So Much Habitat, So Little Time (and Money!): Prioritization of Habitat Assessments

The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) has developed a process and outlined criteria to prioritize stocks at a regional level that would benefit from habitat assessments.   These regional habitat assessment priorities will collectively represent a national set of habitat science priorities.  Habitat science is critical to NMFS to fulfill regulatory mandates under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSA). Two areas of emphasis identified by NMFS in a recent habitat science evaluation are: (1) reducing habitat-related uncertainty in stock assessments; and (2) improving the information upon which designations of essential fish habitat (EFH) and habitat areas of particular concern (HAPC) are based. To accomplish these goals, NMFS conducts or provides fund to conduct habitat assessments, which are the process and the products associated with consolidating, analyzing, and reporting the best available information on the influence of habitat characteristics on the population dynamics of fishery species and other living marine resources. Enhanced habitat understanding will advance NMFS’ ability to meet MSA mandates and will move the agency toward more sophisticated integrated ecosystem assessments and more comprehensive ecosystem-based management as outlined in the NOAA Habitat Blueprint. Two separate priority lists will be assembled representing the two emphasis areas above.  Habitat Science Supporting Stock Assessment Priorities represent the extent to which a habitat assessment should provide efficient and meaningful results to improve stock assessments for valuable and important stocks. EFH Science Priorities represent the extent to which a habitat assessment should provide efficient and meaningful results to inform designations of HAPC and EFH for valuable and important stocks. The priorities will be used to build new habitat science funding initiatives and assist NMFS in determining where to focus habitat assessments.