Mitigating Impacts of Natural Hazards on Fishery Ecosystems

<em>Poster Abstract</em>.—The U.S. Congress, under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Reauthorization Act of 2006, mandated a report on the impact of hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma on commercial and recreational fishery habitat, including that of shrimp and oysters, for Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. The report was compiled by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries Office of Habitat Conservation with assistance by staff from the Southeast Region and the Southeast Fisheries Science Center and input from other elements of NOAA; federal, state, and local agencies; and academic institutions.

Protecting marine biodiversity: a comparison of individual habitat quotas and marine protected areas

Fisheries managers in the United States are required to identify and mitigate the adverse impacts of fishing activity on essential fish habitat (EFH). There are additional concerns that the viability of sessile noncommercial species, animals that are habitat dependent and (or) are themselves constituents of fishery habitat, may be threatened by fishing activities. We propose a system of individual habitat quotas (IHQ) to achieve habitat conservation and species protection cost effectively. Individual quotas of habitat impact units would be distributed to fishers with an aggregate quota set to maintain a target habitat "stock". Using a dynamic, spatially explicit fishery simulation model, we explore the efficiency and effectiveness of an IHQ policy versus marine protected areas (MPAs) for conserving habitat-dependent, sessile species of unknown spatial distributions. Our findings indicate that an IHQ policy with a conservatively established habitat target is better suited to the protection of sessile nontarget species than a rotating or fixed MPA policy.

Fish Habitat: Essential Fish Habitat and Rehabilitation

<em>Abstract</em> .—The importance of coastal wetlands to a large number of commercially important marine fish species for spawning, nursery, and foraging habitat is a commonly held belief. Few studies to substantiate this belief have been conducted in the northeastern United States. This paper examines in detail the life histories and habitat requirements of three species of fish commonly found in salt marshes in the northeastern United States. The results indicate that valuable commercial and recreational species of fish and their prey require coastal wetlands as habitat during their life cycles in New England. Coastal wetland restoration projects will increase the abundance of wetland habitat types required by commercial and recreational species of marine fish. The restoration of the salt marsh within the Galilee Bird Sanctuary in Narragansett, Rhode Island is used as case study. When enhancement of fishery habitat value is a goal of a restoration project, the project should incorporate certain design features. However, the designers of many salt-marsh restoration projects assume that reestablishment of salt-marsh vegetation will result in recolonization by other species of animals.