Risk Management in Fisheries

André is a Professor in the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences at the University Washington, Seattle, USA and the currently the Director of the School. He received his B.Sc, M.Sc and Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Before joining the University of Washington, Dr Punt was a Principal Research Scientist with the CSIRO Division of Marine and Atmospheric Research in Australia. Dr. Punt has been involved in stock assessment and fisheries management for over 25 years and has been recognized for his contributions in this area with awards from CSIRO, the University of Washington, the Australian Society for Fish Biology, and the American Fisheries Society. The research undertaken by Dr. Punt and the MPAM (Marine Population and Management) group at the University of Washington relates broadly to the development and application of fisheries stock assessment techniques, bioeconomic modelling, and the evaluation of the performance of stock assessment methods and harvest control rules using the Management Strategy Evaluation approach.

Currently, projects that Dr. Punt is undertaking with his research group include integrating genetic methods with traditional fisheries management approaches, assessment and management methods for data-poor methods, and understanding the impact of climate change and environmental variation on the performance of assessment and management methods. Dr. Punt has conducted stock assessments for a wide range of species, ranging from anchovies and sardines, to groundfish, tunas, and cetaceans. Dr. Punt has published over 250 papers in the peer-reviewed literature, along with over 400 technical reports. He was recently a member of a National Research Council panel on evaluating the effectiveness of fish stock rebuilding in the United States. Dr Punt is currently a member of the Scientific and Statistical Committee of the Pacific Fishery Management Council, the advisory committee for Center for the Advancement of Population Assessment Methodology, the Crab Plan Team of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, and the Scientific Committee of the International Whaling Commission.

Chris Anderson is a Fisheries Economist at the UW School of Aquatic Fisheries Science. He addresses the role that economics plays in developing effective management for aquatic and fishery resources. Identifying and achieving management goals for complex human-natural systems requires appreciating how people will respond to changes in management and in their environment – questions that economic tools are designed to address. Chris participates directly in management through membership on the Scientific and Statistical Committee of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council. Chris became an economist because he is broadly curious about decision making in environments that induce strategic behavior that leads to negative individual or aggregate outcomes. He sees economics as a behavioral science, and is especially interested in cases where systematically suboptimal individual decisions exacerbate bad outcomes or can be leveraged to ameliorate them. Chris relies on game theory, behavioral economics, experimental economics and maximum-likelihood panel and latent class econometrics to build and test models. Chris’s work spans a wide range of applications, fisheries and coastal issues emerge as consistent themes and his recent work is dominated by questions related to the design of fishery management institutions, especially those based on individual or community rights systems. 

Jamie Goen is the Executive Director at Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers, a trade association representing commercial crab harvesters. She is also a member of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, board member of United Fishermen of Alaska, and executive committee member of the Alaska Ocean Acidification Network. As the leader of an industry on the forefront of climate impacts, Jamie is passionate about building resilient, sustainable ecosystems to support fisheries and communities through stakeholder involvement, collaboration, and innovative solutions backed by science and local and traditional knowledge. Throughout her 20+ year career in fisheries, Jamie has worked on fisheries policy issues in the United States and Canada, working for government agencies, international organizations, and the private sector. Jamie holds a masters degree in marine policy from the University of Washington.

Alistair Hobday is Research Director for CSIRO’s Sustainable Marine Futures Program and is based in Hobart, Australia. His research includes investigating the impacts of climate change and extreme events on marine biodiversity and fishery resources, and developing, prioritizing and testing adaptation options to underpin sustainable use and conservation into the future. He co-developed the Ecological Risk Assessment for the Effects of Fisheries (ERAEF) approach to risk-based management for fisheries, which has been applied in more than 15 countries around the world and is used to provide tactical management advice to the Australian Fisheries Management Authority. Alistair has recently co-led the development of the world’s first marine heatwave forecasts, which are helping decision makers manage risk in the Blue Economy. He is a highly cited researcher (2019-2023) with more than 350 publications and contributed to the IPCC 4th (one of 1500 scientists sharing in the Nobel Peace Prize) and 5th assessment Australasia chapters. He is a founding member of the International Marine Heatwaves Working Group, and a current Fellow of the international Integrated Marine Biosphere Research program (IMBeR). In 2018 he received the Australia Society for Fish Biology’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 2023 he was elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE).

Rich Little is a Senior Research Scientist at CSIRO Environment in Hobart, Australia. His research specializes in modeling population dynamics, economics, and management decision-making in natural resource and marine environmental science. He has worked on the development of a decision support tool called ELFSim, and used computer-based biophysical process-models to measure environmental risk management of climate change. He is the Principal Investigator for the South East Australian Marine Ecosystem Survey (SEA-MES) that is attempting to untangle the effects of environmental management and climate change in the marine waters of Southeast Australia, and is also associated with Marine Visual Technologies, an initiative developing solutions to support sustainable fisheries management using deep video analytics.

Dr Claire Spillman is a Principal Research Scientist and leads the Seasonal and Marine Applications Team at the Bureau of Meteorology, Australia. Her current research is focused on seasonal forecasting for marine applications, including underpinning science, forecast product design, operationalisation and stakeholder engagement. Forecast applications include marine heatwave prediction, coastal hazards, and coral reef, aquaculture and fisheries management.

Dr. Spillman has over 20 years research experience in ocean and climate modelling and has published more than 50 papers in internationally recognised scientific journals. She is an Associate Investigator in the Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes (CLEX), a member of the IMOS Science and Technology Advisory Committee and the Australian representative on the WMO Subseasonal to Seasonal (S2S) Project Steering Committee. She is frequently called on to give media interviews, public webinars and to contribute to government and industry.

James Watson is an Associate Professor at Oregon State University and leads the Socio-Environmental Analysis (SEA) Lab in the College of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences. James’ research uses tools from ecology, economics, oceanography, machine learning and applied math to characterize and understand the complexity and dynamics of socio-environmental systems. He takes inspiration from the study of complex adaptive systems such as financial markets, social networks, and systems of collective behavior, to understand the dynamics of social-ecological systems, and to improve our ability to live sustainably. He is committed to translating basic science into solutions for the real-world, and encourages partnerships with government and NGO organizations, as well as entrepreneurship based on his research.

Genoa is a marine ecologist currently working to support the Ocean Modeling Forum at the University of Washington. Her research focuses on how temperate marine communities respond to human-driven disturbances. As a Master’s student she studied how an invasive alga alters species diversity and production in southern California kelp forests. Additionally, she worked on a team of scientists to assess differences in communities and ecosystem function between kelp forests and urchin barrens across the Aleutian Island archipelago in Alaska. She holds a M.S. from San Diego State University and a B.S. from California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo.