Mitigating Impacts of Natural Hazards on Fishery Ecosystems

Poster Abstract: Report to Congress on the Impact of Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma on Commercial and Recreational Fishery Habitat of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas

James P. Thomas

doi: https://doi.org/10.47886/9781934874011.ch17

Poster Abstract.—The U.S. Congress, under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Reauthorization Act of 2006, mandated a report on the impact of hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma on commercial and recreational fishery habitat, including that of shrimp and oysters, for Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. The report was compiled by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries Office of Habitat Conservation with assistance by staff from the Southeast Region and the Southeast Fisheries Science Center and input from other elements of NOAA; federal, state, and local agencies; and academic institutions.

The habitats discussed in the report (i.e., coastal forests, emergent intertidal wetlands, sea grass meadows, oyster reefs, mangrove forests, barrier islands and shorelines, offshore soft bottom, coral reefs, and shelf edge reefs) provide vital support to fisheries and the coastal ecosystem, and protect coastal communities and infrastructure (e.g., ports, energy, fisheries) critical to the nation. The impacts from the 2005 hurricanes on these habitats were substantial from Florida to Texas and were felt to depths exceeding 300 ft. The hurricanes exacerbated degradation associated with anthropogenic and natural factors in many coastal habitats. Wetland loss was especially severe along the northern Gulf of Mexico and could result in a decline in Gulf fisheries production. The time course for this is uncertain. Except in localized areas of oil spills, there is no evidence that hurricane-caused contamination interfered with the physiological functioning of fishery species or made organisms unfit for consumption by humans.

The report recommends re-establishing freshwater and sediment supplies to deltaic wetlands of the Louisiana and Mississippi coastal zone to underpin wetland restoration efforts and re-establishing permanent freshwater and sediment supplies to enhance coastal barrier islands formation. The report recommends developing a baseline assessment against which to compare the habitat effects of future hurricanes and major storms along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts, developing advance plans for information gathering analysis and dissemination in preparation for future great storms, and establishing mechanisms to disseminate information from the analyses to on-theground managers in readily usable formats on a scale of weeks to months. The inability to precisely describe the linkage between habitat (quantity and quality) and fishery production is identified as a primary impediment to producing more precise estimates of the effects of habitat loss on fisheries and applying an ecosystem approach to the management of fisheries.

The full report is found at: www.nmfs.noaa.gov/msa2007/docs/HurricaneImpacts Habitat_080707_1200.pdf.