The likely suspect’s framework: the need for a life cycle approach for managing Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) stocks across multiple scales
Date
2022-05-08
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Publisher
Oxford Academic Press
Abstract
The ongoing declines in Atlantic salmon populations across its range underscore the need for co-ordinated scientific-based knowledge to support
management and decisions for their conservation. Current salmon management actions remain largely focused on addressing bottlenecks to
production in the freshwater phase of the life-cycle, whereas the continued declines observed in the recent decades are thought to be driven
primarily by constraints on the marine phase. The challenges brought by global warming and other emerging stressors require immediate actions,
requiring us to re-think the methods behind stock assessment and forge stronger linkages between data, models and policies to promote more
effective management actions. We outline a scientific framework that takes a wider ecosystem view, designed to evaluate holistically a suite
of indicators and potential drivers of salmon mortality at key phases of the life cycle. The aims of the proposed “Likely Suspects Framework”
are to enhance cross-fertilisation of ideas between assessment processes at the stock-complex scale and stock-specific focused management
activities, and to develop new decision support tools to improve management efficiencies and scenario testing. Adopting such an approach
provides a new way to catalyse the acquisition and deployment of both existing and new data and models that are urgently needed for assisting
the conservation and future stewardship of salmon stocks on both sides of the Atlantic.
Description
Publication history: Accepted - 10 May 2022: Published online - 8 June 2022
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Article
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Keywords
ecosystem-based-management, life-cycle approach, Salmo salar, stock assessment
Citation
Bull, C.D., Gregory, S.D., Rivot, E., Sheehan, T.F., Ensing, D., Woodward, G. and Crozier, W. (2022) ‘The likely suspects framework: the need for a life cycle approach for managing Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) stocks across multiple scales’, ICES Journal of Marine Science. Edited by W. Flannery. Oxford University Press (OUP). doi:10.1093/icesjms/fsac099.