Quantifying sustainable operating space for lobster fisheries in Nova Scotia

可持续渔业需要的不仅仅是限制人们的捕捞量。它们还必须考虑所涉渔民的目标，包括渔业如何支持他们的社区和生活，因为这些因素影响到人们捕鱼的方式及其对资源的照顾。然而，将社会目标与生物学结合起来一直很困难，因为尚不清楚如何直接比较它们。该项目的目标是通过研究社会、文化和经济因素来克服这些问题，就像我们研究生态过程一样，了解它们如何在空间和时间上影响鱼类种群。这样做将有助于定义我们所说的可持续经营空间，可持续的捕捞水平，并提供足够的社会、文化和经济效益来维持渔业。可持续性通常只被认为是在收获物种方面，在被认为是最大限度地提高渔业产量的捕捞水平上。可持续经营空间背后的想法是，可以在社会效益和生态效益之间进行权衡，以减少捕捞压力，作为保护的机会，否则会被忽视。该项目将在新斯科舍省的渔港测试这一想法，以了解影响龙虾种群的自然和人类过程的全部范围。为此，我们将定义渔业可持续发展的最小和最大捕获量、经济价值和社会文化效益，并开发一系列统计模型，将自然和人为因素与这些渔业效益联系起来，以了解解释捕捞种群在空间和时间上如何变化的全部过程。这项研究将涉及一个由生物学家、经济学家和社会科学家组成的多学科团队，采用先进的统计模型，并为本科生和研究生提供机会。这些新研究人员离开项目时，将具备在学术界、政府研究、教育和非政府组织工作中具有竞争力的技能。重要的是，该项目是模块化的，可扩展到其他渔业，为解决广泛的可持续性问题提供了一个灵活的框架。它还将培养学生发展决策理论方面急需的技能，使他们能够在不确定的情况下帮助促进最佳保护决策。预计这个项目将引起新斯科舍省各地龙虾渔民的高度兴趣，他们将看到他们的价值反映在对其渔业的科学评估中；来自加拿大渔业和海洋部，将向其提供将社会目标纳入其现有管理进程的数量框架；对新斯科舍省人来说，他们将看到并了解龙虾渔业的深度、规模和价值，而不仅仅是金钱价值。我们还预计，如果未来气候导致的龙虾捕捞量下降威胁到整个地区渔民的生计，这项工作将引起政策制定者的兴趣。

Sustainable fisheries require more than just limits on how much people can catch. They must also consider the goals of fishers involved, including how the fishery supports their communities and lives, as these factors influence how people fish and their care for the resource. Yet combining social aims with biology has been difficult because it isn't clear how to directly compare them. The goal of this project is to overcome these problems by studying social, cultural, and economic factors as we do ecological processes, to understand how they influence fished populations in space and time. Doing so will help define what we call sustainable operating spaces, levels of catch that are sustainable and provide sufficient social, cultural, and economic benefits to sustain the fishery. Sustainability is usually thought of only in terms of harvested species, at levels of catch thought to maximize fisheries yield. The idea behind a sustainable operating space is that trade-offs can be made between social and ecological benefits to reduce fishing pressure, as opportunities for conservation that would otherwise be overlooked. This project will test this idea among fishing ports in Nova Scotia to understand the full range of natural and human processes that impact lobster populations. To do this, we will define minimum and maximum levels of catch, economic value, and socio-cultural benefit considered sustainable within the fishery, developing a series of statistical models to relate natural and human factors to these fishery benefits to understand the full range of processes that explain how fished populations vary in space and time. The research will involve a multidisciplinary team of biologists, economists, and social scientists, advanced statistical modelling, and opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students. These new researchers will leave the project with a competitive skill set for careers in academia, government research, education, and NGO work. Importantly, the project is modular and scalable to other fisheries, providing a flexible framework to tackle a wide range of sustainability issues. It will also train students to develop sought-after skills in decision theory, enabling them to help facilitate optimal conservation decisions under uncertainty. It is expected that this project will receive high levels of interest from lobster fishers across Nova Scotia, who will see their values reflected in a scientific assessment of their fishery; from Fisheries and Oceans Canada, who will be provided a quantitative framework for incorporating social objectives into their existing management process; and to Nova Scotians generally, who will see and understand the depth, scale, and value of lobster fisheries beyond simply dollar values. We also anticipate also that the work will be of subsequent interest to policy makers, should future climate-driven declines in lobster catches threaten the livelihoods of fishers throughout the region.