestioned, fully warranting the recognition it has received from the States and the United States.

Bissell, J.H. (1888): Co-operation in Fish-culture, Transactions of the American Fisheries Society, 17:1, 89-100.

From the Archives

We now recognize about six hundred species of fishes as found in the fresh waters of North America, north of the Tropic of Cancer, these representing thirty-four of the natural families. As to their habits, we can divide these species rather roughly into the four categories proposed by Professor Cope, or, as we may call them - (1) Lowland fishes; as the bow-fin, pirate perch, large- mouthed black bass, sun-fishes and some catfishes.(2) Channel fishes; as the channel catfish, the moon-eye, gar-pike buffalo-fishes and drum.(3) Upland fishes; as many of the darters, shin-ers and suckers, and the small-mouthed black bass.(4) Mountain fishes; as the brook trout, and many of the darters and minnows. To these we may add the more or less distinct classes of (5) Lake fishes, inhabiting only waters which are deep, clear and cold, as the various species of whitefish and the great lake trout; (6) Anad-romous fishes, or those which run tip from the sea to spawn in fresh waters, as the salmon, sturgeon, shad and striped bass; (7) Catadromous fishes, like the eel, which pass down to spawn in the sea; and (8) Brackish-water fishes, which thrive best in the debatable waters of the river-mouths, as most of the sticklebacks and the killifishes.

Jordan, D.S.(1888): The Distribution of Freshwater Fishes, Transactions of the American Fisheries Society, 17:1, 4-29.

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Fisheries • Vol 37 No 9• September 2012• www.fisheries.org 428

ANNOUNCEMENTSSeptember 2012 Jobs

Employers: to list a job opening on the AFS online job center sub-mit a position description, job title, agency/company, city, state, responsibilities, qualifications, salary, closing date, and contact information (maximum 150 words) to jobs@fisheries.org. Online job announcements will be billed at $350 for 150 word increments. Please send billing information. Listings are free (150 words or less) for organizations with associate, official, and sustaining member-ships, and for individual members, who are faculty members, hiring graduate assistants. if space is available, jobs may also be printed in Fisheries magazine, free of additional charge.

NR Program Supv SR Fish HatcheryMN Dept of Natural ResourcesPermanentSalary: $56,522–$81,369 / year based on experience

Closing: 10/31

Responsibilities: This position supervises statewide fish hatchery operations as well as directs and manages the statewide hatchery program and special aquaculture projects, including supervision of fish hatchery supervisors.

Contact: Linda Erickson-Eastwood, Division of Fish and Wildlife, 651-259-5206

Email: linda.erickson-eastwood@state.mn.us

Link: https://statejobs.doer.state.mn.us/ResumeBuilder

Fisheries Biologist IISpokane Tribe of Indians, WAPermanentSalary: DOE/DOQ. Benefits package also provided.

Closing: Until filled

Responsibilities: Responsibilities include design and implemen-tation of fisheries surveys on Lake Roosevelt, WA, direct analysis and quantification of diet and aging samples, statistical analyses and interpretation of reservoir-wide creel, wild fish status, and hatchery fish performance surveys, assess impacts from reservoir hydro op-erations, participation in regional coordination with state and tribal co-managers of Lake Roosevelt, and to make scientific recommen-dations regarding reservoir management operations and program direction.

Qualifications: M.S. degree in fisheries biology and at least 5 years’ experience as a professional biologist. Additional qualifications can be found on the website.

Email: hradmin@spokanetribe.com

Link: www.spokanetribe.com/jobs

Sturgeon Fisheries Biologist III/Project Mgr.Spokane Tribe of Indians, WAPermanentSalary: DOE/DOQ. Benefits package also provided.

Closing: Until filled

Responsibilities: Responsibilities include design and implementa-tion of white sturgeon assessments on the upper Columbia River and Lake Roosevelt, WA, direct analysis and quantification of sam-ples, statistical analyses and interpretation of data including stock assessments, early life history evaluation, escapement, telemetry, and assessments recruitment failure of white sturgeon in the region. Additionally, the position will be responsible for project oversight, coordination with state and tribal co-managers of Lake Roosevelt, participation in international forums focused on recovery of the up-per Columbia River transboundary white sturgeon population, and providing insight and recommendations regarding white sturgeon management and restoration actions.

Qualifications: M.S. degree in fisheries biology and at least 8 years’ experience as a professional biologist with at least 5 years as a pri-mary sturgeon research biologist. Additional qualifications can be found on the website.

Email: hradmin@spokanetribe.com

Link: www.spokanetribe.com/jobs

Assistant/Associate Professor and Extension Fisheries SpecialistTexas AgriLife Extension Service-Texas A&M University SystemPermanentSalary: TBD.

Closing: Until filled

Responsibilities: This is a 12 month, non-tenure track position with a 100% Texas AgriLife Extension Service appointment headquar-tered in the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences-Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. The successful candi-date’s job responsibilities include supporting Extension’s education mission in commercial aquaculture, private impoundment fisher-ies management, aquatic vegetation management and adult/youth education via Texas Master Naturalist/4-H. Responsibilities will be accomplished through financial/program support, program plan-ning, educational program implementation, faculty/staff training, coordination/cooperation and professional activities.

Qualifications: The candidate must have a Ph.D in a discipline re-lated to fisheries/aquaculture with a strong fundamental background in warmwater fisheries management and aquaculture. Experience in managing freshwater fish populations and/or warmwater aqua-culture systems preferred.

