Elliott Lee Hazen

Elliott Lee Hazen
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration | NOAA · Southwest Fisheries Science Center

PhD Ecology

About

310
Publications
141,430
Reads
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15,613
Citations
Additional affiliations
August 2000 - August 2003
University of Washington
Position
  • PhD Student
August 2009 - present
NOAA Fisheries
Position
  • Research Ecologist
April 2014 - present
Southwest Fisheries Science Center
Position
  • Research Ecologist

Publications

Publications (310)
Article
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To manage marine ecosystems proactively, it is important to identify species at risk and habitats critical for conservation. Climate change scenarios have predicted an average sea surface temperature (SST) rise of 1-6°C by 2100 (refs , ), which could affect the distribution and habitat of many marine species. Here we examine top predator distributi...
Article
Terrestrial predators can modulate the energy used for prey capture to maximize efficiency, but diving animals face the conflicting metabolic demands of energy intake and the minimization of oxygen depletion during a breath hold. It is thought that diving predators optimize their foraging success when oxygen use and energy gain act as competing cur...
Article
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The field of marine tagging and tracking has grown rapidly in recent years as tag sizes have decreased and the diversity of sensors has increased. Tag data provide a unique view on individual movement patterns, at different scales than shipboard surveys, and have been used to discover new habitat areas, characterize oceanographic features, and deli...
Article
Analyses of the foraging behavior of large cetaceans have generally focused on either correlations with environmental conditions at regional scales or observations of surface behavior. We employed a novel approach combining multi-scale analyses of simultaneous environmental conditions, surface and subsurface humpback whale Megaptera novaeangliae mo...
Article
The open ocean twilight zone holds most of the global fish biomass but is poorly understood owing to difficulties of measuring subsurface ecosystem processes at scale. We demonstrate that a wide-ranging carnivore—the northern elephant seal—can serve as an ecosystem sentinel for the twilight zone. We link ocean basin–scale foraging success with ocea...
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Climate change and the associated shifts in species distributions and ecosystem functioning pose a significant challenge to the sustainability of marine fisheries and the human communities dependent upon them. In the California Current, as recent, rapid, and widespread changes have been observed across regional marine ecosystems, there is an urgent...
Chapter
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Navigating Our Way reflects the broader insights and diverse voices revolutionizing marine conservation. This volume brings together an array of scholars, practitioners, and experts from multiple fields, creating a network of trans-disciplinary and multi-cultural perspectives to address the complex problems in marine conservation. Larry B. Crowder,...
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The Atlantic Deepwater Ecosystem Observatory Network (ADEON) along the US Mid- and South Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) collected multiple years of measurements that describe the ecology and soundscape of the OCS. Ocean processes, marine life dynamics, and human use of the ocean are each three dimensional and time dependent, and occur at ma...
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Chub mackerel Scomber japonicus (subsequently referred to as mackerel), a commercially important small pelagic fish in Korea, is highly sensitive to environmental changes and has shifted its spatial distribution owing to climate change in recent decades. This study examined projected changes in the seasonal potential distribution of mackerel in Kor...
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After the near-complete cessation of commercial whaling, ship collisions have emerged as a primary threat to large whales, but knowledge of collision risk is lacking across most of the world's oceans. We compiled a dataset of 435,000 whale locations to generate global distribution models for four globally ranging species. We then combined >35 billi...
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Marine heatwaves and ocean acidification extreme events are periods during which temperature and acidification reach statistically extreme levels (90th percentile), relative to normal variability, potentially endangering ecosystems. As the threats from marine heatwaves and ocean acidification extreme events grow with climate change, there is need f...
Article
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Dynamic ocean management (DOM) is a critical approach for protecting highly migratory species amid environmental variability and change. We conducted an adapted systematic review to assess how animal movement and environmental data are used in DOM applications, identifying key data traits, barriers, and research priorities. Animal tag data inform i...
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Describing the sheer scale of the global fishing industry necessitates a lot of zeros: 4,900,000 fishing vessels, 40,000,000 million workers, and an annual production of 80,000,000 tonnes of seafood valued at $141,000,000,000. Effective management of the fishing industry requires crunching these big data—while the human mind balks at such a task, t...
