Tyler Eddy

Memorial University of Newfoundland · Fisheries & Marine Institute

Transfer efficiency is the proportion of energy passed between nodes in food webs. It is an emergent, unitless property that is difficult to measure, and responds dynamically to environmental and ecosystem changes. Because the consequences of changes in transfer efficiency compound through ecosystems, slight variations can have large effects on foo...

Coral reefs worldwide are facing impacts from climate change, overfishing, habitat destruction, and pollution. The cumulative effect of these impacts on global capacity of coral reefs to provide ecosystem services is un- known. Here, we evaluate global changes in extent of coral reef habitat, coral reef fishery catches and effort, Indigenous consum...

Projections of climate change impacts on marine ecosystems have revealed long-term declines in global marine animal biomass and unevenly distributed impacts on fisheries. Here we apply an enhanced suite of global marine ecosystem models from the Fisheries and Marine Ecosystem Model Intercomparison Project (Fish-MIP), forced by new-generation Earth...

Sharks and rays are key functional components of coral reef ecosystems, yet many populations of a few species exhibit signs of depletion and local extinctions. The question is whether these declines forewarn of a global extinction crisis. We use IUCN Red List to quantify the status, trajectory, and threats to all coral reef sharks and rays worldwid...

Fish populations are dynamic; their productivity depends on the environment, predator and prey interactions, and fisheries harvest rates. Failure to account for these factors in fisheries science and management can lead to a misestimation of stock dynamics and productivity, resulting in overexploitation or forgone fisheries yield. Using an online s...

Marine animal biomass is expected to decrease in the 21st century due to climate driven changes in ocean environmental conditions. Previous studies suggest that the magnitude of the decline in primary production on apex predators could be amplified through the trophodynamics of marine food webs, leading to larger decreases in the biomass of predato...

This paper describes the rationale and the protocol of the first component of the third simulation round of the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP3a, 70 www.isimip.org) and the associated set of climate-related and direct human forcing data (CRF and DHF, respectively). The observation-based climate-related forcings for the...

The dynamics of marine systems at decadal scales are notoriously hard to predict—hence references to this timescale as the “grey zone” for ocean prediction. Nevertheless, decadal-scale prediction is a rapidly developing field with an increasing number of applications to help guide ocean stewardship and sustainable use of marine environments. Such p...

Climate change is expected to profoundly affect key food production sectors, including fisheries and agriculture. However, the potential impacts of climate change on these sectors are rarely considered jointly, especially below national scales, which can mask substantial variability in how communities will be affected. Here, we combine socioeconomi...

Climate change is expected to profoundly affect key food production sectors, including fisheries and agriculture. However, the potential impacts of climate change on these sectors are rarely considered jointly, and when they are, it is often at a national scale, which can mask substantial variability in how communities will be affected. Here, we co...

Climate change is warming the ocean and impacting lower trophic level (LTL) organisms. Marine ecosystem models can provide estimates of how these changes will propagate to larger animals and impact societal services such as fisheries, but at present these estimates vary widely. A better understanding of what drives this inter-model variation will i...

Coastal regions are essential to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) given their importance for human habitation, resource provisioning, employment, and cultural practice. They are also regions where different ecological, disciplinary, and jurisdictional boundaries both overlap and are obscured. We thus propose the land-sea interface...

The Nature Futures Framework (NFF) is a heuristic tool for co-creating positive futures for nature and people. It seeks to open up a diversity of futures through mainly three value perspectives on nature – Nature for Nature, Nature for Society, Nature as Culture. In this paper, we describe how the NFF can be applied in modelling to support policy....

A virtual international workshop on fisheries management reference points in highly dynamic ecosystems was held from January 25-29, 2021. Its purpose was to provide a general overview of the theory and implementation of dynamic reference points to inform fisheries management. This workshop report includes motivation, background, challenges, worksho...

Sidney J. Holt (1926–2019) was more than a founding father of quantitative fisheries science, and the man who "helped save the great whales." His accomplishments, over a career spanning seven decades, run deeper: he was a champion of reductionism (i.e. able to identify the factors essential for management) and a systemic thinker who inspired scient...

It has proven extremely challenging for researchers to predict with confidence how human societies might develop in the future, yet managers and industries need to make projections in order to test adaptation and mitigation strategies designed to build resilience to long-term shocks. This paper introduces exploratory scenarios with a particular foc...

Ocean conditions can affect human health in a variety of ways that are often overlooked and unappreciated. Oceans adjacent to Canada are affected by many anthropogenic stressors, with implications for human health and well-being. Climate change further escalates these pressures and can expose coastal populations to unique health hazards and distres...

