Good Fish in Bad Habitats: Conceptual and Empirical Challenges in Linking Land-Use Practices to Coastal Fisheries Management

In the Chesapeake, a challenge is to link coastal fisheries to watershed processes that are hundreds of kilometers distant.  Detection of watershed effects on coastal fisheries is obscured by (1) distance, (2) confounding factors such as fishery removals and coastal habitat degradation, and (3) adaptive behaviors by fish and fishers.  A principal way that watersheds influence coastal fisheries is through delivery of anthropogenic nutrients to coastal waters, where they cause eutrophication and systemic summer-time hypoxia.  Hypoxia is believed to detrimentally influence fisheries, but few studies directly link the response of fish and fisheries to low oxygen episodes.   Here we investigate the behavioral responses of fish and fisheries to hypoxic conditions for Chesapeake Bay striped bass.   Results indicate that “good” fish and good fishing can frequently occur in “bad” habitats.  The adaptive responses of fish and fisheries to eutrophication and hypoxia present a challenge in managing watersheds and living resources.  In this instance traditional goals of altering land-use practices to restore or increase abundances of living resources may not be appropriate. Rather, goal-setting should emphasize resilience and stability, conserving the capacity of fish and fisheries to adapt to hypoxia and other environmental stresses.