Kristin M. Kleisner

An index to assess the health and benefits of the global ocean

The ocean plays a critical role in supporting human well-being, from providing food, livelihoods and recreational opportunities to regulating the global climate. Sustainable management aimed at maintaining the flow of a broad range of benefits from the ocean requires a comprehensive and quantitative method to measure and monitor the health of coupled human–ocean systems. We created an index comprising ten diverse public goals for a healthy coupled human–ocean system and calculated the index for every coastal country. Globally, the overall index score was 60 out of 100 (range 36–86), with developed countries generally performing better than developing countries, but with notable exceptions. Only 5% of countries scored higher than 70, whereas 32% scored lower than 50. The index provides a powerful tool to raise public awareness, direct resource management, improve policy and prioritize scientific research.

Increasing jellyfish populations: trends in Large Marine Ecosystems

Although there are various indications and claims that jellyfish (i.e., scyphozoans, cubozoans, most hydrozoans, ctenophores, and salps) have been increasing at a global scale in recent decades, a rigorous demonstration of this has never been presented. Because this is mainly due to scarcity of quantitative time series of jellyfish abundance from scientific surveys, we attempt to complement such data with non-conventional information from other sources. This was accomplished using the analytical framework of fuzzy logic, which allows the combination of information with variable degrees of cardinality, reliability, and temporal and spatial coverage. Data were aggregated and analyzed at the scale of Large Marine Ecosystem (LME). Of the 66 LMEs defined thus far that cover the world’s coastal waters and seas, trends of jellyfish abundance after 1950 (increasing, decreasing, or stable/variable) were identified for 45, with variable degrees of confidence. Of those 45 LMEs, the majority (28 or 62%) showed increasing trends. These changes are discussed in the context of possible sources of bias and uncertainty, along with previously proposed hypotheses to explain increases in jellyfish.

Potential Impact of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill on Commercial Fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico

Abstract Given the economic and social importance of fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico large marine ecosystem (LME), it is imperative to quantify the potential impacts of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. To provide a preliminary perspective of the consequences of this disaster, spatial databases of annual reported commercial catch and landed value prior to the spill were investigated relative to the location of the fisheries closures during July 2010. Recent trends illustrated by this study suggest that more than 20% of the average annual U.S. commercial catch in the Gulf has been affected by postspill fisheries closures, indicating a potential minimum loss in annual landed value of US

Patterns and Emerging Trends in Global Ocean Health

247 million. Lucrative shrimp, blue crab, menhaden, and oyster fisheries may be at greatest risk of economic losses. Overall, it is evident that the oil spill has impacted a highly productive area of crucial economic significance within the Gulf of Mexico LME. This study draws attention to the need for ongoing and thorough in...

Assessing Global Marine Biodiversity Status within a Coupled Socio-Ecological Perspective

International and regional policies aimed at managing ocean ecosystem health need quantitative and comprehensive indices to synthesize information from a variety of sources, consistently measure progress, and communicate with key constituencies and the public. Here we present the second annual global assessment of the Ocean Health Index, reporting current scores and annual changes since 2012, recalculated using updated methods and data based on the best available science, for 221 coastal countries and territories. The Index measures performance of ten societal goals for healthy oceans on a quantitative scale of increasing health from 0 to 100, and combines these scores into a single Index score, for each country and globally. The global Index score improved one point (from 67 to 68), while many country-level Index and goal scores had larger changes. Per-country Index scores ranged from 41–95 and, on average, improved by 0.06 points (range -8 to +12). Globally, average scores increased for individual goals by as much as 6.5 points (coastal economies) and decreased by as much as 1.2 points (natural products). Annual updates of the Index, even when not all input data have been updated, provide valuable information to scientists, policy makers, and resource managers because patterns and trends can emerge from the data that have been updated. Changes of even a few points indicate potential successes (when scores increase) that merit recognition, or concerns (when scores decrease) that may require mitigative action, with changes of more than 10–20 points representing large shifts that deserve greater attention. Goal scores showed remarkably little covariance across regions, indicating low redundancy in the Index, such that each goal delivers information about a different facet of ocean health. Together these scores provide a snapshot of global ocean health and suggest where countries have made progress and where a need for further improvement exists.