Article
Advancements in space-based ocean observation and computational data processing techniques have demonstrated transformative value for managing living resources, biodiversity, and ecosystems of the ocean. We synthesize advancements in leveraging satellite-derived insights to better understand and manage fishing, an emerging revolution of marine indu...
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Populations of small pelagic fish (SPF), such as sardines, anchovies and herrings, support some of the largest marine fisheries globally and are critical for trophic transfer in large marine ecosystems and food security, particularly in low- to medium-income countries. Marked changes in population size, shifts in distribution on multiple time scale...
Article
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Populations of small pelagic fish (SPF), such as sardines, anchovies and herrings, sup-port some of the largest marine fisheries globally and are critical for trophic transfer in large marineecosystems and food security, particularly in low- to medium-income countries. Marked changesin population size, shifts in distribution on multiple time scales...
Article
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Social information is predicted to enhance the quality of animals’ migratory decisions in dynamic ecosystems, but the relative benefits of social information in the long-range movements of marine megafauna are unknown. In particular, whether and how migrants use nonlocal information gained through social communication at the large spatial scale of...
Article
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The Antarctic Peninsula marine ecosystem is highly productive, with large populations of commercially and ecologically important species including Antarctic krill Euphausia superba , Adélie penguins Pygoscelis adeliae , and crabeater seals Lobodon carcinophagus . The ecology of the peninsula is rapidly changing due to accelerating climate change an...
Preprint
Despite the rapid development and application of species distribution models (SDMs) to predict species responses to climate-driven ecosystem changes, we have a limited understanding of model predictive performance under novel environmental conditions. We aimed to address this gap using a simulation experiment to evaluate how novel ecosystem conditi...
Article
We are already experiencing the rapid pace of environmental change in the Anthropocene, necessitating the development of new tools and techniques for measuring changes in ecosystem dynamics. Sentinel species, from birds to invertebrates, have been used to provide insights into ecosystem function, as leading indicators of risk to human health and as...
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A major obstacle to preventing and reversing biodiversity loss in the Anthropocene lies in the scarcity of tools and data for monitoring the health and trajectory of ecosystems. Sentinel species can provide insight into unobserved ecosystem change, but it is unclear how effective sentinels are due to the local, context‐dependent nature of past rese...
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The mobile nature of migratory marine animals across jurisdictional boundaries can challenge the management of biodiversity, particularly under global environmental change. While projections of climate-driven habitat change can reveal whether marine species are predicted to gain or lose habitat in the future, geopolitical boundaries and differing g...
Article
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Marine heatwaves (MHWs) have measurable impacts on marine ecosystems and reliant fisheries and associated communities. However, how MHWs translate to changes in fishing opportunities and the displacement of fishing fleets remains poorly understood. Using fishing vessel tracking data from the automatic identification system (AIS), we developed vesse...
Article
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In the California Current System (CCS), changes in the phenology (i.e., seasonal timing) of coastal upwelling alter the functioning of this productive marine ecosystem. Recently developed coastal upwelling indices that account for upwelling strength and nutrient flux to the surface provide a more complete understanding of bottom‐up forcing in the r...
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Here we update U.S. West Coast Biologically Important Areas (BIAs) that were published in 2015 using new data and approaches. Additionally, BIAs were delineated for two species that were not delineated in the 2015 BIAs: fin whales and Southern Resident killer whales (SRKW). While harbor porpoise BIAs remained the same, substantial changes were made...
Article
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Accurate assessments of human-wildlife risk associated with industrial fishing are critical for the conservation of marine top predators. Automatic Identification System (AIS) data provide a means of mapping fishing and estimating human-wildlife risk; however, risk can be obscured by gaps in the AIS record due to technical issues and intentional di...
Article
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In the marine environment, dynamic physical processes shape biological productivity and predator–prey interactions across multiple scales. Identifying pathways of physical–biological coupling is fundamental to understand the functioning of marine ecosystems yet it is challenging because the interactions are difficult to measure. We examined submeso...
Article
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2022 marked the third consecutive La Niña and extended the longest consecutive stretch of negative Oceanic Niño Index since 1998-2001. While physical and biological conditions in winter and spring largely adhered to prior La Niña conditions, summer and fall were very different. Similar to past La Niña events, in winter and spring coastal upwelling...
