ADMAR Adaptive management of living marine resources by integrating different data sources and key ecological processes

The increasing focus on Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries (EAF) has led to both an increasing knowledge of species interactions and climate effects as well as the development of ecosystem models. The Norwegian Ocean Resource Act ?Havressursloven ? is a formal implementation of EAF and focuses on supporting a sustainable harvest of marine resources in accordance with the precautionary principle. Therefore, to meet the demands for scientific information as set by EAF, and hence Havressursloven, there is a need to reconsider the present framework for obtaining scientific information and developing management advice. The RCN project ADMAR (Adaptive Management of Living Marine Resources by Integrating Different Data Sources and Key Ecological Processes?) (project no. 200497) has been a part of this work. The principal institutions involved in ADMAR, a 5-year strategic institute program (April 2010 - March 2015), have been the Institute of Marine Research, Bergen (coordinator) and CEES¸ University of Oslo. The Norwegian Computing Center has been involved through IMR. The overall goal of the project was to enhance knowledge of how ecosystems function and to derive a framework for an operational adaptive management scheme and to apply this to specific ecosystems. ADMAR has shown that the adequate level of monitoring for advice support can be determined based on what science can actually provide. The advantage and impact of harvest control rules (HCR) including confidence intervals (CI-HCR) is that the advised quota will depend on the quality of the assessments, and leave value judgments made transparent for the decision-maker. ADMAR has also led to an increased use and awareness of statistical sound survey design. Furthermore, ADMAR has shown how simple relationships (correlations) between environmental indicators and stock development may change abruptly over time. The project has contributed to an increased synergy between IMR and CEES. The publication list of ADMAR at the end of the project includes 31 in-print publications. Many of the papers were also co-authored by international colleagues, located all around the world. Central institutional partners included PINRO (Russia), IFREMER (France), Bedford Institute of Oceanography (Canada) and Oregon State University (USA).

The Norwegian Ocean Resource Act "Havressursloven" of 2009 is a formal implementation of the Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries. This requires explicit management action towards both data rich and data poor stocks, including those of minor commercial importa nce. The overall goal of this project is to enhance knowledge of ecosystem functioning and to derive a framework for operational adaptive management. Progress in two directions is required: First, models demand a high level of realism. Different data sour ces (survey data, fisheries statistics, life history traits, multi species considerations etc.) and error structures must be integrated to derive key parameters and time-series. Further development of stock assessment models by quantifying uncertainties i s paramount. Secondly, development of better biological models, which incorporate food-web interactions providing a basic understanding of the ecosystem functioning. Size-based models will be developed to model multi-species dynamics parsimoniously, descr ibing the essential ecological processes that are particularly useful in data-poor situations. We will derive Harvest Control Rules (HCR) for exploited stocks to study the outcome of different harvesting scenarios under varying amounts of information, and to see how a reduction in information affects the most robust HCR. We will also consider different ecological scenarios, where species interactions change within and among species over the course of harvesting and environmental changes. Given these opera tional models, we will derive a model framework providing scientifically sound advice given the level and quality of the available information. The proposed project will contribute to fundamental science and its application for sustainable management of m arine resources.