Process for Analyzing Trade-offs between Fishing and Vulnerable Marine Ecosystem Protection

Regional Fishery Management Organizations (RFMOs), including the North Pacific Fishery Commission (NPFC), have been called on to take action to prevent Significant Adverse Impacts (SAIs) to Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems (VMEs). Currently, the NPFC is still developing approaches to using different kinds of data to quantitatively define VMEs and assess SAIs. A preliminary trade-off analysis was conducted in the Northeast Pacific drawing on Canadian Sablefish fishery data to describe the key steps in identifying VME areas for protection from SAIs given currently available data. The proposed process includes nine general steps modelled after the South Pacific RFMO (SPRFMO) VME trade-off analysis and follows the basic principles of systematic conservation planning: (1) identifying and involving stakeholders, (2) identifying goals and objectives, (3) defining conservation features and gathering data, (4) setting conservation targets and design principles, (5) identifying cost metrics and gathering data, (6) dividing the planning region into planning units, (7) selecting a decision support tool, (8) completing analysis, and (9) completing sensitivity analysis. Data requirements for the process include identifying VMEs based on species distribution models (SDMs) of VME indicator taxa recognized by the NPFC, as well as fishery and other socioeconomic data. Catch, visual, and other types of data may also be used to identify VMEs. When these are identified, the process outlined below can be followed by NPFC Members to work towards the objective of preventing SAIs to VMEs. The code for this preliminary example of a trade-off analysis is included as Appendix A and data is available at: https://collaboration.npfc.int/node/86