Loren McclenachanUniversity of Victoria | UVIC
Loren Mcclenachan
PhD
About
85
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Introduction
Additional affiliations
February 2012 - present
September 2010 - February 2012
September 2009 - June 2010
Publications
Publications (85)
Large animals hunted for the high value of their parts (e.g., elephant ivory and shark fins) are at risk of extinction due to both intensive international trade pressure and intrinsic biological sensitivity. However, the relative role of trade, particularly in non-perishable products, and biological factors in driving extinction risk is not well un...
The growing field of historical ecology describes population abundances, biodiversity, spatial structure, and ecological functioning
in the past, which are important to understanding ecological dynamics and recovery potential. However, because historical
ecological analyses often incorporate nontraditional data sources (i.e., archival materials and...
Sustainable seafood initiatives began with efforts to promote and certify seafood sourced from well-managed stocks caught with a reduced impact on the marine environment. More recently, social equity in fisheries has been the subject of increased concern with suggestions that seafood cannot be certified as sustainable if its production results in s...
The impacts fishing communities face as a result of declining fisheries productivity and access may largely hinge on measurable attributes of their social resilience. Wild-origin Pacific salmon populations have been in a marked decline since the 1960s, resulting in progressively declining access for many commercial fisheries. More recent acute stre...
Ecological data are being opportunistically synthesised at unprecedented scales in response to the global biodiversity and climate crises. Such syntheses are often only possible through large-scale, international, multidisciplinary collaborations and provide important pathways for addressing urgent conservation questions. Although large collaborati...
Historical information has provided key insights into long‐term ecological change to marine species and ecosystems, with value to fisheries. Yet, pathways to integrate these diverse data sources into fisheries decision‐making have not been clear. Here, we identify an array of biological, ecological, and social information suitable for contemporary...
ABSTRACT: Historical ecology draws on a broad range of information sources and methods to provide insight into ecological and social change, especially over the past ~12,000 years. While its results are often relevant to conservation and restoration, insights from its diverse disciplines, environments, and geographies have frequently remained siloe...
Historical ecology draws on a broad range of information sources and methods to provide insight into ecological and social change, especially over the past ~12,000 yr. While its results are often relevant to conservation and restoration, insights from its diverse disciplines, environments, and geographies have frequently remained siloed or underrep...
The status of kelp forests and their vulnerability to climate change are of global significance. As the foundation for productive and extensive ecosystems, understanding long-term kelp forest trends is critical to coastal ecosystem management, climate resiliency, and restoration programs. In this study, we curate historical US government kelp canop...
Historical ecology draws on a broad range of information sources and methods to provide insight into ecological and social change, especially over the past ~12,000 years. While its results are often relevant to conservation and restoration, insights from its diverse disciplines, environments, and geographies have frequently remained siloed or under...
The status of kelp forests and their vulnerability to climate change are of global significance. As the foundation for productive and extensive ecosystems, understanding the long-term trends in kelp is critical to coastal ecosystem management, climate resiliency, and restoration programs. In this study, we curate historical US government kelp inven...
Perceptions of past ecological change affect views of current ecosystem state, but how do baselines help to shape stakeholders' visions of an idealized future?
Here, we investigate links between perceptions of natural baselines and visions for the nearshore Gulf of Maine among a key stakeholder group, active lobster fishers. We ask three related qu...
Transitions from wild-caught and high-input finfish aquaculture to low-input or non-fed aquaculture will help to meet global blue-growth goals. These industries may also increase participation by women as compared to wild-caught fisheries that have been traditionally male-dominated. Here we ask whether transitions to shellfish and seaweed (or non-f...
Over the past 4 decades there has been a growing concern for the conservation status of elasmobranchs (sharks and rays). In 2002, the first elasmobranch species were added to Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). Less than 20 yr later, there were 39 species on Appendix II and 5 o...
The degree to which human actions affect marine fisheries has been a fundamental question shaping people’s relationship with the sea. Today, divergences in stakeholder views about the impacts of human activities such as fishing, climate change, pollution, and resource management can hinder effective co-management and adaptation. Here, we used surve...
The Gulf of Maine has recently experienced its warmest 5-year period (2015–2020) in the instrumental record. This warming was associated with a decline in the signature subarctic zooplankton species, Calanus finmarchicus. The temperature changes have also led to impacts on commercial species such as Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) and American lobster...
Shark populations have declined worldwide. However, the lack of data for most species makes it difficult to use conventional population assessments to estimate their status. The productivity and susceptibility analysis (PSA) has been recommended for elasmobranchs as it is a data-poor assessment that uses the best available information of the specie...
In the context of accelerating environmental change, there is an urgent need to identify ecosystem conservation, restoration, and management strategies likely to support biodiverse and adaptive ecosystems into the future. The field of historical ecology has generated a substantial body of recommendations for ecosystem management, yet these insights...
The community of species, human institutions, and human activities at a given location have been shaped by historical conditions (both mean and variability) at that location. Anthropogenic climate change is now adding strong trends on top of existing natural variability. These trends elevate the frequency of “surprises”—conditions that are unexpect...