Building trust in science and evidence-based decision-making depends heavily on the credibility of studies and their findings. Researchers employ many different study designs that vary in their risk of bias to evaluate the true effect of interventions or impacts. Here, we empirically quantify, on a large scale, the prevalence of different study des...

Building trust in science and evidence-based decision-making depends heavily on the cred- ibility of studies and their findings. Researchers employ many different study designs that vary in their risk of bias to evaluate the true effect of interventions or impacts. Here, we empirically quantify, on a large scale, the prevalence of different study d...

There remain parts of our planet that are seldom visited by humans, let alone scientists. In such locations, crowd-sourced or citizen scientist data can be critical in describing biodiversity and detecting change. Rangitāhua, the Kermadec Islands, are 750 km from the nearest human-habitation. Although our knowledge of this near pristine location ha...

The workshop drew on the ‘nature futures’ participatory scenario-building exercise initiated by the IPBES expert group on scenarios and models, and other biodiversity modelling initiatives such as the ISIMIP project2 working on adding biodiversity to the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) scenarios framework, the 'bending the curve' initiative3 l...

The oceans provide us with ecosystem services such as food provision from fisheries and aquaculture, carbon sequestration, flood control and waste detoxification for people living in coastal communities, and biodiversity provision. These services play a direct role in the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere that regulates our weather and climate....

The workshop entitled ‘From visions to scenarios for nature and nature’s contributions to people for the 21st century’ was organized by the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) expert group on scenarios and models and its technical support unit, and hosted by the NF-UBC Nereus Program, the Peter Wall Institute f...

WKPESTLE aimed to investigate how and where scenarios are being developed around the world to explore the impacts of anthropogenic drivers on marine systems? WKPESTLE brought together a diverse group of researchers from the ICES and PICES communities who are active in the development of social and economic storylines and con- necting them to integr...

Supplemental Information

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...

The Galápagos Archipelago is home to a diverse range of marine bioregions due to the confluence of several cold and warm water currents, resulting in some of the most productive tropical marine ecosystems in the world. These ecosystems are strongly influenced by El Niño events which can reduce primary production by an order of magnitude, dramatical...

Full no-take marine reserves (MRs) act as tools for biodiversity protection that reduce or remove human-induced disturbances and support the recovery of harvested species. Even if not designed specifically for fisheries management, MRs have the potential to enhance locally and distantly fished populations. This study quantified contemporary catch p...

Global impact models represent process-level understanding of how natural and human systems may be affected by climate change. Their projections are used in integrated assessments of climate change. Here we test, for the first time, systematically across many important systems, how well such impact models capture the impacts of extreme climate cond...

Global impact models represent process-level understanding of how natural and human systems may be affected by climate change. Their projections are used in integrated assessments of climate change. Here we test, for the first time, systematically across many important systems, how well such impact models capture the impacts of extreme climate cond...

Recent EU policies known as Plan S require researchers funded with EU grants to publish in open-access journals to make articles more publicly accessible. Critics of these policies claim that they will cause a gradual shift toward publishing in open-access journals and will deepen the divide between authors who have the capac- ity to pay open-acces...

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...

Climate change will alter the structure and functioning of Southern Ocean ecosystems and affect the ecosystem services they provide. The impacts of climate change will require development of conservation and management strategies that anticipate and adapt to potential changes in krill population dynamics. A recent collaborative workshop between the...

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...

Coral reefs are important habitats that represent global marine biodiversity hotspots and provide important benefits to people in many tropical regions. However, coral reefs are becoming increasingly threatened by climate change, overfishing, habitat destruction, and pollution. Historical baselines of coral cover are important to understand how muc...

Distribution of responses for highest coral cover observed by region Numbers of respondents by position: professional scientists = 133, students = 45, managers, policy makers or NGO employees = 12, recreational divers = 5. Number of respondents by region: Atlantic Ocean = 5, Caribbean = 54, Indian Ocean = 13, Pacific Ocean = 109, Persian Gulf = 4,...

Distribution of responses for expert opinion baseline estimates of coral reef cover by survey respondent position Numbers of respondents by position: professional scientists = 133, students = 45, managers, policy makers or NGO employees = 12, recreational divers = 5. Number of respondents by region: Atlantic Ocean = 5, Caribbean = 54, Indian Ocean...

Distribution of responses for expert opinion baseline estimates of coral reef cover according to the region where the respondent reported their highest observed coral cover Numbers of respondents by position: professional scientists = 133, students = 45, managers, policy makers or NGO employees = 12, recreational divers = 5. Number of respondents b...

