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Working Groups: Protected Species Stock Assessment Improvement Plan Tier III Workshop 2006

Workshop Home | Abstracts | Agenda | Groups | Readings | Terms of Reference

Participants were assigned to Working Groups (WGs) by the organizing committee. Assignments to the WGs generally reflected people's interests and expertise, although some balancing was done to assure more-or-less equivalent numbers. Each group had a facilitator, science/manager chair, and rapporteur.

Reports

Themes
There were four working group themes designed to pursue the following:

  • WG 1 – Supporting the NOAA vision of EAM – Ecosystem Studies with A Protected Species Component: What should a national strategy for providing the protected species information necessary to support ecosystem modeling include? Note that this ecosystem modeling is meant to include not only multispecies fishery assessments with predation explicitly included, but also ecosystem based acoustic analyses, ocean health, etc.
  • WG 2 – The Protected Resources Vision – Protected Species Studies with An Ecosystem Component: What should a national strategy for ecosystem based protected species studies include/look like?
  • WG 3 – Assessments – Ecosystem Based Stock Assessments for Protected Species: Can the traditional single-species protected species assessments (e.g., PBR) be made multi-species?
  • WG 4 – Governance – Incorporating EAM into Management of Protected Species: How can NOAA implement ecosystem based management of protected species under MMPA and ESA.

Goals
Each WG was tasked to develop a conceptual strategy for a national and regional program supporting their theme, and prepared a brief (~5 page) report on the outcome of the discussion. Each of the reports should addressed, at a minimum, the following questions:

  • What characteristics should a region-specific, national program for this EAM theme have?
  • Are there appropriate experiences worldwide that demonstrate how this theme can inform ecosystem-based protected species management (include appropriate references)?
  • What new research, data, models, or information management system is required to advance the discipline so that its products form the basis for ecosystem-based decision making?
  • Based on the above, what changes in policy, governance, or science administration are required to more effectively inform ecosystem approaches to protected species management?

The WG reports will be combined to create the bulk of the workshop report. Presentations by the WG are listed above.
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