Eric L Gilman

Bycatch in fisheries can have profound effects on the abundance of species with relatively low resilience to increased mortality, can alter the evolutionary characteristics and concomitant fitness of affected populations through heritable trait-based selective removals, and can alter ecosystem functions, structure and services through food web trophic links. We challenge current piecemeal bycatch management paradigms, which reduce the mortality of one taxon of conservation concern at the unintended expense of others. Bycatch mitigation measures may also reduce intraspecific genetic diversity. We drew examples of broadly prescribed ‘best practice’ methods to mitigate bycatch that result in unintended cross-taxa conflicts from pelagic longline, tuna purse seine, gillnet and trawl fisheries. We identified priority improvements in data quality and in understanding ecological effects of bycatch fishing mortality to support holistic ecological risk assessments of the effects of bycatch removals conducted through semi-quantitative and model-based approaches. A transition to integrated bycatch assessment and management that comprehensively consider biodiversity across its hierarchical manifestations is needed, where relative risks and conflicts from alternative bycatch management measures are evaluated and accounted for in fisheries decision-making processes. This would enable managers to select measures with intentional and acceptable tradeoffs to best meet objectives, when conflicts are unavoidable.

The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) is an inter‐governmental organization mandated to construct a biodiversity informatics research infrastructure to enable free and open access to biodiversity data worldwide ‐ the ‘biodiversity data commons.’ Since its inception in 2001, GBIF has developed the most comprehensive portal to primary biodiversity data in the world, currently enabling access to >177M biodiversity records and >1M species names, served by 291 publishers in 35 countries. The GBIF infrastructure provides tools for data owners to publish Internet‐accessible copies of their data in an internationally‐agreed, standardized format to ensure interoperability among datasets. Through training, access to international experts, and mentoring programmes, GBIF builds the capacity of national and regional institutions to become active, fully functional ‘biodiversity information facilities,’ as part of the coordinated, globally distributed GBIF network. Numerous studies demonstrate the utility of primary species‐level point occurrence data in improving our understanding of the main drivers of changes and losses of global biodiversity. The example of invasive alien species is described to demonstrate how GBIF‐enabled data are contributing to this research domain. However, progress to date in mobilizing data and integrating online biodiversity datasets remains inadequate for many priority applications, owing to thematic gaps in content, such as coverage of some ecosystem types, taxonomic groups, regions, and time periods. GBIF‐enabled data are biased taxonomically towards better‐studied groups, especially birds, and over two‐thirds of GBIF‐enabled, georeferenced records come from just three countries (USA, Sweden, UK); dataset publication in Africa, Asia, and Oceania is particularly underrepresented. The overriding bottleneck hampering progress in filling gaps is not informatics tools, which are reasonably well‐developed. Instead, the principal barriers are capture of biodiversity data currently in non‐digital formats, insufficient institutionalization of incentives for publishing data, and inadequate enforcement of existing relevant policies. Operationalizing a proposed GBIF‐enabled ‘Data Publishing Framework,’ in combination with needed changes in policy and legal frameworks, will address many of the obstacles to biodiversity dataset publication, discovery, and use.

Placing weights near hooks in pelagic longline fisheries can reduce seabird, sea turtle, shark and billfish bycatch. However, vessels that do not use a wire leader on branch lines, such as in the Hawaii-based longline swordfish fishery, do not place weights close to the hook, or use any weights on their branchlines, in part, due to safety concerns: If branchlines break during hauling, which frequently occurs when sharks are caught and bite off the terminal tackle, the weight can fly back at the vessel at extremely high velocity, infrequently causing serious injury, and in very rare cases, killing crew. A dockside trial and research fishing trip on a Hawaii longline swordfish vessel was conducted to assess the efficacy and commercial viability of two experimental designs of safer weights. Results from the dockside trial indicate that the two experimental weights present a substantially reduced risk of injury to crew relative to conventionally employed line weights. Results from one experimental fishing trip demonstrated that an experimental weight performed as designed, however, the sample size was too small to demonstrate a significant difference in weight behavior after lines brake during gear retrieval between the control and experimental weight. Additional research and development is needed to overcome identified practicality issues (threading one of the experimental weights onto the line, gear tangling due to absence of a swivel), and durability of the experimental weights, while keeping the per-unit cost low enough to be economical and competitive with conventional lead center swivels. All problems encountered with the two experimental leads are likely possible to overcome. With additional research and development, it will be possible to develop a simple, inexpensive, and durable safer lead weights for use in pelagic longline gear.

... F/V Mariah 57 2.16. F/V Hokuao 58 2.17. F/V Jennifer 60 2.18. F/V Katherine Y 62 2.19. F/V Jane 63 2.20. F/V Seven Star II 64 2.21. F/V Robin 66 2.22. F/V Crystal 68 2.23. F/V Miss Lisa 71 2.24. F/V Heola 72 2.25. F/V Sea Falcon 74 2.26. F/V Princess Jasmine and Princess ...

