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CLIMATE AND FISHING IMPACTS ON NORTH PACIFIC FISHERIES: INSIGHTS AND PROJECTIONS FROM CONTRASTING APPROACHES TO ECOSYSTEM MODELING A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAIʻI AT MĀNOA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN MARINE BIOLOGY May 2019 By Phoebe Anne Woodworth-Jefcoats Dissertation Committee: Jeffrey C. Drazen, Chairperson Megan Donahue Kyle Edwards Jeffrey J. Polovina Axel Timmermann ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thank you to my advisor Jeff Drazen. Throughout my time as a graduate student you’ve found a balance of supporting me and challenging me. You’ve been an advocate for me and you ask me questions that make me think harder about my research. Thank you for taking me on as a student, seeing the value of work experience in lieu of academic background, and pushing me to work just a little bit harder. Thank you also to Jeff Polovina who’s been both a committee member and for much of my time as a student, my boss. You encouraged me to pursue my PhD and allowed me the professional space follow through. I could not ask for a better school-work balance. In addition to that, your productive curiosity is inspirational. I am extremely fortunate to have begun my career working with you. Thank you to my other committee members: Matt Church, Megan Donahue, Kyle Edwards, and Axel Timmermann. Matt, you helped me keep the broader research community in mind in my research. Megan, your ecosystem expertise helped ensure my research was rooted in sound theory and you always managed to ask tough questions in an encouraging way. Kyle, thank you for jumping in midway through my research. You’ve helped me think more deeply about my modeling work and broaden my skills. Axel, your excitement about new ideas is infectious and you’ve helped me elevate the quality of my research. Thank you to the Drazen Lab members both past and present. You helped me feel like a part of the Lab and a part of UH even though I was rarely in the lab. And you always made space for me when I was there. Plus, your science and your skills and your enthusiasm are inspiring. Everyone is always doing such cool stuff! Team Lancetfish, you’re awesome. Every time we assemble, you make me excited to do science. I love kicking around ideas with you guys. Thank you to my colleagues at PIFSC for your support these last few years. Whether you were helping me sort out my work schedule, asking me how school was going, sitting in class with me, or listening to me lament my latest academic woe, thank you. Knowing I had a team of people rooting for me has been a continual source of strength. Thanks especially to Jen Raynor, Justin Hospital, Joe O’Malley, and Brian Langseth for taking the time to discuss with me ii economics, fish life history, and methods for addressing the limitations of fishery-dependent data. I owe special thanks to my master’s advisor, Chidong Zhang. Chidong let me go on a three-week research cruise that had nothing to do with my (or his) meteorology research. Thank you for allowing me to do that. The more time passes, the more I realize just how pivotal that experience was in my life. It led me to my career, and along the way, to my husband Matt. Thank you, also, to my parents. You’ve always been excited about my work and you’re probably the only two people on the planet who’ve voluntarily read all of my papers. Cecilia, you’re the best sister anyone could ask for. You’re always a voice of sanity and reason, yet you never make me feel silly for worrying. You’re also an endless source of wit and entertainment. Thank you for being you and for being my friend. Thank you, Matt, for more than I could possibly list. Put most simply, you’ve put up with me and encouraged me throughout my PhD (probably in that order). I am thankful every day that you’re my husband. Both the Fernando Gabriel Leonida Memorial Scholarship and the Denise B. Evans Fellowship in Oceanographic Research supported my research outside of NOAA. This funding made it possible for me to travel to visit collaborators, attend international meetings, and participate in extracurricular training. Thank you especially to Grace Furuya in the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology. I funded my return to graduate school largely with US Department of Veterans Affairs Post-9/11 GI Bill benefits. Throughout my time in school, I was continually impressed with how easy it was to access my benefits – thanks in no small part to the great liaisons in the UH Office of the Registrar. Amazingly, this component of my PhD was always the least stressful. Thank you to both UH and the VA for making this the case. And thanks especially to Chris in the Registrar’s office for explaining to the VA how dissertation research works. iii ABSTRACT Climate change and fishing are among the greatest anthropogenic stressors on marine ecosystems. Ecosystem models are one tool for evaluating the effects of these stressors, and ecosystem model comparison is a particularly effective method for identifying robust projections of future ecosystem change. When fundamentally different approaches produce the same result, this increases confidence in the conclusion. Conversely, areas of model disagreement highlight topics for future research. This dissertation uses output from a suite of earth system models to determine the range of climate change effects projected for the North Pacific over the 21st century. It then pairs this output with three types of ecosystem models: a size-based, a species- based, and an integrated size- and species-based model. There is broad model agreement that climate change will lead to reduced fish biomass and fishery yield over the 21st century and that increasing fishing mortality will amplify this decline. Furthermore, Hawaii’s longline fishery may move northeastward away from Hawaii in response to these changes. Examining the structure of the ecosystem models used provides insight into the mechanisms driving ecosystem change. Reduced plankton biomass is projected to reduce food availability to fish, reducing their growth and in turn, biomass. Additionally, a shift toward smaller plankton is expected to propagate through the food web leading to smaller fish body sizes. Comparison across ecosystem models also highlights areas for future research. These areas include evaluating the role that food limitation plays in fishes’ foraging behavior and compiling basic life history information for species with high bycatch rates. The results of this dissertation highlight the urgent need to limit anthropogenic climate change and to account for climate change in fisheries management. We cannot hope to catch ever more fish while at the same time we erode the ecosystem’s productivity and capacity. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................ii Abstract ............................................................................................................................iv List of Tables....................................................................................................................ix List of Figures ..................................................................................................................x Chapter 1: Introduction ..................................................................................................12 Chapter 2: Two takes on the ecosystem impacts of climate change and fishing: Comparing a size-based and a species-based ecosystem model in the central North Pacific ...............................................................................................................................17 2.1 Introduction ...........................................................................................................18 2.2 Materials and methods ...........................................................................................19 2.2.1 Ecopath with Ecosim .....................................................................................20 2.2.2 Size-based food web model ...........................................................................20 2.2.3 Model input and simulation scenarios ............................................................21 2.3 Results ...................................................................................................................23 2.3.1 Climate and fishing impacts on long-term changes in biomass and catch .......23 2.3.2 Fishing impacts on biomass and catch ...........................................................23 2.3.3 Climate change impacts on biomass and catch ...............................................24 2.3.4 Model sensitivity to top-down and bottom-up forcing ....................................25 2.3.5 Climate and fishing impacts on interannual variability ...................................26 2.4 Discussion ..............................................................................................................26 2.4.1 Model agreement on the broad impacts of climate change .............................27 2.4.2 Differences between species-based and species-blind modeling approaches ..27 2.4.3 Uncertainty on the relative impacts of top-down and bottom-up forcing ........29 2.4.4 Impacts of predator- vs. prey-moderated food webs on the propagation of variability ...............................................................................................................31 2.4.5 Model limitations and caveats........................................................................33