Please forgive me for this
essay addressing (I hope) your questions, stillhope. I didn't have anything to do, and enjoy hearing myself talk.
stillhope:
Examples of poor mixing of policy and science may abound, but the two are still interdependent. The mechanism for making science based policy isn't anywhere near perfect, but I think it makes more sense to do what we can to help improve it than to just throw up our hands and say it's busted "till the end of time."
That last statement was never inferred by me at any time. Please do not confuse the difficulty of being able to do something to equate with not doing it at all. But if you operate in the sciences and your work is directly relevant to any form of policy making (which is a
VERY small subset of science, incidentally), it is commonplace for policy makers to ignore or be highly selective in how they view data or scientific advisories. Usually the former (ignore). Extra steps are typically required by scientists if they want their information to have a *reasonable shot* at making it to the policy level. These steps include tailoring research objectives to meet policy objectives, locating the relevant intermediary management personnel AND establishing a strong working relationship with them, and THEN having the good fortune of your research to be completed and key highlights submitted to policy makers (with proper middle management endorsements) at a time which the research is *politically convenient* to broach.
Basically, it's a lot of extra work that more often than not gets the luck of the draw at endgame. Which is one reason why only a teeny tiny ratio of scientists involve themselves directly in it. Government scientists often have to, but they're a minority.
**As an aside, the MAIN reason most scientists don't involve themselves in policy is that their work has no direct bearing on political decisions and they could care less. **
I was involved in the designation of several MPAs in Puget Sound quite some years ago, and as near as I could tell, the
Dept. of Fish and Wildlife based their decision-making mainly on two species: fishers and divers
More recently, their efforts have been directed at creating a network of MPAs that interact in a way that makes some sort of big-picture ecological and oceanographic sense. I seriously doubt that they were really doing the same thing the whole time WINK WINK but making it look like 2 different processes because
in the earlier days they weren't collating the same sort of data as part of the decision making process.
Key points here.
1. Dept of Fish and Wildlife. Government agency whose scientists perform specific objectives in accordance with government policies. This is the tiny minority of scientists that actually are involved much with policy decisions (its in their job title).
2. Yes, the hallmark of ecosystem-based approaches is integrating (collating) different sorts of research all together. The difference between this approach and "classical research" has less to do with science than it has to do with data management and inter-lab cross-communication. Which isn't a paradigm shift in *science*, but in how that science is
used. Only with the advent of compatible computer databases has this management tool become viable.
And I'm baffled by why you say that ecosystem-based approaches to MPAs won't work for pelagic fisheries. Sure the boundaries may be an entire ocean, or more. You don't have to make the whole ecosystem a harvest refugia. Haven't gains been demonstrated by protecting/restoring spawning grounds, setting seasonal limitations, protecting nursery areas and areas where prey congregate, etc.? Aren't these examples of considering ecosystem characteristics in policy decisions?
This argument is dependent on how the term "ecosystem management" is defined. It is very easy to confuse it with habitat management. Habitat management is the cornerstone concept behind the majority of wildlife protected areas. Habitat is a term linked to species,
not ecosystems. And if one peruses the long list of protected wildlife areas around the world, it can be easily seen that such areas have an overwhelming bias towards habitat protection centered around target species.
Therefore, the ecological consideration of the target species is the sum goal of protective legislation, not the ecosystem. It just SO HAPPENS (here's the wink wink part
) however that a great deal of species protection can't take place without protection of its habitat. Which in essence, protects the ecosystem wrapped part and parcel with that habitat.
Some ecologists have referred to this quirky situation as "the ends justifying the means". Accurate, if not somewhat
tacky.
With pelagic fisheries, classical "habitat protection" is problematic. Sure aggregation areas can be set aside, but animals don't stay there throughout their life history. Therefore only portions (and small ones at that) of habitat can be protected. Then there's the "irritation" of deciding which fishery species *deserves* priority on habitat protection. Remember, we can only protect little pieces of pelagic habitat. A spawning ground for some species may be little more than migration ground for others. If that same species doesn't have its other main aggregation sites protected, the point of protecting the spawning ground is moot. Heck, some species may have aggregatation areas that MOVE from time to time. Dang, what a regulatory mess!
Which is why pelagic fisheries have such complicated regulations already in place. Catch limits that vary by season, area, and species. Fishing grounds that go off limits periodically. Gear restrictions. There's good reason that "fisheries" is a science major all to itself in some universities.:11: I think Luiz on this board has one of these, in fact.
Therefore, an ecosystem-based approach sounds rather corny when applied to pelagic systems. About the only *new* thing that can be done (other than setting aside vast tracts of ocean) is integrate life history information of as many species as possible into one big management plan that focuses on points of commonality between large species groups. Example: locating a "super-species feeding ground and making it the hell off limits". But this work is already being done. God bless modern databases!
And I'm being overly simplistic regarding marine organisms. Many of the
non-pelagics have pelagic
larval stages. Corals, crabs, urchins, blah blah. Makes for a management nightmare, Bleah!
And even if marine biologists have always thought in terms of the ecosystem and it's only the policy makers who are finally catching on, isn't that a potential step in the right direction? Might not the political acceptance of an ecosystem perspective make it easier to obtain resources necessary to better implement studies of same?
Spot on! Throwing around these newfangled terms is "cool and exciting" to politicos and the lay public, which means (hopefully) funding and enhanced habitat protection. Only now it's called "ecosystem protection".
. A lot of coral reef and hard bank MPA's fall into this new pattern of environmental management.
Protecting the marine environment isn't easy by any stretch. Bringing in different approaches like "ecosystem-based management" doesn't hurt and it has the possibility to do a great deal of good, particularly regarding funding and researcher collaboration. It's just that the
science isn't changing much, just the way that that science is
viewed. Go back 60 years, and
basic ecology wasn't even on the radar of politicians. Go back a century, and public thinking of "nature" was a negative!
Public perception of the environment always lags far behind that of the (relevant) science crowd. Which doesn't make it any less important for the public to know *new* things, it just might not be viewed with the same excitement by dorks like us. After all, whatever gets disseminated into the public probably took
5-20 years of prodding by researchers to get there in the first place. Ha ha.
Oh, and every biologist and ecologist has their own opinions on this. I'm sure Luiz or DrBill will ream me for it for something outrageous I said. It's the *duty* of scientists to professionally ream out one another.:blinking:
