Hearing on How the Mission and Related Research of NOAA Contribute to The National Science Program
Dr. Susan K. Avery, President and Director
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Written Testimony Presented to the Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies
Committee on Appropriations
United States House of Representatives
March 4, 2009
excerpted
NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Services (NMFS) has responsibility for the management of fishing activity between the 3-mile and 200-mile limits of U.S. waters, and manages 230 commercial stocks via 47 different management plans administered by 8 regional Fishery Management Councils. Of these, 89 stocks are considered overfished or subject to overfishing. An additional 33 fish and 32 non-fish species are protected by NOAA Fisheries under the Endangered Species Act.
NOAA has the primary responsibility for sustaining these fishery ecosystems and the economies and cultures they support. Significant declines in fishery production over the last several decades have in most cases been linked to excess fishing pressure, often a symptom of inadequate management plans that are based on single stock assessments and rely on limitation of gear or effort to restrict catches. In recent years, the fishery science community has recognized the importance of understanding and managing coastal fisheries at the ecosystem level. This type of Ecosystem Based Management (EBM), increasingly embraced in principle by NOAA, considers multiple components of a fishery ecosystem, including major physical and biological factors that affect recruitment and survival of commercial species and sustainability of their populations. EBM allows development of management principles based on the reality of ecosystem function, and at the same time provides protection for habitats and the biodiversity they support.
Unlike previous management schemes that could be based on landings data and routine surveys, however, EBM rests on understanding a much more complex ecosystem structure, requiring a broader set of observations and more sophisticated interpretation and modeling. Achieving this will require significant participation by the academic research community working with NMFS and other NOAA scientists. Current solicitations for NOAA Cooperative Institutes recognize this need, and timely progress in ensuring the future sustainability of our fishery resources will only be possible through more extramural research support, whether for Cooperative Institutes or by other mechanisms. This is another powerful example of the value of NOAA’s research partnership with the larger academic community.