Article
Full-text available
2022 marked the third consecutive La Niña and extended the longest consecutive stretch of negative Oceanic Niño Index since 1998-2001. While physical and biological conditions in winter and spring largely adhered to prior La Niña conditions, summer and fall were very different. Similar to past La Niña events, in winter and spring coastal upwelling...
Article
Spatial and temporal variability in temperature and food availability are key drivers of growth of marine fishes. Growth during the early life stages (ELS's) is tightly coupled to survival, and in turn, can set year-class strength (i.e. annual recruitment) and overall stock productivity of populations and fished stocks. Ontogenetic changes in physi...
Preprint
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Marine heatwaves (MHW) and ocean acidification extreme events (OAX) are periods during which temperature and acidification reach extreme levels, endangering ecosystems. As the threats from MHW and OAX grow with climate change, there is need for skillful predictions of events months-to-years in advance. Previous work has demonstrated that climate mo...
Article
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Conservation planning traditionally relies upon static reserves; however, there is increasing emphasis on dynamic management (DM) strategies that are flexible in space and time. Due to its novelty, DM lacks best practices to guide design and implementation. We assessed the effect of planning unit size in a DM tool designed to reduce entanglement of...
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The effect of active sonars on marine mammal behaviour is a topic of considerable interest and scientific investigation. Some whales, including the largest species (blue whales, Balaenoptera musculus), can be impacted by mid-frequency (1–10 kHz) military sonars. Here we apply complementary experimental methods to provide the first experimentally co...
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Aim Marine biodiversity faces unprecedented threats from anthropogenic climate change. Ecosystem responses to climate change have exhibited substantial variability in the direction and magnitude of redistribution, posing challenges for developing effective climate‐adaptive marine management strategies. Location The California Current Ecosystem (CC...
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Simplifying complex species interactions can facilitate tracking and predicting functional responses to ecological stressors. This is important for highly migratory pelagic predators, exploiting diverse prey fields as they respond to dynamic environments. We reconstructed the historical resource use of albacore tuna ( Thunnus alalunga ) globally fr...
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Forecasting weather has become commonplace, but as society faces novel and uncertain environmental conditions there is a critical need to forecast ecology. Forewarning of ecosystem conditions during climate extremes can support proactive decision-making, yet applications of ecological forecasts are still limited. We showcase the capacity for existi...
Preprint
Full-text available
Social information is predicted to enhance migratory performance, but the relative benefits of social information in the long-range movements of marine megafauna are unknown. In particular, whether and how migrants use nonlocal information gained through social communication at the extreme spatial scale of oceanic ecosystems remains unclear. Here w...
Preprint
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Understanding how climate change will influence ecosystems is essential for effective climate adaptation and mitigation. Current approaches in ocean management aim to protect climate refugia, defined as areas where species will persistent over time, or areas where climatic conditions are projected to be more stable. However, these approaches overlo...
Article
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Anthropogenic carbon emissions and associated climate change are driving rapid warming, acidification, and deoxygenation in the ocean, which increasingly stress marine ecosystems. On top of long‐term trends, short term variability of marine stressors can have major implications for marine ecosystems and their management. As such, there is a growing...
Article
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Ocean forecasting is now widely recognized as an important approach to improve the resilience of marine ecosystems, coastal communities, and economies to climate variability and change. In particular, regionally tailored forecasts may serve as the foundation for a wide range of applications to facilitate proactive decision making. Here, we describe...
Article
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The management and conservation of tuna and other transboundary marine species have to date been limited by an incomplete understanding of the oceanographic, ecological and socioeconomic factors mediating fishery overlap and interactions, and how these factors vary across expansive, open ocean habitats. Despite advances in fisheries monitoring and...
Article
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Coastal communities of the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico have been affected by atypical influxes of pelagic macroalgae (Sargassum genus) since 2011, entailing ecological, economic and social impacts in need of characterization. We compiled and documented local ecological knowledge (LEK) and perceptions across diverse stakeholder groups from coas...
Article
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Marine heatwaves cause widespread environmental, biological, and socioeconomic impacts, placing them at the forefront of 21st-century management challenges. However, heatwaves vary in intensity and evolution, and a paucity of information on how this variability impacts marine species limits our ability to proactively manage for these extreme events...
Article
Climate change drives species distribution shifts, affecting the availability of resources people rely upon for food and livelihoods. These impacts are complex, manifest at local scales, and have diverse effects across multiple species. However, for wild capture fisheries, current understanding is dominated by predictions for individual species at...
