* Click on the link above to view the recording of the discussion.

When I hear the term “ecosystem-based management” or “ecosystem thinking,” I think of connections – connections among people who have different goals and values for ocean places and connections among people, place, and the more than human world, like the barnacles, mussels, and seaweeds living in the rocky intertidal zone.

Many people have helped me learn about those connections. The other participants in this panel (i.e., Robin Alden, Joshua Stoll, and Jessica Bonilla) are among those from whom I have learned so much.

I met Robin Alden, founding Executive Director of the Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries, for the first time when I visited Isle au Haut, an island off the Maine coast, nearly 30 years ago. The conversation we had about the connection between Maine marine ecosystems and the people who rely on them was formative for me, as were a number of other conversations that I had with Maine marine resource managers, conservationists and scientists at that time.

I carried those conversations with me, as I moved west to Oregon for graduate school. At Oregon State University, advised by Profs. Jane Lubchenco and Bruce Menge, I learned to be an ecologist. I learned to pay attention to how humans and other living beings interact with one another and the world around us. I also learned more about the deep and varied connections that people have with coastal and marine places.

When I finished my PhD, I realized I still had research questions I wanted to tackle. So I went on to a postdoctoral fellowship with Prof. Simon Levin at Princeton University. There I co-edited one of the first books on marine ecosystem-based management, .

Josh Stoll, moderator of the panel, asked me why I wrote the book. The short answer is: I was asked to. My PhD mentor, Jane Lubchenco, is very good at sharing opportunities. When she explained to my co-editor Karen McLeod and me that Island Press was interested in publishing a book on marine ecosystem-based management, and that she thought we’d be good people to lead the effort, the book began to take shape. Over the next several years, we collaborated with more than 40 other people to create the volume. The book covered everything from the ethics, law, and policy of ecosystem-based management to the science and practice of this emerging field.

While I am very proud of the book we published in 2009, and the impact our collective work has had on the science and practice of ecosystem-based management, what I am most proud of is the community we helped to create during the process of drafting the book. In the process of identifying key themes for the book and figuring out how to write about them in a coherent way, we developed a shared understanding of the state of ecosystem-related science and management of the oceans, particularly in North America. That shared understanding helped support later research and policy development, such as the drafting of the US’s first National Ocean Policy in 2010.

By the time we finished the book, I realized that my next research project already was clear. We had lots of theory about ecosystem-based management, but fairly little empirical work on how it played out in practice and what worked and why. I turned my attention to documenting ecosystem-based management in practice in multiple places around the world. As that body of work developed over the last 15 years, I also was able to identify places where new science would be helpful. That process kept me in the field, doing ecology and learning how to do social science fieldwork, both in New England and also in Mexico.

During the book project, I realized that one of the parts of research that I particularly enjoy is helping other researchers talk with each other and identify research challenges that they can tackle together. Since then, I have helped co-create research projects with people who have many different kinds of expertise and experiences, including other scientists, as well as community members, resource managers, and other partners outside of academia. My role is these projects often is as translator – helping people with different backgrounds identify their shared interests and research questions as well as translating knowledge into action. When I can see that a project has made a real impact on my community, as we’ve managed to do through this community science program, that has been particularly rewarding.

Several years ago, I joined a group of 91���� faculty, led by Joshua Stoll, to develop a proposal to the US National Science Foundation for the Ecosystem Science National Research Traineeship (NRT) program. I now have an opportunity to support graduate students and my fellow faculty in becoming translators of ecosystem science knowledge and tools. Thanks to this program, we have recruited students to 91���� from all over the country to learn how to do ecosystem science and to support ecosystem-based management better. Together, we are exploring what comes next in this field, both in terms of the scholarship and its applications. If you are interested in joining us, please check out our program website at /ecosystem-science/ or reach out to me directly at heather.leslie(at)umaine.edu.

Thank you for reading!

I am particularly appreciative of AAAS as they hosted one of the first meetings I attended as a graduate student. I also am honored to be recognized as a AAAS Fellow.

I went to Boston in anticipation of seeing old friends and colleagues, and meeting new ones. Together with colleagues from other universities and one of the US’s leading scientific federal agencies, NOAA, I shared my reflections on the science and practice of marine ecosystem-based management during one of the meeting’s scientific sessions.

My goal was to highlight how far we have come with the science and the implementation of ecosystem-based management for our coasts and oceans and also, the highlight the work that still needs to be done, in which we all have a part.

I focused my remarks on the Gulf of Maine, a highly productive and cultural and economically important bit of the world ocean just beyond my doorstep. Over 3300 species marine plants and animals can be found in Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank, including over 650 species of fishes, 32 marine mammals, and 180+ species of seabirds. This tremendous biodiversity is supported by the Gulf’s dynamic and seasonally shifting oceanography ().   

