Mary Gleason

The Nature Conservancy · Marine

Participatory marine spatial planning, geodesign and stakeholder engagement.

Overfishing and other anthropogenic impacts to ocean ecosystems have motivated widespread implementation of no-take marine reserves to protect biodiversity and fished resources. Fully protected marine reserves now comprise approximately 2.5% of the ocean and calls for enhanced protections abound. The benefits to marine biodiversity within reserve b...

Modernizing data systems to inform collaborative management is critical to adaptively managing fisheries in an era of climate change. In 2006, The Nature Conservancy of California purchased 13 federal groundfish permits in California with the objective of managing the fishing and reporting activities in a manner that protected sensitive habitats an...

Climate-related impacts to marine ecosystems threaten the biological, social, and economic resilience of the United States fishing industry. Changes in ocean conditions and variability in fisheries productivity have stimulated an effort to integrate climate information into fisheries science and management processes to inform more responsive decisi...

The use of video camera systems in ecological studies of fish continues to gain traction as a viable, non-extractive method of measuring fish lengths and estimating fish abundance. We developed and implemented a rotating stereo-video camera tool that covers a full 360 degrees of sampling, which maximizes sampling effort compared to stationary camer...

Fishermen and the fishing industry can bring extensive local knowledge, capacity, and funding to support fisheries research. At the same time, many fishery management agencies lack the capacity, resources, and information needed to manage fisheries today, and this problem is likely to be exacerbated in the future as the oceans undergo rapid changes...

Historically, it has been difficult to balance conservation goals and yield objectives when managing multispecies fisheries that include stocks with various vulnerabilities to fishing. As managers try to maximize yield in mixed-stock fisheries, exploitation rates can lead to less productive stocks becoming overfished. In the late 1990s, population...

Odds Ratios. Odds ratios of catching a particular species, given that the species was observed on video in the same area. Lower and Upper 95% confidence intervals and Fisher’s Exact test results are reported. (DOCX)

Video Survey Data. Complete list of fish species observed in video surveys that were co-located within 500 m of fishing sets (n = 299 lander surveys) by sub-region and depth category. Frequency of occurrence (Freq. occur.) is calculated from the number of surveys out of 299 in which the species was observed. Rebuilding species are denoted by an ast...

Management and technical approaches that achieve a sustainable level of fish production while at the same time minimizing or limiting the wider ecological effects caused through fishing gear contact with the seabed might be considered to be ‘best practice’. To identify future knowledge-needs that would help to support a transition towards the adopt...

In 2002, the Pacific Fishery Management Council and the National Marine Fisheries Service established coast-wide, depth-based closures known as Rockfish Conservation Areas (RCAs) to support rebuilding efforts for several West Coast groundfish species that were declared overfished. Although some of these species have subsequently been declared rebui...

Spatial and temporal management measures to reduce nontarget catch are important strategies for rebuilding overfished rockfish (Sebastes spp.) populations in the Northeast Pacific. We describe efforts to support reducing rockfish bycatch in central California trawl fisheries by testing the efficacy of move-on rules on catch data from 2002 to 2010....

Significance Human populations are rapidly expanding along Earth's coastlines, increasing stress to coastal ecosystems and the services they provide. One of these stressors comes from an increase in nutrient inputs from coastal land development that can enter estuaries and coastal seas leading to algal blooms that deplete oxygen from the water, a c...

Well-designed and effectively managed networks of marine reserves can be effective tools for both fisheries management and biodiversity conservation. Connectivity, the demographic linking of local populations through the dispersal of individuals as larvae, juveniles or adults, is a key ecological factor to consider in marine reserve design, since i...

Bottom trawling has been shown to affect the seafloor and associated biological communities around the world. Considerably less is known about the dynamics of impacts to structural attributes of fish habitat, particularly in unconsolidated sandy sediments of the continental shelf. We collaborated with commercial fishermen to conduct experimental tr...

Well-designed and effectively managed networks of marine reserves can be effective tools for both fisheries management and biodiversity conservation. Connectivity, the demographic linking of local populations through the dispersal of individuals as larvae, juveniles or adults, is a key ecological factor to consider in marine reserve design, since i...

Private-sector financial and legal transactions have long been used to protect terrestrial habitats and working landscapes, but less commonly to address critical threats in marine environments. Transferrable and marketable fishing privileges, including permits and quotas, make it possible to use private-sector transactions as conservation strategie...

California enacted the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) in 1999 to redesign and improve the state's system of marine protected areas (MPAs), which the State Legislature found created the illusion of protection while falling far short of its potential to protect and conserve living marine life and habitat. In 2004, after two unsuccessful attempts t...

Marine protected areas (MPAs) can be an effective tool for marine conservation, especially if conservation goals are clearly identified and MPAs are designed in accordance with ecological principles to meet those goals. In California (USA), the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative led four regional public planning processes to design a stat...

Background/Question/Methods Off California’s coast, a coalition of conservationists and fishermen are combining science and local knowledge to test new approaches for avoiding bycatch of overfished rockfish. Groundfish on the U.S. West Coast is a multi-species fishery that has been dominated by bottom trawling for decades. The fishery was declare...

In Central California, The Nature Conservancy (TNC) has purchased and subsequently leased federal groundfish permits to fishermen. These leases are structured to test how specific changes to traditional groundfish harvest can improve economic and conservation performance of the local fleet, thereby benefiting local fishing communities who have witn...

Background/Question/Methods Wild-caught fisheries are dependent on healthy coastal and marine ecosystems; moving towards sustainability requires that we manage and monitor harvest in an ecosystem context and incentivize good stewardship. On California’s Central Coast, The Nature Conservancy (TNC) is applying our “working landscape” experience to...

The planning process for California's Marine Life Protection Act in north central California represents a case study in the design of a regional component of a statewide network of marine protected areas (MPAs) for improved ecosystem protection. We describe enabling factors, such as a legislative mandate, political will, and adequate capacity and f...

Implementation of marine conservation strategies lags far behind terrestrial conservation efforts. Quantifying what is protected and what is not, or "gap analysis", helps to show just how much work there is to do; systematic conservation planning provides guidance on how to best fill those gaps. We conducted the first marine gap analysis for Califo...

Coral recruitment to artifi ial substrata (ceramic tiles) was measured in shallow back-reef (1–2 m depth) and deeper fore-reef (8–10 m depth) habitats on the island of Moorea, French Polynesia. Recruitment to three patch types within each of those habitats was measured at 4 month intervals for 3 years. Recruitment rates did not differ between fore-...

This study examines patterns of susceptibility and short-term recovery of corals from bleaching. A mass coral bleaching event began in March, 1991 on reefs in Moorea, French Polynesia and affected corals on the shallow barrier reef and to >20 m depth on the outer forereef slope. There were significant differences in the effect of the bleaching amon...

This laboratory study examined the influence of parasitic infection by larval trematodes on the survival of extreme environmental conditions by the salt marsh snail, Cerithidea californica. Experimental treatments simulated the durations, combinations, and levels of potentially lethal environmental extremes to which the snail is exposed in its natu...

The opportunistic polychaetes formerly known as Capitella capitata are the archetypal pioneers in soft-bottom benthic succession. Capitella is now known to be comprised of several morphologically indistinguishable but reproductively isolated sibling species. Capitella sp. I is widely distributed on the east coast of the United States and has been u...

Thesis (Ph. D. in Zoology)--University of California, Berkeley, May 1994. Includes bibliographical references. Photocopy. Originally published: Berkeley, Calif.: University of California at Berkeley,