Distributed Graduate Seminar: Finding common ground in marine conservation and management

• Ray Hilborn
• Boris Worm

Abstract
There is increasing concern among scientists, resource managers, and the general public about the current state of marine fisheries and their supporting ecosystems. Recent scientific progress on this topic has been partly overshadowed by significant controversy on how to assess marine resources and how to address current problems in ocean management. Marine ecologists and fisheries scientists often tend to favor contrasting approaches, and we observe that these schools of thought have polarized over time. We now recognize this situation as counterproductive and propose to address this controversy where possible. To help address this concern, the National Center for Ecological analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) is supporting a Working Group to define common ground among marine ecologists and fishery scientists by (1) developing a unifying terminology and a common analytical framework for assessing marine fisheries and ecosystem change, (2) applying this framework to a number of representative marine ecosystems around the globe, and (3) assessing management successes and failures in order to identify a set of tools that have been proven to reverse trends of degradation in marine fish stocks and ecosystems. This process should also identify areas of continued disagreement, important for focusing future research. The central question we are trying to answer is: how can we merge contrasting objectives, tools, and scientific criteria among marine ecology, fisheries science, and management into a unifying framework. We envision that this group will be acting as a catalyst for joining scientific forces in a quest to sustain and restore valuable marine resources. Clearly, one of the solutions to integrating the interests and efforts of fisheries biologists and ecologists is to expose young scientists to the goals and approaches of the various interested parties dealing with these issues. Accordingly, NCEAS will coordinate a Distributed Graduate Seminar (DGS) to involve graduate students and mentors from six universities.