I am a child of the Gulf. I grew up in Plymouth, near Cape Cod. And I now live on the Maine coast, an hour east of Portland. Like many New Englanders, my family and I spend a lot of time close to the water, swimming and walking by the shore, sailing, and watching birds. And for work, I have closely studied the varied connections between people and the ocean in this region, including coastal fisheries.

These connections between people and the ocean are the foundation of ecosystem-based management. They are what enable us to identify the place-based goals that guide both the science and practice of ecosystem-based management.

My main message to the AAAS audience was that the science and practice of ecosystem-based management have evolved a lot in the last 25 years. That is large part to the tremendous efforts of scientists, including many of our federal scientist colleagues at NOAA.

Around the turn of the century, single issue management was the norm at the federal, state and local levels in the US. That is how many of our landmark laws are written – think the U.S. Endangered Species Act that guides protection of the piping plover, for example.

I saw this firsthand, when I was active in piping plover research 30 years ago as a college intern with the . The management focused on the birds and creating conditions on Massachusetts’ barrier beaches to increase the success of individual pairs to fledge chicks. Sea level rise, beach and marsh restoration, and even the behavior of people who share beaches with these birds were outside the scope of plover management in the mid 1990s. Yet this bird is part of a much bigger coastal marine ecosystem.

Also, people were not part of many folks’ concept of an ecosystem. When people were considered, they were external to the system, and usually impacting it in a negative fashion.

Policies began to shift in the early 2000s with the release of the Pew Ocean Commission report and the report. Both reports identified ecosystem-based management as vital to our nation.

The progress continued with the

NOAA has been developing the science and policy of ecosystem-based management for more than 25 years. With the release of the (2016, and updated in 2024), that work became more visible and useable by managers, scientists, and others working at the regional and local levels.

Along with these policy developments, the science also has evolved. In my AAAS talk, I focused on the science of social-ecological systems specifically. When I talk about this science, I am talking about interdisciplinary research that embraces the connections between people and nature; recognizes the value of multiple disciplines and ways of knowing, including local and indigenous knowledge; and contributes to solutions.

Social-ecological systems approaches recognize that people are part of the ecosystem.

This figure from the book that Karen McLeod and I edited, (Island Press, 2009) illustrates these connections. We can see the hierarchical connections among ecological elements of the system, and also within the social domain. And we can see that the domains are connected, in multiple ways, often through ecosystem services like fisheries and recreation.

If you flip through my presentation, you’ll see the two examples I shared of how the science and practice have evolved. First I talked about a regional example: process in the Gulf of Maine. Then I discussed our lab’s work in the Damariscotta River estuary in coastal Maine.

Through these two examples, I argued that by bringing together knowledge of the diverse connections of the system of interest, we create more robust information and understanding. This way of doing ecosystem science supports a more varied set of management strategies than we get if we just rely on assessments of a particular species or set of human activities in a place. Place-based connections matter.

In summary, the science and practice of EBM has evolved a lot in the last two decades. This progress has supported implementation of EBM at multiple geographic scales.

However, we still have work to do! To guide future management, we need to continue to monitor and document the impacts of ecosystem-based management and other drivers on nature and people. If this is something you are interested in collaborating on, please be in touch.

Thank you for reading.

Heather

I was grateful to be able to travel with a close colleague and friend, Hudson; my daughter, Eva; and my graduate student, Sarah. With them, I saw places I had been before with new eyes. I also was fortunate to visit some new places.

Hudson introduced us to El Pardito, a small fishing community that has engaged in a revolutionary approach to ocean management over the last 15 years. We were the guests of Doña Clara and Don Pablo and their sons, Juan and Felipe. Doña Clara cooked meals for us that included one of the fish in season, jurel or yellowtail, and she taught Eva to make tortillas to wrap around the fresh fish.

We had the chance to explore the rocky reefs surrounding the island, snorkeling. The shoreline sloped gently away from the island, providing easy entry to the sea, even with wind and waves. Broad boulders interspersed with smaller structure and some sandy areas provided homes for wide diversity of fishes, hard and soft corals, and other invertebrates.

In the afternoon, when the wind blew fiercely and the sun shone hot, we sat in the shade and talked. Hudson and Juan and Don Pablo traded fishing stories. They talked about how different species behaved, the ways that different fishes move underwater and how as fishermen, the distinctive behaviors of the fishes influenced how they found and fished for different species.

“What happened to the squid?” Juan asked. “We rarely see them now.”

Hudson replied that another member of our research team, Dr. Tim Frawley, had studied this dramatic ecosystem change, the disappearance of jumbo squid. With the decline in squid abundance, fisheries in some of the remote and rural communities of the Gulf, particularly Santa Rosalia, also were much diminished. This had happened more than once in recent memory, but after the most recent decline, corresponding with the El Niño years of 2015-16, the squid never returned, at least not in commercially viable numbers.

