Cooperative Research: Citizens and Government Working Together to Study Fisheries

Cooperative Research: Citizens and Government Working Together to Study Fisheries

0:00:01.1 John Sheehan: The relationship between government and recreational anglers and voters doesn't have to be one direction where in an agency, say NOAA fisheries dictates rules and regulations, and the public rumblingly acknowledges suspicious of how these laws and limits came to be. In many cases, that relationship can instead be collaborative with members of the communities who enjoy and rely on fisheries, actively participating in their health and management along with government scientists and officials, and that relationship can be really beneficial for everyone.

0:00:32.8 Speaker 2: The research that we're doing, the information we're getting is critical to our continued existence.

0:00:37.3 Speaker 3: I've been fishing for 74 years all over the world, and I still want the fish to be there when I'm old and in a wheelchair.

0:00:44.7 Speaker 4: And it kind of brings together that community and the sharing of knowledge.

0:00:48.3 Speaker 5: It's important to have a fishery that is gonna continue. I think the future is better now than it ever has been.

0:00:54.8 JS: This is Dive in with NOAA Fisheries, I'm John Sheehan, and those were voices of citizens, voters, recreational and commercial fishers who have participated in some of the co-operative research we'll hear about today, just in time for national fishing and boating week always held the first week of June.

0:01:11.6 Dr. Melissa Monk: I think cooperative research should be one of the foundations for how we conduct some of our business in terms of collecting both the fisheries-dependent data and the fisheries independent data.

0:01:20.9 JS: This is Dr. Melissa Monk, a Stock Assessment Scientist at the Southwest fisheries Science Center.

0:01:25.5 John Harms: The advantages of working with citizens, commercial fishermen and sport fishermen, they're almost too numerous to list.

0:01:32.7 JS: And this is John Harms, a research biologist at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center. John and Melissa both conduct cooperative research that informs stock assessments and management on the West Coast, working with private charter boat crews to gather necessary data.

0:01:49.1 JS: Dr. Melissa Monk and John Harms. Welcome to Dive In with NOAA Fisheries.

0:01:51.6 DM: Thanks so much. Glad to be here.

0:01:52.0 JH: Thanks, John.

0:01:54.1 JS: So you're both conducting Cooperative Research, meaning research that is involving NOAA scientists as well as private, either recreational or commercial fishermen, anglers. Could you both describe how that works in your respective studies?

0:02:12.1 DM: Yes, so what I'm working on at the Southwest Fishery Science Center in Santa Cruz is a cooperative research project, working with the recreational angling fleet in California to collect biological information from the many rockfish species we have on the West Coast. One of the ways to do that is through fisheries-dependent research or collections, so we're depending on the fishermen to collect the data we need, and that's being done by the deck hands aboard the charter boat fleet, and that's allowing us to get a picture of the age and the length of the fish and figuring out what the population looks like, that's a big question in terms of the stock assessments and figuring out what the fleet is actually collecting and fishing for and retaining out on the ocean.

0:02:58.1 JH: For the hook and line survey that we do. It certainly dovetails with the work that Melissa's doing, we're chartering sport fishing boats, so we're chartering these 60 to 75 foot fishing boats that most folks are familiar with, and we're doing an independent research cruise, and the boats are staffed by usually the vessel crew. The normal vessel crew, so it's the captain and a second captain as well as three or four deck hands, and so those are employees, generally speaking, employees of the boat, and they're doing the fishing. What we're out there doing is we're asking them to fish in a certain way with a certain design and methodology to get independent information that ultimately gets corroborated and integrated in the stock assessment that Melissa and others are working on to get the full picture of what's going on with the species, biologically and abundance-wise. Our project goes back to really around 2002 in a number of species that were significantly over-fished at that point, and then some of the management measures that were implemented were highly restrictive in order to rebuild those species.

0:04:07.5 JH: So you had a lot of both sport and commercial fishermen that weren't able to get out there and make a living, their boats were essentially tied to the dock, and there wasn't a whole lot of data at that time, and so the sport fishing industry really approached NOAA back then and said, Hey, we'd like to get involved and assist with collecting data and making sure there's a lot of information there that management measures can be based on. So they really approached us with the idea, the industry really was the prime mover in getting our hook and line survey going.

0:04:38.8 JS: But in both of your cases, you are working with the people, with the anglers who most utilize the fishery, and the areas that you're collecting data on, you're putting the people who have a stake in that fishery out to work.

