Quantifying sustainable operating space for lobster fisheries in Nova Scotia

Sustainable fisheries require more than just limits on how much people can catch. They must also consider the goals of fishers involved, including how the fishery supports their communities and lives, as these factors influence how people fish and their care for the resource. Yet combining social aims with biology has been difficult because it isn't clear how to directly compare them. The goal of this project is to overcome these problems by studying social, cultural, and economic factors as we do ecological processes, to understand how they influence fished populations in space and time. Doing so will help define what we call sustainable operating spaces, levels of catch that are sustainable and provide sufficient social, cultural, and economic benefits to sustain the fishery.

Sustainability is usually thought of only in terms of harvested species, at levels of catch thought to maximize fisheries yield. The idea behind a sustainable operating space is that trade-offs can be made between social and ecological benefits to reduce fishing pressure, as opportunities for conservation that would otherwise be overlooked. This project will test this idea among fishing ports in Nova Scotia to understand the full range of natural and human processes that impact lobster populations. To do this, we will define minimum and maximum levels of catch, economic value, and socio-cultural benefit considered sustainable within the fishery, developing a series of statistical models to relate natural and human factors to these fishery benefits to understand the full range of processes that explain how fished populations vary in space and time.

The research will involve a multidisciplinary team of biologists, economists, and social scientists, advanced statistical modelling, and opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students. These new researchers will leave the project with a competitive skill set for careers in academia, government research, education, and NGO work. Importantly, the project is modular and scalable to other fisheries, providing a flexible framework to tackle a wide range of sustainability issues. It will also train students to develop sought-after skills in decision theory, enabling them to help facilitate optimal conservation decisions under uncertainty.

It is expected that this project will receive high levels of interest from lobster fishers across Nova Scotia, who will see their values reflected in a scientific assessment of their fishery; from Fisheries and Oceans Canada, who will be provided a quantitative framework for incorporating social objectives into their existing management process; and to Nova Scotians generally, who will see and understand the depth, scale, and value of lobster fisheries beyond simply dollar values. We also anticipate also that the work will be of subsequent interest to policy makers, should future climate-driven declines in lobster catches threaten the livelihoods of fishers throughout the region.