Climate‐driven warming has both social and ecological effects on marine fisheries. While recent changes due to anthropogenic global warming have been documented, similar basin‐wide changes have occurred in the past due to natural temperature fluctuations. Here, we document the effects of rapidly changing water temperatures along the United States’...
The complexity of trade networks is a significant challenge to controlling wildlife trafficking and illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing. Such networks may not be modern inventions, but have developed over centuries, from integrated global markets that preceded modern regulatory policies. To understand these linkages, we curated 150 y...
The ability of resource-dependent communities to adapt to climate change depends in part on their perceptions and prioritization of specific climate-related threats. In the Maine lobster fishery, which is highly vulnerable to warming water associated with climate change, we found a strong majority (84%) of fishers viewed warming water as a threat,...
Local seafood marketing is intended to improve livelihoods in coastal communities and the sustainability of fisheries practices. While local seafood procurement aligns with the objectives of “farm to school” (F2S) programming in the United States (U.S.), local seafood purchases by schools are infrequent. Understanding the impediments to local seafo...
Coastal ecosystems have been degraded by human activity over centuries, with loss of memory about past states resulting in shifted baselines. More recently conservation efforts have resulted in localized recoveries of species and ecosystems. Given the dynamism of ecosystem degradation and recovery, understanding how communities perceive long-term a...
Seafood is the world's most internationally traded food commodity. Approximately three out of every seven people globally rely on seafood as a primary source of animal protein (1). Revelations about slavery and labor rights abuses in fisheries have sparked outrage and shifted the conversation (2, 3), placing social issues at the forefront of a sect...
A loss of memory of past environmental degradation has resulted in shifted baselines, which may result in conservation and restoration goals that are less ambitious than if stakeholders had a full knowledge of ecosystem potential. However, the link between perception of baseline states and support for conservation planning has not been tested empir...
The speed and scale of human impacts on marine species, such as climate change and exploitation for international markets, coupled with a poor regulatory regime and lack of enforcement, make it especially difficult to protect marine species beyond areas of national jurisdiction. Yet as the number of multilateral treaties continues to grow, the decl...
Massive declines in population abundances of marine animals have been documented over century-long time scales. However, analogous loss of spatial extent of habitat-forming organisms is less well known because georeferenced data are rare over long time scales, particularly in subtidal, tropical marine regions. We use high-resolution historical naut...
Seafood is the world's most internationally traded food commodity. Approximately three out of every seven people globally rely on seafood as a primary source of animal protein (1). Revelations about slavery and labor rights abuses in fisheries have sparked outrage and shifted the conversation (2, 3), placing social issues at the forefront of a sect...
Yankee whalers of the 19th century had major impacts on populations of large whales, but these leviathans were not the only taxa targeted. Here, we describe the “collateral damage,” the opportunistic or targeted taking of nongreat whale species by the American whaling industry. Using data from 5,064 records from 79 whaling logs occurring between 18...
Ecological data sets rarely extend back more than a few decades, limiting our understanding of environmental change and its drivers. Marine historical ecology has played a critical role in filling these data gaps by illuminating the magnitude and rate of ongoing changes in marine ecosystems. Yet despite a growing body of knowledge, historical insig...
Diversification has been defined as one goal of sustainable fisheries. However, the role of consumer choice in successfully achieving this goal is unknown. We use a choice experiment survey to quantify consumer preferences for locally abundant and underutilized fish relative to more familiar and overfished species, as well as in the context of othe...
Restoration of coastal ecosystems provides opportunities to simultaneously restore historical fisheries and ancillary ecosystem and social benefits that were historically derived from functioning ecosystems. In Maine, dam removal and other ecosystem restoration efforts have positively impacted anadromous fish, with local populations of alewives (Al...
This pioneering volume provides a blueprint for managing the challenges of ocean conservation using marine historical ecology—an interdisciplinary area of study that is helping society to gain a more in-depth understanding of past human-environmental interactions in coastal and marine ecosystems and of the ecological and social outcomes associated...
Global overfishing indicates a need to define fisheries sustainability thresholds and identify social factors promoting successful management, but rates of fishing and factors mediating sustainability over long timescales are largely unknown. Here, we reconstruct fisheries yield for the entire period of human habitation (five to seven centuries) fo...
Global fisheries declines have alerted ecologists that long-term ecosystem assessments require diverse information sources. Non-traditional sources of information on past marine ecosystems have included photographs, newspapers, artwork, and living memory. To date, this information has been taken primarily from historical harvest records, but a seco...
Historical ecology research is valuable for assessing long-term baselines, and is increasingly applicable to conservation and management. In this study, we describe how historical range data can inform key aspects of protected species management, including evaluating conservation status and recovery, and determining practical management units. We e...
Marine environmental history has exposed the nuances of long-term change in productivity, technology, and economics of commercial fisheries but, to date, has paid less attention to the relationship between environmental decline and recreational fisheries. Fishing for fun is commonly considered a low-impact pastime, and anglers are heralded as conse...