Email: Search Committee Co-Chairs-- Dr. Del Gatlin (d-gatlin@tamu.edu) and Dr. Billy Higginbotham (b-higginbotham@tamu.edu)

Link: https://greatjobs.tamu.edu

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Facilities O&M Project Leader (Manager II)Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, ORPermanentSalary: $42,772 – $76,813/year DOQ.

Closing: Until filled

Responsibilities: Umatilla Hatchery Satellite Facilities O&M Proj-ect Leader (Manager II), Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, Pendleton, Oregon. Oversight of all facets of operating and maintaining five juvenile acclimation and three adult holding and spawning facilities including general fish culture activities, col-lection of operational data and maintaining records, holding and spawning of adult salmon and steelhead and coordination of facility maintenance.

Qualifications: Bachelor degree in Fisheries or closely related field with minimum of four years relevant experience or similar Associ-ate degree with five years relevant experience. For a non-related Bachelor or Associates degree, a minimum of 10 years of experi-ence specific to artificial propagation would be required.

Contact: Brian Zimmerman at 541-429-7286

Email: brianzimmerman@ctuir.org

Link: http://www.umatilla.nsn.us/jobs.html

Biological Technician – FisheriesUSGS Lake Erie Biological Station, OHPermanentSalary: $16.70 an hour

Closing: Until filled

Responsibilities: Provide support to principal investigators. Work on a variety of research projects associated with the restoration and protection of Great Lakes fish populations, as well as the role and impact of invasive species on ecosystem health and resilience. Tar-get species include yellow perch, white perch, walleye, white fish, lake trout, burbot, suckers, and their prey. Some work will be per-formed on USGS Large Research Vessels.

Qualifications: Bachelor of Science (B.S.) or graduate degree in a biological science discipline.

Knowledge of ecological principles/practices to apply standard scientific techniques to complete assignments involving scientific investigations and studies.

Knowledge of scientific disciplines related to the collection and in-terpretation of ecological data.

Experience in the preparation of reports pertaining to scientific re-search.

Experience and training in fisheries science and conducting research on fishes of Lake Erie is preferred.

Knowledge of basic computer operations, including some basic sta-tistical packages.

Link: www.css-dynamac.com

Research and Restoration DirectorHenry’s Fork Foundation, IDPermanentClosing: Until filled

Salary: $48K/year

Responsibilities: The Henry’s Fork Foundation located in Ashton, ID is seeking a team member to plan, develop, implement, and direct aquatic research and restoration activities, with particular emphasis on fisheries work, in the Henry’s Fork watershed. Provides oversight to research and restoration staff, interns, and contractors. Serves as the organization’s aquatic technical representative for planning and projects involving local, state, and federal organizations and the sci-entific community. Disseminates research and restoration activities and results to a variety of audiences. Assists the Executive Director in promoting the organization and fundraising as needed for specific projects.

Qualifications: Master’s Degree in Fisheries Biology, Aquatic Ecology, or very closely related field required. Three to five years of similar work experience preferred.

Email: bhoffner@henrysfork.org

Link: www.henrysfork.org

Post Master’s Research AssociatePacific Northwest National LaboratoryPermanentSalary: Varied

Closing: Until filled

Responsibilities: Conduct research on the use of elemental and isotope signatures in fish to determine population origin, describe movement and migration, and characterize temperature history and bioenergetics. Assist with laboratory investigations to develop geo-chemical methods for marking fish. Responsibilities include field and lab work to collect and prepare samples for analysis, operate analytical equipment, maintain fish populations and aquaculture fa-cilities, data processing and analysis, and report writing.

Qualifications: The candidates will have a master’s degree in biology or a fisheries related field. Knowledge of fish ecology, geochemistry and mass spectrometry are desirable, as well as expe-rience with laboratory techniques for sample preparation of otoliths, fin rays and scales. Experience with fish culture, data management, statistical software and writing are also desirable.

Contact: Dr. David Geist, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Ecology Group, K6-85, Richland, WA 99354; (509) 371-7165

Email: david.geist@pnnl.gov

Link: www.jobs.pnl.gov

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Fisheries • Vol 37 No 9• September 2012• www.fisheries.org 432

Specializing in RFID products, expert customer service & biological consulting to the fisheries, wildlife & conservation communities for over 20 years.

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Biomark 601 Reader| FDX-B & HDX. FDX-A option

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Biomark’s Multiplexing Transceiver System (IS1001-MTS) is our newest stationary reader; providing decoding of ISO 11784/11785 compliant FDX-B & HDX PIT tags. The MTS provides improved performance, with respect to detection range and number of antennas, over the current FS1001M stationary reader. The MTS consists of a Master Controller (IS1001-MC) and up to 12 IS1001 reader boards. The IS1001-MC acts as the command and control center for the system, directing each reader when to fire and storing tag code and diagnostic information. The MTS is scalable. A single IS1001 reader can be used as a stand-alone unit or synchronized with one more IS1001, without the need for an IS1001-MC. The scalable approach of the MTS offers a cost

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FS1001M “MUX” IS1001 “ACN” IS1001-MC

24V DC

7.0 Ap-p

12 capacitors, electronically switched

134.2 FDX-B

Yes, digitally adjustable

1 x 128 KB: 5350 tags; 146 status reports

6, multiplexed

1: RS232, DB-9

No

24V DC range 18–30V DC

10.0 Ap-p

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134.2 FDX-B & HDX

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2 x 128 KB: 8900 tags; 151 status reports

1

2 standard USB (Mini-B), CAN Bus. 2 optional Ethernet (RJ45) fibre optic

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134.2 FDX-B & HDX

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Status Report

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Why is Choosing a Telemetry Supplier an Important Decision?

Because success is your only option.

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ATStrack.com • 763.444.9267

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