Benjamin Isaac Ruttenberg

Commercial fisheries along the US West Coast are important components of local and regional economies. They use various fishing gear, target a high diversity of species, and are highly spatially heterogeneous, making it challenging to generate a synoptic picture of fisheries activity in the region. Still, understanding the spatial and temporal dynamics of US West Coast fisheries is critical to meet the US legal mandate to manage fisheries sustainably and to better coordinate activities among a growing number of users of ocean space, including offshore renewable energy, aquaculture, shipping, and interactions with habitats and key non-fishery species such as seabirds and marine mammals. We analyzed vessel tracking data from Vessel Monitoring System (VMS) from 2010 to 2017 to generate high-resolution spatio-temporal estimates of contemporary fishing effort across a wide range of commercial fisheries along the entire US West Coast. We identified over 247,000 fishing trips across the entire VMS data, covering over 25 different fisheries. We validated the spatial accuracy of our analyses using independent estimates of spatial groundfish fisheries effort generated through the NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service Observer Program. Additionally, for commercial groundfish fisheries operating in federal waters in California, we combined the VMS data with landings and ex-vessel value data from California commercial fisheries landings receipts to generate highly resolved estimates of landings and ex-vessel value, matching over 38,000 fish tickets with VMS data that included 87% of the landings and 76% of the ex-vessel value for groundfish. We highlight fisheries-specific and spatially-resolved patterns of effort, landings, and ex-vessel value, a bimodal distribution of fishing effort with respect to depth, and variable and generally declining effort over eight years. The information generated by our study can help inform future sustainable spatial fisheries management and other activities in the marine environment including offshore renewable energy planning.

A variety of criteria may influence the efficacy of networks of marine protected areas (MPA) designed to enhance biodiversity conservation and provide fisheries benefits. Meta‐analyses have evaluated the influence of MPA attributes on abundance, biomass, and size structure of harvested species, reporting that MPA size, age, depth, and connectivity influence the strength of MPA responses. However, few empirical MPA evaluation studies have used consistent sampling methodology across multiple MPAs and years. Our collaborative fisheries research program systematically sampled 12 no‐take or highly protective limited‐take MPAs and paired fished reference areas across a network spanning 1100 km of coastline to evaluate the factors driving MPA efficacy across a large geographic region. We found that increased size and age consistently contributed to increased fish catch, biomass, and positive species responses inside MPAs, while accounting for factors such as latitude, primary productivity, and distance to the nearest MPA. Our study provides a model framework to collaboratively engage diverse stakeholders in fisheries research and provide high‐quality data to assess the success of conservation strategies.

As climate change accelerates and fisheries management continues to evolve, California's commercial fisheries are changing. To improve the understanding of recent California fisheries dynamics, we compiled and analyzed commercial landings receipts to characterize temporal and spatial variation in landing and value of key fisheries groups within the exclusive economic zone across the state from 2005 to 2019. We found that California fisheries continue a shift first observed in the 1980s from higher-biomass, lower-value species, such as coastal pelagic species and market squid, toward lower-biomass, higher-value species, such as Dungeness crab Cancer magister and groundfish. Over the 15-year time series analyzed, total landings declined by nearly two-thirds but total value remained relatively stable, likely due to a focus on higher value species and rising prices. The northern half of the state has become much more economically valuable, accounting for over 50% of total value across the state in 2019. A case study analysis found groundfish to be the dominant fisheries in the two areas that have been identified as priorities for potential offshore wind development in central and northern California. Our results elucidate the most recent status and trends of California's commercial fisheries, over time, across space, and among different fisheries groups, providing valuable information for informing fisheries management and marine spatial planning.