Exploring Patterns of Seafood Provision Revealed in the Global Ocean Health Index

People value the existence of a variety of marine species and habitats, many of which are negatively impacted by human activities. The Convention on Biological Diversity and other international and national policy agreements have set broad goals for reducing the rate of biodiversity loss. However, efforts to conserve biodiversity cannot be effective without comprehensive metrics both to assess progress towards meeting conservation goals and to account for measures that reduce pressures so that positive actions are encouraged. We developed an index based on a global assessment of the condition of marine biodiversity using publically available data to estimate the condition of species and habitats within 151 coastal countries. Our assessment also included data on social and ecological pressures on biodiversity as well as variables that indicate whether good governance is in place to reduce them. Thus, our index is a social as well as ecological measure of the current and likely future status of biodiversity. As part of our analyses, we set explicit reference points or targets that provide benchmarks for success and allow for comparative assessment of current conditions. Overall country-level scores ranged from 43 to 95 on a scale of 1 to 100, but countries that scored high for species did not necessarily score high for habitats. Although most current status scores were relatively high, likely future status scores for biodiversity were much lower in most countries due to negative trends for both species and habitats. We also found a strong positive relationship between the Human Development Index and resilience measures that could promote greater sustainability by reducing pressures. This relationship suggests that many developing countries lack effective governance, further jeopardizing their ability to maintain species and habitats in the future.

Operationalizing integrated ecosystem assessments within a multidisciplinary team: lessons learned from a worked example

Sustainable provision of seafood from wild-capture fisheries and mariculture is a fundamental component of healthy marine ecosystems and a major component of the Ocean Health Index. Here we critically review the food provision model of the Ocean Health Index, and explore the implications of knowledge gaps, scale of analysis, choice of reference points, measures of sustainability, and quality of input data. Global patterns for fisheries are positively related to human development and latitude, whereas patterns for mariculture are most closely associated with economic importance of seafood. Sensitivity analyses show that scores are robust to several model assumptions, but highly sensitive to choice of reference points and, for fisheries, extent of time series available to estimate landings. We show how results for sustainable seafood may be interpreted and used, and we evaluate which modifications show the greatest potential for improvements.

European Union's public fishing access agreements in developing countries

Operationalizing integrated ecosystem assessments within a multidisciplinary team: lessons learned from a worked example Geret S. DePiper*, Sarah K. Gaichas, Sean M. Lucey, Patricia Pinto da Silva, M. Robin Anderson, Heather Breeze, Alida Bundy, Patricia M. Clay, Gavin Fay, Robert J. Gamble, Robert S. Gregory, Paula S. Fratantoni, Catherine L. Johnson, Mariano Koen-Alonso, Kristin M. Kleisner, Julia Olson, Charles T. Perretti, Pierre Pepin, Fred Phelan, Vincent S. Saba, Laurel A. Smith, Jamie C. Tam, Nadine D. Templeman, and Robert P. Wildermuth NOAA Northeast Fisheries Science Center, 166 Water Street, Woods Hole, MA 02543, USA Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Centre, 80 East White Hills, St. John’s, NL A1C 5X1, Canada Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Bedford Institute of Oceanography, 1 Challenger Drive, Dartmouth, NS B2Y 4A2, Canada School for Marine Science & Technology, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, 200 Mill Road, Suite 30, Fairhaven, MA 02719, USA Environmental Defense Fund, Floor 28, 123 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94105, USA National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Marine Fisheries Service, Northeast Fisheries Science Center, Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Princeton University Forrestal Campus, 201 Forrestal Road, Princeton, NJ 08540, USA

Halpern et al. reply

The imperative to increase seafood supply while dealing with its overfished local stocks has pushed the European Union (EU) and its Member States to fish in the Exclusive Economic Zones of other countries through various types of fishing agreements for decades. Although European public fishing agreements are commented on regularly and considered to be transparent, this is the first global and historical study on the fee regime that governs them. We find that the EU has subsidized these agreements at an average of 75% of their cost (financial contribution agreed upon in the agreements), while private European business interests paid the equivalent of 1.5% of the value of the fish that was eventually landed. This raises questions of fisheries benefit-sharing and resource-use equity that the EU has the potential to address during the nearly completed reform of its Common Fisheries Policy.

Improved fisheries management could offset many negative effects of climate change

replying to T. A. Branch, D. J. Hively & R. Hilborn. 495, 10.1038/nature11974 (2013)Branch et al. suggest that the fisheries component of our ocean health and benefits index is ‘biased’. We contend that our approach is no more biased than their alternative, and that our method improves on theirs in three fundamental ways: it provides a score for every country, accounts for thousands of data-poor stocks, and incorporates sustainability more comprehensively.