0:04:53.5 DM: Yes, I think that's the best explanation of Cooperative Research, we're able to utilize the knowledge and the understanding of the fleet, 'cause John, I think used a lot of the knowledge to find the Rocky habitat for his survey locations with the expert knowledge of the captains in the fleet. Because we're interested in rockfish species, we wanna make sure we're sampling Rocky habitat, and we know that those charter boats are going out there and they're targeting the Rocky habitat when they're taking customers fishing, which allows us to get the species that we're interested in and in terms of John Harms research project and fisheries independent study that's targeting the rock fish species, he wanted to make sure that he was going out and targeting Rocky habitat where the species would be known to be present.

0:05:36.4 JH: Yeah, that's absolutely correct. Not only are the folks that we're working with, the primary stakeholders down there, but it's the knowledge and ultimately involving them in the research, it's not just a means to an end to collect data, sort of an ancillary benefit of involving these folks is they're engaged in the process, are much more informed and then management that is built on the stock assessments that they're collecting information for becomes a little bit more legitimate, they're kind of seeing like, Here's how we play a role in that, and it really does play a secondary benefit in terms of adding some legitimacy and transparency to the management.

0:06:17.2 JS: Yeah, this data that has been collected by these folks that impacts the management decisions, and it's a product of their work.

0:06:26.4 JH: That's correct. And it doesn't always mean they like it, it's for good or for bad, it's been interesting, since we've been doing this hook and line survey, we've been fortunate that we've been largely in a fairly productive regime, and it's been characterized generally by rebuilding or at least stable population levels for a lot of the critical species, but these things are cyclical and we may very well move into a regime that is less favorable, and hopefully we'll see that and folks will be aware and know that that's just the nature of the resource over time.

0:07:00.5 JS: And Melissa, your surveys also use hook and line, like standard rod and real gear. What is it about hook and line collection that's advantageous rather than, say, using a troll or using nets.

0:07:14.6 DM: So for most of the species, they live over rocky habitat, and it's really difficult to get a troll in there, you get snagged. It wouldn't really be possible. And so one of the other major gears to use would be hook and line, and that's what the fleet uses, and so it also gives us a good representation of what the fleet might actually catch if they were out there fishing on a normal fishing day.

0:07:36.0 JH: That's it in a nutshell, the troll survey that we currently conducted to Canada to Mexico annual research cruise, and it's great for getting information in the soft bottom habitats and mud, that sort of thing, but the big information gap 20 years ago, and in a sense, it still persists today is in these structure associated species, you have totally different assemblages associated with hard bottom than you do with soft bottom and hook and line gear. There's all sorts of different ways to deploy the gear, different configurations, that sort of thing, long line gear, rod and real gear, vertical set lines, that sort of thing, so it's very adaptable to different types of habitats that are out there in different types of species, it's inexpensive and the fact that it was the sport fishing industry that was so active in working with us, we wanted to use gear that was familiar to them, so they were the ones that really played the largest role in designing the gear that we use on the Southern California hook and line survey. We really haven't changed the gear very much, really at all in 20 years, so it's definitely stood the test of time.

0:08:46.4 JS: And have the results in your survey proven out that the partnership is working?

0:08:53.4 JH: I think so, certainly on our end, since we started this survey back in the early 2000s, I think our data has been used in about 20 different stock assessments across eight or 10 different species, and these are species that really were data-limited prior to this survey getting off the ground. So it really has been, the footprint of the survey spatial is fairly small. We're just down in Southern California. I imagine if we were doing something like this in a larger spatial context, it would be... The data would be useful for a lot more species as well.

0:09:24.9 DM: Yeah, in terms of stock assessment, which is the process by which we try to estimate how much biomass or how many of a given species are out there in the ocean, we do consider the hook and line survey for all of those. And it is being used in the current 2023 copper rockfish assessment. And the way we use that data is we create what's called an index of abundance, so it gives us a relative idea of the trend in the population over time, and for us to use those in stock assessments, we need a really long time series, because if you just have one or two years, you're getting a snapshot of the population, but now that we've got 20 plus years from the hook and line survey, that gives us a good idea of the relative trend of a species over time in Southern California bight. And the other great thing about the survey is that we have the age data, so we have the length of the fish that come on board and also the age associated with those fish, that helps us look at growth patterns too across depth or across the region, North and South of conception for some of these species. We can compare the ages from John survey to ages from other surveys as well and other sources of information. So it's been a great resource to have this long time series in Southern California.

0:10:39.3 JS: Melissa, can I ask you to describe the other group that you work with, the California collaborative Fisheries Research Program?

