Addressing Logistical Constraints to Multijurisdictional Fisheries Management – Where Are Data, Can They Be Deciphered, Will Anyone Share?

At the core of addressing fisheries sustainability is the need to share information across multiple jurisdictions and disciplines. In 2009, the USGS, in conjunction with Michigan State University, developed a nationwide pilot information system called the Sturgeon Information Infrastructure (SII). SII combined historical and current lake sturgeon status and trends data from state, federal and tribal agencies, academic institutions, and private organizations. Development of the SII probed at a number of underlying systemic issues relating to natural resource management within the United States. In particular, resistance to sharing data, how and if agencies cooperate and communicate with each other and with their own employees, how to preserve and use historical datasets, the general lack of biological standardization, and assessing if the creation of large-scale databases yields returns enough to justify their investment in resources. Ultimately, attempts to consolidate and display information about the status of a species gets at the core of a very simple, intuitive, and relevant public concern about biodiversity and the sustainability of our fisheries resources, but this can only be accomplished if natural resource agencies actively move towards a common goal of sharing, documenting and ultimately standardizing how fisheries data are collected and reported.