Publication Date

1-1-2021

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

Volume

288

Issue

1964

DOI

10.1098/rspb.2021.1607

Abstract

Despite the increasing frequency and magnitude of extreme climate events, little is known about how their impacts flow through social and ecological systems or whether management actions can dampen deleterious effects. We examined how the record 2014-2016 Northeast Pacific marine heatwave influenced trade-offs in managing conflict between conservation goals and human activities using a case study on large whale entanglements in the U.S. west coast's most lucrative fishery (the Dungeness crab fishery). We showed that this extreme climate event diminished the power of multiple management strategies to resolve trade-offs between entanglement risk and fishery revenue, transforming near win-win to clear win-lose outcomes (for whales and fishers, respectively). While some actions were more cost-effective than others, there was no silver-bullet strategy to reduce the severity of these trade-offs. Our study highlights how extreme climate events can exacerbate human-wildlife conflict, and emphasizes the need for innovative management and policy interventions that provide ecologically and socially sustainable solutions in an era of rapid environmental change.

Funding Number

DGE-1762114

Funding Sponsor

National Science Foundation

Keywords

Dungeness crab, dynamic ocean management, marine heatwave, trade-offs, whale bycatch

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Department

Moss Landing Marine Laboratories

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