Eelgrass Ecosystem Services
We are working to ensure conservation and restoration of local seagrass habitats by developing and disseminating mapping and monitoring toolkits to inform marine spatial planning. This project is significant because seagrass meadows are rapidly decreasing around the world and they provide key ecosystem services by 1) supporting the nation’s food supply and jobs (commercial fisheries and aquaculture), 2) maintaining clean and healthy waters (seagrass reduces nutrients and increases water clarity), 3) mitigating climate change (“blue” carbon storage, reducing ocean acidification), and 4) fostering public enjoyment of nature through tourism and recreation in marine protected areas. Our work is needed for effective management and conservation of these critical resources and services.
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Forage Fish Management
Our forage fish conservation work has preserved the ocean’s resources by adding protections for new species that are the food for whales, dolphins, seabirds, sharks, and fishes (https://n.pr/2HcGDgD). Our holistic approach to ecosystem science includes utilizing ecosystem-scale information to improve management of commercial fisheries, as seen in our work to build ecosystem considerations like climate change and food webs into the San Francisco Bay Herring Fisheries Management Plan (https://bit.ly/2spEZDQ). Recently we participation in a collaborative process between fishers, managers, and conservation that enabled stronger communities focused on wise management of marine resources and our food supply, leading the way for implementation of sustainable fishing practices that account for warmer ocean temperatures and the needs of marine predators that rely on herring as a food source.
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Data Synthesis
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