Capture in global pelagic longline fisheries threatens the viability of some seabird populations. The Hawaii longline tuna fishery annually catches hundreds of seabirds, primarily Laysan (Phoebastria immutabilis) and black-footed (P. nigripes) albatrosses. Since seabird regulations were introduced in 2001, the seabird catch rate has declined 74%. However, over the past decade, seabird catch levels significantly increased due to significant increasing trends in both effort and nominal seabird catch rates. We modelled observer data using a spatio-temporal generalized additive mixed model with zero-inflated Poisson likelihood to determine the significance of the effect of various risk factors on the seabird catch rate. The seabird catch rate significantly increased as annual mean multivariate ENSO index values increased, suggesting that decreasing ocean productivity observed in recent years in the central north Pacific may have contributed to the increasing trend in nominal seabird catch rate. A significant increasing trend in number of albatrosses attending vessels, possibly linked to declining regional ocean productivity and increasing absolute abundance of black-footed albatrosses, may also have contributed to the increasing nominal seabird catch rate. Largest opportunities for reductions are through augmented efficacy of seabird bycatch mitigation north of 23° N where mitigation methods are required and during setting instead of during hauling. Both side vs. stern setting, and blue-dyed vs. untreated bait significantly reduced the seabird catch rate. Of two options for meeting regulatory requirements, side setting had a significantly lower seabird catch rate than blue-dyed bait. There was significant spatio-temporal and seasonal variation in the risk of seabird capture with highest catch rates in April and May and to the northwest of the main Hawaiian Islands.

ABSTRACT Of the 39 Nationwide Permits (NWPs) that came into effect on 11 February 1997, 11 authorize activities that could impact Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) wetlands. Because managers of CNMI wetlands lack an accurate scientific basis for determining the significance of proposed wetland impacts, the CNMI denied and conditioned Clean Water Act Section 401 Water Quality Certifications and Coastal Zone Management Act Section 307 consistency concurrences for these 11 NWPs to reduce the likelihood of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) authorizing more than minimal adverse wetland impacts under the NWP program. The CNMI decided that the benefits of requiring a more stringent review process outweigh the costs of increasing the regulatory burden on developers. A review of authorized CNMI wetland impacts indicates that the loss of wetland quantity under the NWP program on Saipan is minimal. However, managers do not know if the site specific and cumulative loss of wetland quality— wetland functional performance and provision of valued services— is significant. The Corps authorized 7 projects under NWPs that impacted CNMI wetlands. These 7 projects impacted 10 of Saipan's 37 freshwater wetlands and filled approximately 3.6 hectares or 1.5% of the island's total freshwater wetland area. Seven of these 10 affected sites were isolated wetlands. Nationwide, the Corps does not know if the cumulative loss of wetland area, functions, and values authorized under the NWP program has been minimal because the Corps has incomplete data on wetland impacts. Also, because most regions of the United States lack standardized assessment methods that estimate changes in functional performance and provision of valued services by local wetland classes, because many regions do not have the ability to define thresholds for cumulative wetland impacts, and because even small, isolated, and temporary wetlands may possess valued functions, the Corps does not know if wetland impacts authorized under the NWP program have been minimal. The Corps lacks an accurate basis for defining what constitutes a more than minimal adverse wetland impact to implement the NWP Program. Regulators assume that conserving wetland area prevents a net loss of functional performance and the provision of valued wetland services, but they have no means to confirm the accuracy of this assumption. Conditioning and denying the use of NWPs that could be used to authorize wetland impacts creates a more stringent review process but still results in the continued authorization of unknown wetland impacts under provisional NWPs and Individual Permits. A proposed solution is to develop regional wetland assessment methods for each wetland class to allow for the management of the project‐specific and cumulative effects of wetland degradation on wetlands functional performance and provision of valued services. This provides wetland managers with the requisite information to condition relevant NWPs to ensure that no more than minimal adverse wetland impacts are authorized in their region.

About this document The mission of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is to understand and predict changes in the Earth's environment and to conserve and manage coastal and oceanic marine resources and habitats to help meet our Nation's economic, social, and environmental needs. As a branch of NOAA, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) conducts or sponsors research and monitoring programs to improve the scientific basis for conservation and management decisions. NMFS strives to make information about the purpose, methods, and results of its scientific studies widely available. NMFS' Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center (PIFSC) uses the NOAA Technical Memorandum NMFS series to achieve timely dissemination of scientific and technical information that is of high quality but inappropriate for publication in the formal peer-reviewed literature. The contents are of broad scope, including technical workshop proceedings, large data compilation...

Cryptic, not readily detectable, components of fishing mortality are not routinely accounted for in fisheries management because of a lack of adequate data, and for some components, a lack of accurate estimation methods. Cryptic fishing mortalities can cause adverse ecological effects, are a source of wastage, reduce the sustainability of fishery resources and, when unaccounted for, can cause errors in stock assessments and population models. Sources of cryptic fishing mortality are (1) pre-catch losses, where catch dies from the fishing operation but is not brought onboard when the gear is retrieved, (2) ghost-fishing mortality by fishing gear that was abandoned, lost or discarded, (3) post-release mortality of catch that is retrieved and then released alive but later dies as a result of stress and injury sustained from the fishing interaction, (4) collateral mortalities indirectly caused by various ecological effects of fishing and (5) losses due to synergistic effects of multiple interacting sources of stress and injury from fishing operations, or from cumulative stress and injury caused by repeated sub-lethal interactions with fishing operations. To fill a gap in international guidance on best practices, causes and methods for estimating each component of cryptic fishing mortality are described, and considerations for their effective application are identified. Research priorities to fill gaps in understanding the causes and estimating cryptic mortality are highlighted.

... Another feature of groundwater in the GCC region is quality degradation. ... Ground water rechargeGround water use ... The increase in demand for potable water led the GCC countries to resort to desalination of seawater which started in the 50s and early 60s. ...