SEAwise 2nd synthesis report on the implementation of EBFM and remaining knowledge gaps throughout the project

<p dir="ltr">The SEAwise project works to deliver a fully operational tool that will allow fishers, managers, and policy makers to easily apply Ecosystem Based Fisheries Management. This SEAwise report provides a framework for evaluation of the implementation of an ecosystem approach to fisheries building on the FAO “Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries Implementation Monitoring Tool”. The framework is designed to highlight where we have sufficient knowledge and structures in place to reliably guide management and its implementation and where such knowledge and structures are lacking. Aspects of EBFM are grouped into three components: Ability to achieve, Ecological wellbeing and Human wellbeing. The implementation in the three components and their sub-components is scored based on the process used to Identify priority objectives (I), the availability and width of knowledge needed to assess status(A), the ability to evaluate impacts of future drivers and management measures (E), the effective implementation of management measures (M) and the assessment of the degree to which objectives are attained (AO).</p><p dir="ltr">Confidence in the results is key to achieve social buy-in and thereby a change in the decisions made. We suggest methods to link clearly defined objectives to transparent and unbiased assessments with an associated confidence in the results. We divide confidence into two parts: Certainty in the results and coverage of the assessed indicators across important components and proceed to score the confidence within each region and category. Analysing the scores across all regions, more than 75% of the maximum confidence score was attained in assessment certainty of Human wellbeing in all regions. As there are no agreed clear objectives for Human wellbeing, the highly certain and broadly covering assessments could not be used to assess whether management measures supported the objectives or whether objectives were in fact attained.</p><p dir="ltr">The certainty of the assessments of Ecological wellbeing was less than that of Human wellbeing in all regions except the North Sea. The lower certainty and coverage was caused by poor certainty and coverage for bycatch of non-retained (e.g. seabirds, mammals, reptiles and sensitive fish) species and non-fish foodwebs. For habitat impact, the method used was the same across all regions, with the same weaknesses related to sampling coverage across habitats and taxa needed to parameterise the model. For non-retained species, habitat impact and foodweb status, there were either no agreed thresholds or data necessary to estimate status and threshold were missing, and hence it was not possible to evaluate the attainment of objectives or the appropriateness of management measures. Across all regions, the decision support from scientific methods estimating the impact of different management approaches was less certain and had poorer coverage than was the case for assessments. Hence, even when current status was appropriately assessed, the exact impact of various management measures was uncertain, as many of the models used have yet to demonstrate their predictive ability. With the work in SEAwise on estimating predictive ability, we hope to contribute to remedying this gap by making guidelines for what to estimate and how to improve confidence in the results.</p><p dir="ltr">Read more about the SEAwise project at https://seawiseproject.org/</p><p dir="ltr"><br></p>