Sean Michael Lucey

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration | NOAA · Northeast Fisheries Science Center

The Northeast US continental shelf has a rich tradition of commercial fishing. These fisheries have been managed using single species/stock assessments. Recently, there has been a movement toward a more holistic ecosystem-based management approach. This ecosystem-based approach is a departure from traditional single species management in that both...

The Northeast US Continental Shelf Large Marine Ecosystem (NES LME) has experienced 2 major pressures: fishing and climate. The magnitude and rate of response to these pressures are species-specific and depend on each individual species' behavior, physiology and life histories. Thus, species assemblages can be expected to change as a result of the...

Food web models capture shifting species interactions, making them useful tools for exploring community responses to disturbances. The inclusion of environmental drivers, such as temperature, can improve model predictions, as energy demands of an organism can be temperature specific. While mass-balance models such as Ecopath with Ecosim (EwE) and t...

The Joint ICES/EUROMARINE Workshop on Common Conceptual Mapping Methodologies (WKCCMM) aimed to advance approaches to support inter- and transdisciplinary science via qualitative conceptual models to inform Integrated Ecosystem Assessment (IEA) throughout European seas and beyond. The workshop focused on developing a common understanding of conce...

Qualitative Network Models (QNMs), Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCMs), and Bayesian Belief Networks (BBNs) have been proposed as methods to formalize conceptual models of social–ecological systems and project system responses to management interventions or environmental change. To explore how these different methods might influence conclusions about syste...

Management Strategy Evaluation (MSE) is an effective tool to gauge the relative performance of fishery management options. For the most part, MSEs have been applied to single-species management procedures. However, to be more inclusive of all the biological and technical interactions occurring within a system, ecosystem-based strategies are emergin...

Science-based natural resource management is necessary for agencies to effectively meet their goals and mandates. However, this scientific basis needs to be advanced and evolved with ecosystems experiencing unprecedented events that challenge conventional management frameworks. Effectively managing marine resources and achieving agency missions req...

Integrated ecosystem assessments (IEAs) compile and use indicators, risk assessments, and other analyses to address regional policy needs at varying spatial scales. Although approaches to implementing IEAs are context-specific, challenges in data acquisition, management, processing, analysis, and communication are universal. By embracing open scien...

Resource managers worldwide are being asked to consider the ecosystem while making management decisions. Integrated Ecosystem Assessment (IEA) provides a flexible framework for addressing ecosystem considerations in decision making. The US Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council (Council) adapted the IEA approach and implemented a structured decisi...

Ecosystem models are important tools for conducting ecosystem-based management. A particularly useful method of characterizing the flow of energy through an ecosystem and the subsequent direct and indirect implications of management actions is mass balance modeling. Here we outline the equations as utilized in Rpath, an R implementation of the mass...

Management strategy evaluation (MSE) is an increasingly popular tool for developing, testing, and implementing fisheries management regimes, oftentimes utilizing participatory modeling. This special issue, “Under pressure: addressing fisheries challenges with Management Strategy Evaluation”, includes eleven articles highlighting cutting edge MSE ap...

The overarching focus of Working Group on Maritime Systems (WGMARS) has been on under-standing the conceptualisation and implementation of Integrated Ecosystem Assessments (IEAs) in ICES and more broadly. From 2017-2019, the Working Group reviewed academic literature and ICES documents, interviewed the chairs of the ICES Regional Seas Working Group...

Management strategy evaluation (MSE) is a simulation-based approach to examine the efficacy of management options in achieving fishery-, ecosystem-, and socioeconomic-related objectives while integrating over system uncertainties. As a form of structured decision analysis, MSE is amenable to stakeholder involvement, which can reduce implementation...

There is accumulating evidence for decadal-scale regime shifts at the base of the food web on the Northeast US Continental Shelf. However, less evidence exists for regime shifts in fish recruitment success, particularly for synchronized regimes across multiple species. Here, we analyzed stock assessment output and survey data to test for regimes in...

Euphausiids are a key link between primary production and higher-level predators in the Gulf of Maine, but are not well sampled during standard fisheries surveys. Multifrequency acoustic data may provide useful estimates of euphausiid distribution and biomass, as long as automated classification of acoustic backscatter is reliable and robust. Estim...

Between 2014 and 2016 an interdisciplinary team of researchers including physical oceanographers, biologists, economists, and anthropologists developed a working example of an Integrated Ecosystem Assessment (IEA) for three ecologically distinct regions of the Northwest Atlantic; Georges Bank, the Gulf of Maine, and the Grand Banks, as part of the...

We explored alternative status determination criteria and reference points that could simplify fisheries management using a simulated multispecies/ecosystem-based operational management procedure. There are four components to the procedure: (i) limit total removals from the ecosystem; (ii) allocate the total removals limit among aggregate species g...

Many studies illustrate variable patterns in individual species distribution shifts in response to changing temperature. However, an assemblage, a group of species that shares a common environmental niche, will likely exhibit similar responses to climate changes, and these community-level responses may have significant implications for ecosystem fu...

Annual NEFSC bottom trawl survey coverage for the spring. Black dots represent a sampled site in each year. (PDF)

Methodology for observed species shifts versus climate velocity using truncated regressions. (DOCX)

Annual NEFSC bottom trawl survey coverage for the fall. Black dots represent a sampled site in each year. (PDF)

‘Hotspots’ of cluster locations in each region. Red signifies clusters 1N and 1S, blue signifies clusters 2N and 2S, green signifies clusters 3N and 3S, and yellow signifies clusters 4N and 4S. The Gulf of Maine (northern NES) is shown in the top panels, and the Mid-Atlantic Bight/Georges Bank (southern NES) is shown in the bottom panels. Hotspots...