0:10:46.4 DM: Yes, I love to. So the California Collaborative Fisheries Research Program, or what we call affectionately CCFRP is a collaborative that started out of Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo in Maslin Marine Labs back in 2007 as a fisheries independent hook and line survey. It operates a little bit differently than John Harms survey in Southern California. There are six academic institutions involved, the survey utilizes volunteer anglers, they've had over 2000 volunteers since 2007 participate in the program, and the volunteers are the ones who are doing all of the fishing, while the scientific staff on the boat are grad students and undergrads who have been trained to implement the survey by the professors. This was developed as an inside outside Marine Protected Area Survey in 2007, California constructed a network of marine protected areas along the coast of California within state waters, and so the survey expanded, was lucky enough to expand in 2017 to a state-wide survey. So this is the only fisheries independent survey, hook and line survey we have for the near shore species that spans the entire California Coast, which is pretty amazing, but it's been a great addition to the stock assessments because we can compare and contrast it to what John is seeing as well, in the deeper waters for most of the species.

0:12:11.2 JS: So you're partnering with another group's data collection in order to paint a bigger picture.

0:12:16.7 DM: Exactly, it allows us to paint a bigger picture, especially in the near-shore waters.

0:12:21.6 JS: Got it. And I think both of your examples illustrate the need for partnerships, the need to work with other groups, other organizations in the process of just gathering more data.

0:12:33.3 DM: Exactly, we can't do this in a silo, especially as a Stock Assessment Scientist, I think it's really critical for us to understand where the data come from and how the data are collected. Once the stock assessor gets the data, we're just seeing the numbers on the screen, we're not seeing how the data were collected necessarily, or what happened in the field, or how messy the biological data might be, because anything ecologically related isn't cut and dry, we're not working in a factory, we are reliant on nature, and so it's been great to have the extra contacts within the fleet as well. So if I have a question about what happened in 2007, I can call up a Captain and say, Hey, do you remember what happened? Where as looking at the data, I might have no idea, I just see a change in the size composition or the age of the fish, but there's probably an answer as to what happened out in the field or when they were fishing in the fishery.

0:13:25.7 JS: That's really interesting. Finally, Cooperative Research happens in every region, but plays a more central role on the West Coast, could you see these models expanding around the country?

0:13:37.3 DM: Absolutely, I think cooperative research should be one of the foundations for how we conduct some of our business in terms of collecting both the fisheries dependent data and the fisheries independent data, because like John mentioned if you do not have buy-in from your stakeholders and from the Fleet, it makes it really hard to digest what's happening in the stock and understand the outcome. So I think the other piece of this is it's opening the door for communication with the fleet and the stakeholders, and I think hearing from those of us who are actually conducting the stock assessments and communicating the results with the fleet, to making sure that everybody understands what happened, how it happened and why it happened. Whether or not the stock is in a growth phase or in a decline, everybody can understand what's happening and that there's more trust and communication between the science, the managers and the stakeholders.

0:14:27.5 JH: I would absolutely agree with all of that, the advantages of working with citizens, commercial fishermen, sport fishermen, they're almost too numerous to list, we're collecting really great data, and then there's a bunch of ancillary benefits that fall along with that. The buy-in that tends to follow and just the relationships that you develop with the captains are important, and I think that goes both ways. So it's not uncommon, probably not a week goes by where one of our captains doesn't give me a call to ask about a certain thing or ground truth, something that they're hearing, or just provide an anecdote, some of the deck hands will do the same. We've got folks who once were deck hands and now are captains in their own right, are kind of spreading the news about these types of projects, but they'll... They get a weird Squid on a hook or a weird fish, they'll save it and send it up here, 'cause we know we'll send it off to someone to get the genetics analyzed. They wanna know what it is. That sort of thing. So there's just all these little things, but the big picture issue is the data and the management that result are really improved by working with the industry.

0:15:37.2 JS: Melissa Monk and John Harms, thanks so much.

0:15:38.7 DM: Thank you, John, it was a pleasure.

0:15:40.0 JH: Yeah, thank you, John. Very much appreciate it.

0:15:43.3 JS: John Harms is a research biologist at the Northwest Fishery Science Center, and Dr. Melissa Monk is a Stock Assessment Scientist at the Southwest Fishery Science Center. You can find more about cooperative research opportunities on the West Coast or wherever you might be by connecting with your nearest Fishery Science Center or regional management council. All of that contact info can be found at fisheries.noaa.gov. Thank you to CCFRP announcement catching and SpiderPlant Media for some of the audio we heard earlier of enthusiastic anglers, happy National fishing and boating week. For those of you who observe, I'm John Sheehan, and this has been Dive In with NOAA Fisheries.