by Rhea Ehresmann and Natura Richardson

If a pot gear fleet averages 1 million pounds of Pacific cod harvest in a day but harvest rates have been increasing the last week, and a huge storm is projected for the next three days, and four boats are down for a mechanical, how long will it take to harvest the remaining 5.6 million pounds?

A. To answer this question, I need to know swimming speed and spawning stage of Pacific cod, direction of ocean currents, water temperature, and abundance of predators

B. Let me get my Magic-8 ball

C. Around 7 days

D. My model fails to converge when I include mechanical breakdowns

If you answered C, you might be cut out for fisheries management! As fisheries managers, we are faced with questions like this regularly and have to make our best guess at the answer with the data and information we have at hand.

What is fishery management?

Fishery management aims to maintain sustainable production of fish stocks over time while promoting the socioeconomic well-being of fishers and fishing communities ¹. In Alaska state fisheries, management actions are wide-ranging but generally involve establishing a harvest target or limit for a species using time, area, and gear restrictions. Harvest limits may be established by the managers, often with input from many other research or dockside staff and in consultation with other agencies and treaties. Harvest limits can come in many forms, such as individual quotas, total allowable catch (TAC), and area, gear, or season allocations. Managers are responsible for hitting the harvest limits without going too far over or under. Best would be to hit a bullseye.

While methods for management may be similar among fisheries, each fishery is unique and managed differently. For fisheries with high participation and harvesting power, it is hands-on, requiring rigorous in-season management methods, such as daily calls to fishermen to get real time estimates of harvest. Sometimes fisheries are managed down to the last fish or hour. Other fisheries are slower paced, require minimal communication with the fleet, and can be entirely monitored through records of how much fish was caught (“landings”). Fisheries might close when landings indicate the harvest limit is reached or when the fishing season has ended. We use many tools to make decisions: biological samples collected from harvested fish, catch records, information from the fleet, logbooks, data from on-board observers, aerial surveys, electronic vessel monitoring systems, weather websites, and lots of Excel spreadsheets.

Fisheries like this salmon purse seine fishery in Southeast Alaska depend on real-time decisions by managers about when and where to open and close the fishery. Photo by Anne Beaudreau.

A day in the life of a fishery manager

The typical morning routine as a fishery manager looks something like this: pour coffee, look at current harvest for open fisheries, and examine daily harvest rates and areas. We pore over weather webpages to determine which areas are fishable and which vessels are capable of fishing under current and future conditions. This helps us anticipate increases or decreases in daily harvest and the number of remaining days for fishing. If the fishery warrants, we do a daily call out to fleet to get the most recent harvest reports and see if fishing is improving or dropping off. After this morning routine or during slower times, we work on written reports that describe plans for prosecuting the fishery or summarize the last fishing season, including number of boats, total harvest, areas of harvest, revenues, and so on. When we are not working on a report (and there is always a report), we might be running data requests or reviewing old reports and preparing materials for upcoming management meetings.

Yet, the pace of our day is largely determined by the incoming phone calls or visits from fishermen who have questions to ask or information to share. Inquiries may come from a captain wanting to know the harvest limits in an open fishery, a greenhorn interested in breaking into a fishery for the first time, or an entrepreneur filing the paperwork to sell catch off their boat. Alaskan fisheries are dynamic, and as a result, life in fishery management is ever changing. The health of the stocks dictates how (or if) we will have a fishery, so fisheries and seasons may change from year to year. Fish move in, fish move out. Some weeks are very exciting and busy, other weeks are quite slow.

The life of a fishery manager involves lots of reading, writing, and data wrangling as Rhea can attest. Photo courtesy of Rhea Ehresmann.

Pros and cons of a job in fishery management

Two major pros of working in fisheries management are human interactions and learning opportunities. It is not an ivory tower position. The job and daily decisions are tangible. Every day we talk with someone who has touched fish, run fishing gear, or purchased fish and through these interactions, we learn. We learn from fishermen about the capacity and capability of boats and their gear. Fishermen are the eyes on the water who see things first hand. They share their observations of the environment, from whales to birds to pyrosomes to water temperature. From processors we learn about markets, products, and economics. From dockside samplers we learn about the biology of harvested species, such as signs of spawn, abnormalities, disease, and parasites. We not only learn from human interaction but also from attending management meetings, participating on stock assessment surveys, or reading and preparing reports. Rather than being the expert and learning a lot about one thing, we get to learn about a wide range of all things fisheries.

The pros of the job can also be the cons. While it’s rewarding to have good relationships and communication with the fleet or processors, that reward can diminish when fish stocks are down and conservation efforts must be taken. We are the bearers of bad news and we hear when difficult decisions impact many people. Additionally, because there is so much to learn, it can be frustrating to be speaking with someone and not have the answers or forget something that you just looked up for the fifth time. Information Overload. And lastly, because there is so much distraction in speaking with people or researching, it can take weeks or months to finish a report. Projects can drag on.

Well-informed fishery management decisions are important for maintaining sustainable fisheries and strong working waterfronts. Photo by Anne Beaudreau.

Preparing for a job in fisheries management

If we’ve sold you on the job based on the daily routine, endless learning opportunity, and great relationships you’ll develop, then get ready. Hands-on experience is extremely important and what we valued most when starting in fisheries management. One needs to understand how fisheries work. Start gaining experience in fisheries however possible – as a deckhand, port sampler, fishery observer, field technician, or survey volunteer. Get an idea of what life is like for fishermen, how the gear works, how fish are caught and handled from the ocean to the dock.

However, what you can’t observe on the dock or deck is the regulatory process. Understanding how regulations are implemented, created, and how they can be changed is crucial for a position in management. The best way to learn about this is to go to fisheries meetings, such the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) or Alaska Board of Fisheries (BOF) meetings to learn about the federal and state processes. UAF offers a cram course on the NPFMC where students attend a week of meetings; this course was so insightful. Early on in our management positions, we entered into the BOF cycles, which also forced us to read, write, and prepare for intense regulatory meetings. These short, rigorous meetings taught us as much as can be learned from months on the job.

Fishery managers need to have a working knowledge of fishery operations to make good decisions. Natura got her early training as a fisheries observer in Alaska. Photo courtesy of Natura Richardson.

Concluding thoughts

“Managing fisheries is hard: it’s like managing a forest, in which the trees are invisible and keep moving around.” ² This quote rings true for fisheries managers. Not only is it incredibly difficult to predict the abundance of fish and where they are at any given time, we also must account for the movements and effort of the fleet in real time. While some parts of management may be exhausting and overwhelming, it is also rewarding when harvest targets are met, the fleet is happy, our resources remain sustainable, and we provide the best fish products for the world. These aspects of fisheries management get us out of bed in the morning and keep us on our toes.

References

¹ Hilborn, R. and C. J. Walters. 1992. Quantitative Fisheries Stock Assessment: Choice, Dynamics and Uncertainty. New York: Chapman and Hall.

² John Shepherd. ca. 1978. Unpublished lecture at Princeton University.

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Rhea Ehresmann began her career in fisheries as a deckhand aboard a commercial troller out of Sitka, Alaska, before making a move into fisheries research and management with Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) in 2010. She is currently the assistant management biologist for the commercial troll fisheries in Southeast Alaska. Rhea is also a Master’s student in the CFE Lab.

Natura Richardson has been working for ADF&G since 2010 and currently is the assistant area management biologist for state managed commercial groundfish and shellfish fisheries in the Kodiak, Chignik, and South Alaska Peninsula Areas. Natura is a CFE Lab alum and earned her Master’s degree in 2016.