Mitigating Impacts of Natural Hazards on Fishery Ecosystems

Dialog with Stakeholders: Overview and Summary

Ronald C. Baird

doi: https://doi.org/10.47886/9781934874011.ch35

From the inception of this symposium series, the conveners have strongly endorsed a policy of stakeholder engagement and input to the proceedings. In accordance with this custom, a block of time was set aside for a moderated discussion and comment session that included both a panel of experts and active input from the audience. The stakeholders’ comments were broad-ranging and the dialog extensive. My objective here is to present a brief overview and summary of the issues and points raised in the discussion.

Two excellent publications (Mileti 1999; USCOP 2004) expand on a number of critical steps in hazards mitigation that permeate much of the symposium dialog with stakeholders. These include (1) building local networks, capability, and consensus; (2) establishing a holistic or integrated governance framework; (3) conducting multihazard community-scale risk assessments that are place-based; (4) establishing critical databases; (5) providing education and training; and (6) establishing baselines against which to measure progress.

Stakeholder’s comments can be logically divided into two general categories. The first involves problems that emerged from actual situations, particularly with hurricanes and tsunamis, followed by recommendations to improve resiliency of fisheries to natural hazards.

Stakeholder comments emanating from personal experience involved both the human dimensions of hazards and effects on fish stocks. Concerning the stocks themselves, there were often few useful data bases or baselines available for documenting population changes. This was particularly true for shallow- water nursery areas where prerecruit sizeclasses are exposed to a multitude of stressors. Generally, there was a reduction in fishing pressure and indications of concomitant enhancement of stock size. Interestingly, the post-event fishing effort after recovery can be considerably altered, perhaps permanently, from pre-event levels. Clearly, market forces and the economic characteristics of various fisheries are critical variables in predicting both resiliency and post-event recovery.

In the human dimension, impacts observed were highly place-based, and a number of stakeholders indicated that vulnerability was strongly related to preconditions. Disasters in communities were often exacerbated by pre-existing problems. Degraded facilities and equipment prior to the event are examples. Related problems were the lack of good economic data on pre-event infrastructure and therefore very convoluted and inefficient post-event recovery and rebuilding processes.