Steven MackinsonScottish Pelagic Fishermen's Association
Steven Mackinson
Doctor of Philosophy
About
43
Publications
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Introduction
Pelagic fisheries
Publications
Publications (43)
Atlantic herring in International Council for Exploration of the Sea (ICES) Divisions 6.a, 7.b–c comprises at least three populations, distinguished by temporal and spatial differences in spawning, which have until recently been managed as two stocks defined by geographical delineators. Outside of spawning the populations form mixed aggregations, w...
Atlantic herring in ICES Divisions 6.a, 7.b-c comprises at least three populations, distinguished by temporal and spatial differences in spawning, which have until recently been managed as two stocks defined by geographic delineators. Outside of spawning the populations form mixed aggregations, which are the subject of acoustic surveys. The inabili...
Fat content indicates individual condition and fuels annual reproductive cycles in many fish species. These cycles, coupled with ecosystem changes, can result in large intra- and inter-annual fluctuations in fat content. However, quantifying this variability is challenging when scientific sampling does not cover the full reproductive cycle. Scottis...
HERRING ASSESSMENT WORKING GROUP FOR THE AREA SOUTH OF 62° N
The Workshop on guidelines and methods for the evaluation of rebuilding plans (WKREBUILD) chaired by Vanessa Trijoulet (Denmark) and Martin Pastoors (Netherlands) met from 24 to 28 February 2020. The workshop attracted 27 participants from the US, Canada, Europe and FAO.
Herring Assessment Working Group for the Area South of 62° N (HAWG)
While the physical dimensions of climate change are now routinely assessed through multimodel intercomparisons, projected impacts on the global ocean ecosystem generally rely on individual models with a specific set of assumptions. To address these single-model limitations, we present standardized ensemble projections from six global marine ecosyst...
WKNSMSE (Workshop on North Sea stocks Management Strategy Evaluation) took place over
two physical meetings (19-21 November 2018 and 26-28 February 2019, but at ICES HQ, Copenhagen) and several WebEx meetings, was chaired by José De Oliveira (UK) and included 30 participants from Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, UK and the European Co...
The project, which included the SFF, SWFPA, Marine Scotland Science and the University of Aberdeen, resulted in a feasibility study into a scientific self-sampling programme for the pelagic sector. Fishermen often question scientific surveys and sampling schemes, and scientists can doubt the reliability of catch data. FIS asked the SPFA and the Uni...
Climate change is shifting the abundance and distribution of marine species with consequences for ecosystem functioning, seafood supply, management and conservation. Several approaches for future projection exist but these have never been compared systematically to assess their variability. We conducted standardized ensemble projections including 6...
A Benchmark on pelagic stocks (WKPELA2018), chaired by External Chair Katja
Enberg*, Norway, and ICES Chair Pieter-Jan Schon*, UK, and attended by three invited ex-
ternal experts, Verena Trenkel, France, Ashleen Benson, US, and Bjarki Elvarsson, Iceland,
will be established and meet for a three-day data evaluation meeting at ICES Headquarters
4–6,...
Model intercomparison studies in the climate and Earth sciences communities
have been crucial to building credibility and coherence for future projections.
They have quantified variability among models, spurred model development,
contrasted within- and among-model uncertainty, assessed model fits to
historical data, and provided ensemble projection...
Processes and behaviours from New Zealand's experience of industry stakeholders’ participation in research and management could be transferrable to Europe, helping expedite its evolution to inclusive governance models consistent with an ecosystem approach to fisheries management. In particular, experience from NZ could help to alleviate bottlenecks...
Marine ecosystems evolve under many interconnected and area-specific pressures. To fulfil society's intensifying and diversifying needs while ensuring ecologically sustainable development, more effective marine spatial planning and broader-scope management of marine resources is necessary. Integrated ecological–economic fisheries models (IEEFMs) of...
Model intercomparison studies in the climate and earth sciences communities have been crucial to build credibility and coherence for future projections. They have quantified variability among models, spurred model development, contrasted within- and among-model uncertainty, assessed model fits to historical data, and provided ensemble projections o...
Maximising the long term average catch of single stock fisheries as prescribed by the globally-legislated MSY objective is unlikely to ensure ecosystem, economic, social and governance sustainability unless an effort is made to explicitly include these considerations. We investigated how objectives to be maximised can be combined with sustainabilit...
Since the 1950s, invertebrate fisheries catches have rapidly expanded globally to more than 10 million tonnes annually, with twice as many target species, and are now significant contributors to global seafood provision, export, trade and local livelihoods. Invertebrates play important and diverse functional roles in marine ecosystems, yet the ecos...
The predictability of fisher behaviour is an area of considerable uncertainty in fisheries management models. Fisher-derived data could underpin a better understanding, and more realistic predictions of fishing behaviour. Face to face interviews and a choice-based survey were conducted with scallop fishers to collect foraging parameters that could...
End-to-end modelling is a rapidly developing strategy for modelling in marine systems science and management. However, problems remain in the area of data matching and sub-model compatibility. A mechanism and novel interfacing system (Couplerlib) is presented whereby a physical-biogeochemical model (General Ocean Turbulence Model-European Regional...
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...