Dramatic coral loss has significantly altered many Caribbean reefs, with potentially important consequences for the ecological functions and ecosystem services provided by reef systems. Many studies examine coral loss and its causes—and often presume a universal decline of ecosystem services with coral loss—rather than evaluating the range of possible outcomes for a diversity of ecosystem functions and services at reefs varying in coral cover. We evaluate 10 key ecosystem metrics, relating to a variety of different reef ecosystem functions and services, on 328 Caribbean reefs varying in coral cover. We focus on the range and variability of these metrics rather than on mean responses. In contrast to a prevailing paradigm, we document high variability for a variety of metrics, and for many the range of outcomes is not related to coral cover. We find numerous “bright spots,” where herbivorous fish biomass, density of large fishes, fishery value, and/or fish species richness are high, despite low coral cover. Although it remains critical to protect and restore corals, understanding variability in ecosystem metrics among low‐coral reefs can facilitate the maintenance of reefs with sustained functions and services as we work to restore degraded systems. This framework can be applied to other ecosystems in the Anthropocene to better understand variance in ecosystem service outcomes and identify where and why bright spots exist.

Overexploitation of key species can negatively impact ecosystem processes, so understanding the ecological roles of individual species is critical for improving ecosystem management. Here, we use coral reefs and the process of herbivory as a model to examine how species identity of consumers influence ecosystem processes to inform management of these consumers. Herbivorous fishes can facilitate the recruitment, growth, and recovery of corals by controlling the fast‐growing algae that can outcompete corals for space. However, herbivorous fish guilds are species rich with important differences among species in diet, movement, and habitat preferences. Yet, we lack a general understanding of (1) how these species‐specific differences in feeding and behavior scale up to reef‐wide rates of ecosystem processes and (2) how species identity and diversity impact these processes. To address these knowledge gaps, we used field observations to derive key species‐ and size‐specific foraging parameters for nine herbivorous parrotfish species on coral reefs in the Florida Keys, USA. We then combined these foraging parameters with fish survey data spanning multiple spatial scales to estimate the rates of three ecosystem processes: area of reef grazed, amount of macroalgae removed, and rate of bioerosion. We found that predicted rates of ecological processes varied dramatically among habitats and among reef zones within habitats, driven primarily by variation in abundance among species with different foraging behaviors. In some cases, assemblages with similar levels of total biomass had different rates of ecological processes, and in others, assemblages with different biomass had similar rates of ecological processes. Importantly, our models of herbivory using species‐specific parameters differed from those using genus‐level parameters by up to 300% in rates of ecological processes, highlighting the importance of herbivore identity in this system. Our results indicate that there may be little overlap in the roles species play, suggesting that some systems may be vulnerable to loss of ecological function with the reduction or loss of just a few species. This work provides a framework that can be applied across the region to predict how changes in management may affect the ecological impact of these important herbivores.

To inform a community-based ocean zoning initiative, we conducted an intensive ecological assessment of the marine ecosystems of Barbuda, West Indies. We conducted 116 fish and 108 benthic surveys around the island, and measured the abundance and size structure of lobsters and conch at 52 and 35 sites, respectively. We found that both coral cover and fish biomass were similar to or lower than levels observed across the greater Caribbean; live coral cover and abundance of fishery target species, such as large snappers and groupers, was generally low. However, Barbuda lacks many of the high-relief forereef areas where similar work has been conducted in other Caribbean locations. The distribution of lobsters was patchy, making it difficult to quantify density at the island scale. However, the maximum size of lobsters was generally larger than in other locations in the Caribbean and similar to the maximum size reported 40 years ago. While the lobster population has clearly been heavily exploited, our data suggest that it is not as overexploited as in much of the rest of the Caribbean. Surveys of Barbuda’s Codrington Lagoon revealed many juvenile lobsters, but none of legal size (95 mm carapace length), suggesting that the lagoon functions primarily as nursery habitat. Conch abundance and size on Barbuda were similar to that of other Caribbean islands. Our data suggest that many of the regional threats observed on other Caribbean islands are present on Barbuda, but some resources—particularly lobster and conch—may be less overexploited than on other Caribbean islands. Local management has the potential to provide sustainability for at least some of the island’s marine resources. We show that a rapid, thorough ecological assessment can reveal clear conservation opportunities and facilitate rapid conservation action by providing the foundation for a community-driven policymaking process at the island scale.