SEMINAR: Brown Bag Seminar: Gulf of Mexico Integrated Ecosystem Assessment

["Michael.Schirripa@noaa.gov" <michael.schirripa@noaa.gov>]

You are invited to attend the

SOUTHEAST FISHERIES SCIENCE CENTER
BROWN-BAG SEMINAR

THIS THURSDAY

  Thursday August 16 at 3:00 pm in the SEFSC Large Conference Room

Title:  The Gulf of Mexico Integrated Ecosystem Assessment: Progress and Vision

Speakers: Michael Schirripa & Chris Kelble
Affiliation: NOAA NMFS & OAR

Abstract:

The Gulf of Mexico (GOM) is a semi‐enclosed coastal sea with a vast array of topography and moderately high productivity that supports biological diversity and high biomass of fish, sea birds and marine mammals. Along with supporting a large recreational and commercial fishing industry, the GOM also provides vital services such as oil and gas production, tourism, habitat for endangered species, and support for many Gulf state economies. It is also the only known spawning ground for the western stock of the bluefin tuna. However, despite the many ecological services provided by the GOM Large Marine Ecosystem (LME) management of the system historically has been done on a case by case or single species basis with little or no integration. First conceived in 2008, the GOM Integrated Ecosystem Assessment (IEA) is an interdisciplinary, interagency effort whose goal is to address all the various ecological services in one unified management framework. The intent of the IEA is to make more obvious the tradeoff between often conflicting ecosystem services. Through state of the art ecosystem models such as Atlantis, OSMOS, and Ecopath_Ecosim, management strategy evaluations (MSE) will be performed that seek to manage the GOM LME from a more holistic, broader perspective than the current single species models are capable of.