Ecopath with Ecosim (EwE) models are easier to construct and use compared to most other ecosystem modelling techniques and are therefore more widely used by more scientists and managers. This, however, creates a problem with quality assurance; to address this we provide an overview of best practices for creating Ecopath, models. We describe the dia...
End to end modelling is an attractive and rapidly developing approach to solve developing strategies in marine systems science and management. However problems remain in the area of data matching and sub-model compatibility. A mechanism and novel interfacing system (Couplerlib) is presented whereby a physical/biogeochemical model (GOTM-ERSEM) that...
The Ecospace model has been developed from the Ecopath with Ecosim food web model to add a spatial dimension for investigating marine ecosystems. In this study, we evaluated the sensitivity of an Ecospace model developed for the North Sea ecosystem to some of its key parameters, and we examined this model's capability to reproduce trends in spatial...
1. Well-designed marine protected area (MPA) networks can deliver a range of ecological, economic and social benefits, and so a great deal of research has focused on developing spatial conservation prioritization tools to help identify important areas. 2. However, whilst these software tools are designed to identify MPA networks that both represent...
An ecosystem model of the western English Channel ecosystem in 1994 was used to explore the effects of the use of a fishing policy optimization routine on profits, number of jobs and ecosystem structure. The optimization for single objective led to the specialization of the fishing fleet, with some fleet types being almost excluded. The profits and...
To explore the contributions that fishing, trophic interactions and plankton production make to explanations of the observed variation of higher trophic (principally fish) levels in the western English Channel ecosystem, Ecosim simulations were run from 1973 to 1999 using the most complete data set yet assembled. The results indicate that a bottom-...
Modelling is perceived as being one of the only tools available to address the new agenda of ecosystem management. However, little is currently understood with regard to the influence of model structure and configuration on predictions and hence management recommendations.In the present study we used a detailed Ecopath with Ecosim (EwE) model of th...
In communities sharing a common energy source, the energetic equivalence hypothesis predicts that numerical abundance (N) scales with body mass (M) as M−0.75. However, in size-structured food webs all individuals do not share a common energy source, and the energy available (E) to larger individuals is constrained by inefficient energy transfer thr...
We present the first acoustic observations of predator–prey interactions between fin whales and herring. The school dynamics and predation events of Norwegian spring-spawning herring ( Clupea harengus ) in a cold front area (about 125 km ² ) in the Norwegian Sea in April were quantified. Data from high-resolution sonar tracking of herring schools c...
Projects
Projects (2)
Lobster, shrimp, squid, crabs, and other invertebrates are increasingly important to the world’s supply of seafood, but managers often lack the information needed to ensure the catch is sustainable. Now, a series of studies has revealed for the first time that invertebrates are as important to marine ecosystems as forage fish, a group widely recognized as critical food for larger-bodied species. The studies also have found that invertebrates may be more vulnerable to fishing than forage fish, suggesting the need for caution in setting harvest rates for these fisheries.
Fisheries & Marine Ecosystem Model Intercomparison Project (Fish-MIP)
Goal:
Bringing together disparate marine ecosystem models to better understand and forecast the long-term impacts of climate change on fisheries and marine ecosystems
Our Questions:
What is the future of:
Fish & Fisheries?
Seafood supply?
Marine biodiversity?
Marine ecosystem functioning?
Our Approach:
We use similar earth-system models (ESMs) and scenarios (RCPs) as other ISIMIP sectors, with some adaptations to better represent future oceanic climate change. We also aim to use similar shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) based on human population growth and GDP, but again with some adaptations to represent future fishing scenarios in the ocean. See our ISIMIP2a simulation protocol for details.
Our Challenges:
Marine ecosystem models use very different basic structures to represent food-web or ecosystem components and the links between them. Ecosystem components can be represented by size classes, functional groups, trophic levels, species groups, and life-history stages, whereas links can be represented by who-eats-whom networks, diet composition or energy transfer. Another challenge is that our models do not all use the same input and output variables. Finally, there are limited observational data for historical runs and model validation, and limited data on spatially resolved fishing effort.
Our Choices:
The ISIMIP2a simulation protocol represents the choices we have made in order to compare as many global and regional models as possible. These include common inputs with respect to climate, physical and chemical data (temperature, currents, salinity, pH, oxygen), biological data (e.g. primary production, phyto- and zooplankton), and fisheries data (effort, catch, fisheries mortality) as well as common outputs including fish biomass and catch as well as other ecosystem parameters
Cross-sectoral links:
Once Fish-MIP simulation results are available, we will link with other ISIMIP sectors and explore cross-sectoral topics such as biodiversity changes on land and in the sea, changes in global food and animal protein supply, and consequences of land-use changes and nutrient run-off on coastal ecosystems.
For more information, please contact the sectoral FISH‐MIP coordinators:
Overall Fish-MIP coordinator: Derek Tittensor (Derek.Tittensor@unep-wcmc.org)
Coordinator for regional models: Tyler Eddy (t.eddy@oceans.ubc.ca)
Coordinators for global models: Eric Galbraith (eric.d.galbraith@gmail.com); William Cheung (w.cheung@oceans.ubc.ca); Heike Lotze (Heike.Lotze@dal.ca)
Full details about how to upload results can be found here:
https://www.isimip.org/gettingstarted/marine-ecosystems-fisheries/