Article
Full-text available
The Northwest Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico are among the fastest warming ocean regions, a trend that is expected to continue through this century with far-reaching implications for marine ecosystems. We examine the distribution of 12 highly migratory top predator species using predictive models and project expected habitat changes using downsc...
Article
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Species distribution models (SDMs) are becoming an important tool for marine conservation and management. Yet while there is an increasing diversity and volume of marine biodiversity data for training SDMs, little practical guidance is available on how to leverage distinct data types to build robust models. We explored the effect of different data...
Article
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Despite progress in understanding and predicting climate change impacts and possible responses for US marine fisheries, use of climate-related information in federal fishery management decisions remains limited. One barrier to progress in linking climate knowledge to management action is that individual management bodies' efforts tend to be isolate...
Article
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Blue marlin (Makaira nigricans) and sailfish (Istiophorus platypterus) are ecologically important predators and valuable species throughout the world’s recreational, commercial, and subsistence fisheries. Comparing multi-species vertical habitat use can inform ecological uncertainties such as inter-species competition, as well as relative vulnerabi...
Preprint
Full-text available
Species distribution models (SDMs) are becoming an important tool for marine conservation and management. Yet while there is an increasing diversity and volume of marine biodiversity data for training SDMs, little practical guidance is available on how to leverage distinct data types to build robust models. We explored the effect of different data...
Preprint
Anthropogenic carbon emissions and associated climate change are driving rapid warming, acidification, and deoxygenation in the ocean, which increasingly stress marine ecosystems. On top of long-term trends, short term variability of marine stressors can have major implications for marine ecosystems and their management. As such, there is a growing...
Article
Full-text available
Introduction Understanding how abundance, productivity and distribution of individual species may respond to climate change is a critical first step towards anticipating alterations in marine ecosystem structure and function, as well as developing strategies to adapt to the full range of potential changes. Methods This study applies the NOAA (Nati...
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Forage fishes are key energy conduits that transfer primary and secondary productivity to higher trophic levels. As novel environmental conditions caused by climate change alter ecosystems and predator-prey dynamics, there is a critical need to understand how forage fish control bottom-up forcing of food web dynamics. In the northeast Pacific, nort...
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Recovering marine animal populations and climate-driven shifts in their distributions are colliding with growing ocean use by humans. One such example is the bycatch of whales in commercial fishing, which poses a significant threat to the conservation and continued recovery of these protected animals and is a major barrier to sustainable fisheries....
Article
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Weddell seals ( Leptonychotes weddellii ) are important predators in the Southern Ocean and are among the best-studied pinnipeds on Earth, yet much still needs to be learned about their year-round movements and foraging behaviour. Using biologgers, we tagged 62 post-moult Weddell seals in McMurdo Sound and vicinity between 2010 and 2012. Generalize...
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Synthesis research in ecology and environmental science improves understanding, advances theory, identifies research priorities, and supports management strategies by linking data, ideas, and tools. Accelerating environmental challenges increases the need to focus synthesis science on the most pressing questions. To leverage input from the broader...
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The world's eastern boundary upwelling systems (EBUSs) contribute disproportionately to global ocean productivity and provide critical ecosystem services to human society. The impact of climate change on EBUSs and the ecosystems they support is thus a subject of considerable interest. Here, we review hypotheses of climate-driven change in the physi...
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Environmental DNA (eDNA)-based ecological co-occurrence networks can provide a valuable tool for fisheries and conservation management. In the past, it was nearly impossible to explore the microscopic world of larval fishes in one sampling event. Now, eDNA data and ecological co-occurrence network modeling provide windows into ecosystems that suppo...
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Early life history stages of marine fishes are often more susceptible to environmental stressors than adult stages. This vulnerability is likely exacerbated for species that lay benthic egg masses bound to substrate because the embryos cannot evade locally unfavorable environmental conditions. Lingcod ( Ophiodon elongatus ), a benthic egg layer, is...
Preprint
Full-text available
Climate change drives species distribution shifts, impacting the availability of resources people rely upon for food and livelihoods. These impacts are complex, manifest at local scales and have diverse effects across multiple species. Yet, for wild capture fisheries current understanding is dominated by predictions for individual species at coarse...