Distribution of responses for first year that a coral reef was observed by survey respondent position Numbers of respondents by position: professional scientists = 133, students = 45, managers, policy makers or NGO employees = 12, recreational divers = 5.

Distribution of responses for highest coral cover observed by survey respondent position Numbers of respondents by position: professional scientists = 133, students = 45, managers, policy makers or NGO employees = 12, recreational divers = 5. Number of respondents by region: Atlantic Ocean = 5, Caribbean = 54, Indian Ocean = 13, Pacific Ocean = 109...

Qualitiative survey data Survey data provided by respondents about coral baselines, highest coral cover observed, location, position, and year coral first observed.

In Paris, France, December 2015, the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) invited the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to provide a special report in 2018 on the impacts of global warming of 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission...

Monitoring and assessing the effectiveness of no-take zones (NTZs) is critical, not just for the effective management of marine resources, but also for informing and gaining support from community stakeholders. The Galapagos Marine Reserve (GMR) established a network of coastal NTZs in 2001, yet, to date no study has investigated their effectivenes...

Fish-MIP logo png format

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...

Fisheries and aquaculture make a crucial contribution to global food security, nutrition and livelihoods. However, the UN Sustainable Development Goals separate marine and terrestrial food production sectors and ecosystems. To sustainably meet increasing global demands for fish, the interlinkages among goals within and across fisheries, aquaculture...

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 recogn...

Achieving ocean sustainability is paramount for coastal communi es and marine industries, yet is also inextricably linked to much broader global sustainable development—including increased resilience to climate change and improved social equity—as envisioned by the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This report highlights the co-bene ts fr...

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...

In New Zealand and Nova Scotia, lobster (Jasus edwardsii and Homarus americanus, respectively) is the most valuable export fishery. Although stock assessments and indicators assist in evaluating lobster fisheries, ecosystem effects are largely unknown, hindering ecosystem-based fisheries management (EBFM). We employed ecosystem models for the Cook...

The regionally endemic Galapagos Grouper, locally known as bacalao, is one of the most highly prized finfish species within the Galapagos Marine Reserve (GMR). Concerns of overfishing, coupled with a lack of fishing regulations aimed at this species raises concerns about the current population health. We assessed changes in population health over a...

Ascophyllum nodosum (rockweed) is a domi- nant, habitat-forming seaweed on intertidal rocky shores in the North Atlantic and commercially harvested in Can- ada, Maine and Europe. Rockweed plant structure varies regionally, and several morphotypes have been identified in Atlantic Canada alone. Yet the regionality of canopy struc- ture, associated sp...

Indicators. Fishery health indicator dataset. (CSV)

Raw data. Raw data for all analyses conducted in this paper. (CSV)

In Paris, France, December 2015, the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) invited the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to provide a "special report in 2018 on the impacts of global warming of 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission...

Coastal ecosystems are among the most productive yet increasingly threatened marine ecosystems worldwide. Particularly vegetated habitats, such as eelgrass ( Zostera marina ) beds, play important roles in providing key spawning, nursery and foraging habitats for a wide range of fauna. To properly assess changes in coastal ecosystems and manage thes...

Length at maturity data for all species encountered, except for common starfish for which weight at maturity is listed and flounder sp. which were too small to identify and clearly juveniles

Site-specific results for (A) abundance, (B) species richness, (C) diversity, and (D) evenness measured by beach seine (dark grey) and visual (white) surveys

Mobile macrofauna species observed in each survey method (visual survey and beach seine) with their life stage (J, juvenile; A, adult) among five New Brunswick estuaries

New Brunswick habitat comparison raw data

Site-specific results (mean, ±SE, n = 2) for (A) abundance, (B) species richness, (C) diversity, and (D) evenness measured by visual surveys in nearshore (white) and eelgrass (black) habitats

Names of all study sites, with latitude and longitude, date sampled, water temperature and salinity during sampling, and an indication whether they were included in the method and habitat comparisons

Mobile macrofauna species observed in each habitat type (nearshore vs eelgrass bed) with their life stage (J, juvenile, A, adult) in five New Brunswick estuaries (n = 5)

2013 New Brunswick method comparison raw data

Projections of the impacts of climate change on marine ecosystems are a key prerequisite for the planning of adaptation strategies, yet are inevitably associated with uncertainty. Identifying, quantifying, and communicating this uncertainty is key to both evaluating the risk associated with a projection and building confidence in its robustness. We...