Science-to-Management Pathways for Collaborative Herring Stock Survey Data: Using network analysis to track information flow and potential influence in fisheries management

No abstracts are to be cited without prior reference to the author.

Herring in the Northwest Atlantic are not overfished and overfishing is not occurring. However concerns for the potential of localized depletion and negative impacts on other fisheries and economic sectors have led to a sequence of management plans and amendments in the U.S. in recent years. Stock assessments have been vital in these management deliberations and there are several sources of herring stock survey data in the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank, including a collaborative industry-science acoustic survey and government-administered trawl surveys. A joint U.S.-Canadian technical committee of scientists conducts the stock assessment from these data. We first describe the stock survey approaches, including the outcome of a 2005 external peer review of the collaborative acoustic survey, and examine their use in the assessment process. Second, we use a network analysis methodology to map the communication patterns among participants in the development of a fisheries management plan (FMP). Individuals (nodes) and their connections (links) are spatially arranged in a network map based upon the communicative relationship among all individuals. We track the pathways through which the collaborativelyderived stock survey data flow into the stock assessment (science) and the FMP decision-making (management) process. We compare pathways for their communication efficacy in feeding stock survey information into science and management. The resulting map shows participants in the collaborative survey well connected to the stock assessment and fisheries management process, although not institutionalized and dependent upon key individual participants serving as bridgers between informational resources.