Intergenerational loss of information about the abundance of exploited species can lead to shifting baselines, which have direct consequences for how species and ecosystems are managed. Historical data provide a means of regaining that information, but they still are not commonly applied in marine conservation and management. Omission of relevant h...
The oceans face a biodiversity crisis, but the degree and scale of extinction risk remains poorly characterized. Charismatic species are most likely to garner greatest support for conservation and thus provide a best-case scenario of the status of marine biodiversity. We summarize extinction risk and diagnose impediments to successful conservation...
Ecological states (‘EcoStates’) and criteria used to assess the condition of coral reef guilds for different data types on an ordinal scale. General criteria are presented as headings in each row of the second column. General criteria developed by Jackson et al. (2001) and Pandolfi et al. (2003, 2005) were further refined to evaluate the level of i...
Summary narratives of the primary data used to reconstruct ecological conditions and anthropogenic impacts are presented by guild. At the beginning of each guild subsection, tables summarize a timeline specific to the guild and include descriptions of major events, intensity of proximate stressors and the quantitative EcoState scores assigned to di...
Data summary by guild through time used to reconstruct coral reef ecosystem conditions in the Hawaiian archipelago. Number of observations (N) are displayed on the right side of the graph, and observations are plotted by each year for each guild on the horizontal axis. Archaeological data are displayed as one observation per earliest reliable date...
Changes in ecological conditions through time for free-living guilds (large carnivores; large herbivores; small carnivores; small herbivores) for the Main Hawaiian Islands (A–D) and the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands (E–H). The vertical axis represents ecological condition as a percentage of depletion-degradation, with 0% = pristine and 100% = globa...
Changes in ecological conditions through time for architectural guilds (corals; seagrasses/algae; suspension feeders & detritivores) for the Main Hawaiian Islands (A–C) and the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands (D–F). The vertical axis represents ecological condition as a percentage of depletion-degradation, with 0% = pristine and 100% = globally extin...
Human population in Hawai‘i, AD 1250–2010. A demographic model developed by Dye and Komori (1992) (as reviewed by Kirch 2007b), was used for estimating pre-censal population, which remains poorly understood and the subject of some controversy (Kirch 2007b). High and low bounds (grey lines) and an estimated mean (black line) are presented for this p...
Summary of trends in faunal remains recovered from excavated middens in archaeological sites in the main Hawaiian Islands, sorted by date. Changes in ecological state (EcoState) are denoted as positive (up arrow), negative (down arrow), or not able to be determined (−) for specific time periods based on summary of major findings. Abbreviations for...
Trajectories of change in free-living (large carnivores; large herbivores; small carnivores; small herbivores) and architectural/sedentary guilds (corals; seagrasses/algae; suspension feeders & detritivores) from AD 1250–2009 for the Main Hawaiian Islands (MHI) (pink, red lines) and the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands (NWHI) (dark & light blue lines)...
Descriptions and examples of biota comprising of coral reef guilds.
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Summary of data types and number of records used to reconstruct ecological conditions through time. Archaeological records include published studies on marine fauna from archaeological sites (See Table S4, below). For qualitative and ethnographic accounts, one record is one description from one publication; multiple descriptions from reports are ex...
Archaeological sites in the MHI and studies that report marine fauna in midden deposits. Citation references are in Appendix A. NWHI sites (not listed in table) include sites on Nihoa and Mokumanamana (Necker) Islands (Emory 1928; Cleghorn 1988; Kikiloi 2010; K. Kikiloi, pers. comm.). No midden remains have been discovered in other NWHI sites (Appl...
Bibliography of sources.
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Comparison of Hawaiian coral reef ecosystem trajectories with global estimates of reef conditions. Trajectories include the Main Hawaiian Islands (MHI, red) and the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands (NWHI, blue). Periods of reef recovery in the MHI (AD 1400–1820) and the NWHI (AD 1950–2009) are indicated where the trend line is yellow. Current ecosyste...
Representative observations of the ecological condition of reef biota in the Main Hawaiian Islands during the prehistoric and early historic period. *exact dates for these observations are not described; estimates are derived from descriptions of authors or commentators.
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Coral reef ecosystems are declining worldwide, yet regional differences in the trajectories, timing and extent of degradation highlight the need for in-depth regional case studies to understand the factors that contribute to either ecosystem sustainability or decline. We reconstructed social-ecological interactions in Hawaiian coral reef environmen...
John Crosbie, the Canadian minister of fisheries, stunned Newfoundlanders on July 2, 1992, when he announced the first moratorium on the northern cod fishery, bringing to an end one of the oldest and richest fisheries on Earth. I was then teaching maritime history at the Memorial University of Newfoundland, and the news caught me entirely off guard...
In recent decades, large pelagic and coastal shark populations have declined dramatically with increased fishing; however, the status of sharks in other systems such as coral reefs remains largely unassessed despite a long history of exploitation. Here we explore the contemporary distribution and sighting frequency of sharks on reefs in the greater...
Historical data are important in fisheries management and conservation, particularly for species which suffered significant population declines prior to the collection of ecological data. The globally endangered goliath grouper Epinephelus itajara was fished intensively long before data on population size were first collected. Historical population...