Characterization of the species assemblages derived from the NEFSC bottom trawl survey over four periods (1968–1978, 1979–1989, 1990–2000, and 2001–2012) in three-dimensional space. Assemblages are defined by surface temperature (x-axis), bottom temperature (y-axis), and depth (z-axis) in the Fall (A, B) and Spring (C, D) in the northern (A, C) and...

Latitudinal climate velocities based on a truncated regression. Slopes of observed versus predicted changes in latitude from truncated regressions for the Gulf of Maine (northern NES; a, b) and Mid-Atlantic Bight/Georges Bank (southern NES; c, d) northeast U.S. shelf sampled during spring (a, c) and fall (b, d) bottom trawl surveys. Colors correspo...

Description of the key species in the species clusters defined from the bottom trawl survey. The presence of a ‘1’, ‘2’, ‘3’, or ‘4’ in the columns ‘Spring, South’, ‘Spring, North’, ‘Fall, South’, or ‘Fall, North’ indicates membership of a core species to a particular cluster. An ‘xx’ indicates that the species is present in a given region, but was...

Description of the bottom temperature fields on the NES. Comparison of average bottom temperature fields in the fall on the U.S. Northeast Shelf for an early part of the time series (1977–1987) and a later part of the time series 2000–2010. The bottom panel shows the difference field (late minus early). (PDF)

Percent change in effort by the U.S. otter trawl fishery from 1995 through 2015. Blue (red) colors indicate a decrease (increase) in fishing effort between respective fishing periods. The EEZ is illustrated as a red line and the 200 m isobaths as a light grey line. Black lines illustrate the closed area boundaries. In general fishing effort has dec...

Need to assess the skill of ecosystem models: Accelerated changes to global ecosystems call for holistic and integrated analyses of past, present and future states under various pressures to adequately understand current and projected future system states. Ecosystem models can inform management of human activities in a complex and changing environ...

Climate change and decadal variability are impacting marine fish and invertebrate species worldwide and these impacts will continue for the foreseeable future. Quantitative approaches have been developed to examine climate impacts on productivity, abundance, and distribution of various marine fish and invertebrate species. However, it is difficult...

Sensitivity Attributes. (PDF)

Climate exposure scoring. (PDF)

Climate Vulnerability and Distribution Change Potential. (PDF)

Climate Exposure Maps. (PDF)

Directional Effect Results. (CSV)

Species Narratives. (PDF)

Climate Model Uncertainty. (PDF)

Ocean Currents Exposure. (PDF)

Sea-level Rise Exposure. (PDF)

Data Quality. (PDF)

MDS Ordination of Sensitivity Attributes. (PDF)

Vulnerability Results. (CSV)

Assessment Results. (PDF)

Methodology Evaluation. (PDF)

Natural and social ecosystems and resources are changing fast under an accelerating global change context. Scenario Building is an aid to understand these changes and proactively identify plausible futures, but building scenarios of social-ecological systems is a multi-faceted, interdisciplinary and multi-sectorial challenge where scientists need t...

Decadal model skill metric analysis. (DOCX)

Just over fifteen years ago in their seminal work, Pauly and his colleagues coined the phrase “fishing down the food web”. That phrase describes how fisheries systematically target fish species sequentially down the food web as the higher trophic levels are depleted. This behavior, measured by the mean trophic level of the catch, can have dramatic...

The science behind “fishing down the food web” (Pauly et al. 1998) suggests marine food web structure has shifted over the past half-century. The assumption is that mean trophic level (MTL) from fisheries catch echoes ecosystem MTL and biodiversity, and findings imply global declines in ecosystem health. Questioning the suitability of this indicato...

Ecosystem Based Fisheries Management (EBFM) is a holistic, place-based method for managing fisheries resources. In the Northeast United States, steps are being taken to adopt EBFM. One of the first steps was creating spatial ecological productions units (EPU) that contain similar biological and oceanographic features. These EPUs are the foundation...

Background/Question/Methods Much scientific advice for fisheries management is based on results from single species population assessment methods. However, as fisheries management becomes increasingly ecosystem-based, models that consider multispecies and environmental interactions are required, as are effective ecological indicators and referenc...

Progress on ecosystem approaches to fisheries management requires comparative studies with standardized methods that incorporate readily available data. This precludes complex ecosystem models in favor of simpler models such as surplus production models. Surplus production models for individual species can provide estimates of common biological ref...

We fit simple production models with and without covariates for several functionally aggregated groups using data for 11 large marine ecosystems. Species were aggregated based on habitat (demersal/pelagic), size (small/medium/large using standard length to max body size ratios) and trophic guild (detritivore/benthivore/planktivore/zooplanktivore/pi...

Large marine ecosystems are complicated, with ecological components that are highly connected both to each other (via trophic interactions) and their environment. As ecosystem-based fishery management (EBFM) moves from questions of why one would do EBFM towards how to do EBFM, recognition of the importance of these connections has increased. Studie...

The Northeast US Large Marine Ecosystem (NEUS LME) has experienced a variety of pressures due to fishing and climate. Differences in the reactions of marine species to these changes stemming from differential behavior and life histories have led to a variety of adaptations, which in turn alters the species assemblage of an area. The NEUS LME has tr...