Identifying Indicators of Fish Habitat Status in the California Current Ecosystem

Fish habitats support diverse communities of species and are the focus of management mandates, species conservation, and restoration efforts. Habitat quantity and quality is affected by both long-term climate processes and anthropogenic pressures, thus habitats are the interface where these interactions occur and an integral component of ecosystem based management (EBM) of recreational and commercial fisheries. Unfortunately, effective habitat science and management is hindered by a lack of understanding aquatic habitat condition and their importance for marine living resources. Incorporating habitat into EBM framework is important to understanding linkages between multiple drivers, interconnections among habitats, the living marine resources using habitats, and the benefits of habitats to people. However, without a temporal reference of habitat status, it is difficult to determine how climate and anthropogenic pressures are affecting habitats. We constructed a conceptual habitat model with four macrohabitats relevant to ecosystem management (freshwater, estuary and nearshore, pelagic, and seafloor) of the California Current Large Marine Ecosystem. We identify and develop time series for 34 ecosystem indicators to evaluate habitat status and trends. These time series improve our ability to identify habitat condition, track habitat changes through time, and highlight information gaps in habitat data.