Dear Colleagues, we are convening a session on solutions to marine megafaunal bycatch at the Ocean Sciences meeting in Portland Oregon, USA 11-16 February, 2018.

We invite you to submit your abstract here:  https://agu.confex.com/agu/os18/preliminaryview.cgi/Session27803

Submission deadline: September 6th

Session ID#: 27803

Session Description:

Fisheries bycatch is a major threat to marine megafauna globally and addressing it poses many challenges, particularly in developing countries. Fisheries bycatch of marine megafauna is often poorly monitored or regulated, so impacts of bycatch on local populations are not well understood. The limited availability of quantitative data on the abundance and distribution of marine megafauna, bycatch occurrences, encounter frequency, fishing effort, and fishing gear use constrain estimations of bycatch rate and consequently management action. Due to a lack of resources that impede local scientific capacity, data limitations are often greatest in developing countries where marine fisheries can be fundamental to local and even national economies. Bycatch situations and solutions are local and place-based and controlled by diverse biophysical, cultural, economic and political criteria. However, commonalities in many of these issues need to be explored to create a common practice to guide the creation and analysis of bycatch risk analysis locally and globally. We will welcome presenters with examples of place-based bycatch for a discussion of issues and solutions, especially in sites with varying gaps in data. After presentations, we will discuss data gaps, needs, and commonalities, and interdisciplinary methods to determine how socio-cultural and economic dynamics contribute to bycatch.

Primary Chair:  Ellen Hines, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA, United States

Co-chairs:  Rebecca L Lewison, San Diego State University, Biology, San Diego, CA, United States, Andrew Frederick Johnson, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Marine Biology Research Division, La Jolla, CA, United States and Gregg Verutes, National Audubon Society, San Francisco, CA, United States

Ellen Hines, PhD

Associate Director and Professor of Geography & Environment

Romberg Tiburon Center for Environmental Studies

San Francisco State University

3150 Paradise Dr. Tiburon, CA 94920

415 338 3512, ehines@sfsu.edu

http://rtc.sfsu.edu/research/in_hines.html