For years, fisheries managers have struggled to find a delicate balance between competing financial and ecological needs. Now, a team of researchers led by a Florida State University faculty member is working toward integrating a third factorthe social and cultural needs of different groups of people.
“Everyone wants their piece of the pie of the ecosystem,” said Daniel Okamoto, an assistant professor in the Department of Biological Science and the lead author on the study. “But we need a better way of making decisions regarding fisheries. Management strategies don’t often consider the social or cultural dynamics because they often aren’t well understood. It’s hard enough to understand the ecology of fish populations, much less how they benefit communities in space and time.”
Okamoto and a group of biologists, mathematicians, social scientists, resource managers and representatives of indigenous cultures have created tools that look at the social and cultural costs and benefits of different management strategies used to protect and recover fisheries. The new models also pay careful attention to how many of these strategies operate in space and time to gain a fuller appreciation for the outcomes and trade-offs associated with each strategy.
Their work is published in the journal Fish and Fisheries .
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