A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE STATUS OF THE U.S. MARINE MAMMAL STOCK ASSESSMENT PROGRAM
Abstract
The Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) includes a multi-step process for reducing
national marine mammal bycatch. This process requires the National Marine Fisheries
Service (NMFS) to publish annual marine mammal Stock Assessment Reports (SARs), which
include best estimates of each stock’s abundance, population trend, maximum rate of
increase, potential biological removal (PBR), and ‘annual human-caused mortality and
serious injury’. On the basis of these estimates, NMFS determines ‘strategic’ stocks
which are most at risk from bycatch. According to the MMPA, a stock should be considered
strategic if is: a) Threatened or Endangered under the ESA, or decreasing in abundance
and likely to be listed, or b) classified as depleted under the MMPA, or c) experiencing
direct human-caused mortality and serious injury at a level which exceeds its PBR.
If strategic stocks interact with commercial fisheries that have significant levels
of marine mammal bycatch, the agency is required to establish Take Reduction Teams
(TRTs), which craft Take Reduction Plans (TRPs). TRPs include measures to reduce the
fishery-related mortality of a particular strategic stock, given that the current
level of annual human-caused mortality and serious injury exceeds the stock’s PBR.
Therefore, without a TRT, the strategic stocks interacting with fisheries that cause
either frequent or occasional mortality will continue to remain imperiled because
nothing is being done to reduce the unsustainable level of stock mortality. Because
NMFS’ status determinations are data-dependent, deficient and/or imprecise stock data
hinders the agency’s ability to appropriately determine strategic status. This project
assessed the current state of the U.S. marine mammal stock assessment program, with
regard to data quality and MMPA compliance, relative to previous assessments by NMFS
(2004) and the GAO (2008). The results of this project indicate that previously-identified
gaps in stock information and MMPA compliance persist in the 2013 stock assessment
reports.
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/9643Citation
Wagner, Amy Nicole (2015). A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE STATUS OF THE U.S. MARINE MAMMAL STOCK ASSESSMENT PROGRAM.
Master's project, Duke University. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/9643.Collections
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