Hudson explained that while squid still swam in the Gulf, they were smaller than before. The environment had changed – tropical conditions dominated, which meant not only warmer ocean waters but also less food for squid and other pelagic species.¹ The smaller form of squid now dominant in the Gulf ecosystem also is less catchable, at least in the ways that fishermen had caught them before.

As I listened to this conversation, I thought about the fishers’ deep and geographically specific knowledge of the habits and ecologies of so many different species. Local ecological knowledge like theirs often is not well-represented in government-led fisheries management. Fortunately, in the case of the Corridor, the geographic region within which El Pardito sits, local knowledge has been integral to recent management strategies, and specifically to the development of a series of fishery refuges that were later recognized by both the state and federal governments.²

Juan and his brother are unique among fishers in the region in that they not only fish for a living, they also work with researchers, studying sharks, sea lions and some of the many other marine organisms that live in the diverse ecosystems that surround El Pardito. They showed us some of the places that are important to them – not so much for fishing but for the biological diversity that can be experienced there.

At dusk, we made our way by boat to Isla San José, a larger island just north of El Pardito. We motored through a shallow saltwater channel into the estero, or estuary, on the southwestern tip of the island, where flocks of pelicans, terns, and other seabirds fed in the shelter of a dense mangrove forest. A mangrove warbler sang nearby, bright yellow against the green leaves of the mangrove. Fish jumped on the edge of the channel, prompting the pelicans to launch back into the sky and try their luck at fishing. The brothers told the story of exploring the mangrove forest as kids, trying to make their way to an abandoned house on a high point in the desert that we could just see above the seaside forest.

The estero ended against a gravel berm, protected from the waves of the Gulf. We talked about what this place had looked like a generation ago, when the brothers first visited this spot. They described an islet open to the ocean, and how the gravel had filled in the passage through time, for reasons no one could quite explain. We could see small mangrove trees growing on the edge of the gravel bed, a sign that the forest might continue to expand in the wave-protected reaches of the estero.

Time scales of ecosystem change

This talk of ecosystem change over years – in the case of squid generations and fishing seasons – and then over decades – in the case of shoreline movement and human generations – got me thinking about time. Humans have been challenged by ecosystem changes on these time scales for a long time, much longer than people have ‘managed’ fisheries or other interactions that people have with marine species and ecosystems.

What are the time scales that we need to understand, to enable people in coastal communities like El Pardito to engage in ecosystem-based responses to climate change and other threats to people and nature?

I would say that we particularly need to understand the time scales at which people can take action strategically and collectively – several years or decades into the future. That is the scale of community planning and policymaking and also the scale at which people are thinking not only about what the future may hold for themselves, but for their children and the places and more than human world that they cherish.

Researchers have forecasted how marine species have or will respond to different climate change impacts,^3,4 and how in turn fishers adapt to climate change impacts.⁵ This is an important area of study and requires both observations from the field as well as sophistical models of human-nature interactions. But these forecasts and retrospective studies of climate impacts, even the empirically grounded ones, can only illuminate so much. They often fall short when it comes to modeling the heterogeneity of social-ecological systems, particularly spatial heterogeneity. The diversity of ways different fishers fish in the Gulf, even for the same species;⁶ the variation in how different fished species respond to changing water temperature, chemistry, and currents;³ and how this variation plays out across a biophysically and socioeconomically diverse seascape^5,7 challenge our science. More often than not, our results are illustrative rather than predictive.

But there’s hope – here is where linking local knowledge with the full toolkit of social-ecological system science tools, drawn from anthropology, ecology, economics, geography, oceanography, sociology, etc. – can make a difference. My conversations on El Pardito last month newly inspired me to think about how we can do this, in Mexico and in Maine.

Acknowledgements

This research was made possible by the US National Science Foundation through CNH2-S award .

Related Reading

1.             Frawley, T. H. et al. Impacts of a shift to a warm-water regime in the Gulf of California on jumbo squid (Dosidicus gigas). ICES J. Mar. Sci. fsz133 (2019) doi:10.1093/icesjms/fsz133.

2.             Quintana, A., Basurto, X., Rodriguez Van Dyck, S. & Weaver, A. H. . Biodivers. Conserv. 29, 3899–3923 (2020).

3.             Cisneros-Mata, M. A. et al. . PLOS ONE 14, e0222317 (2019).

4.             Aburto-Oropeza, O., Paredes, G., Mascareñas-Osorio, I. & Sala, E. . Mar Ecol Prog Ser 410, 283–287 (2010).

5.             Frawley, T. H. et al. Self-governance mediates small-scale fishing strategies, vulnerability and adaptive response. Glob. Environ. Change 84, 102805 (2024).

6.             Pellowe, K. E. & Leslie, H. M. Heterogeneity among clam harvesters in northwest Mexico shapes individual adaptive capacity. Ecol. Soc. 24, art25 (2019).

7.             Leslie, H. M. et al. Operationalizing the social-ecological systems framework to assess sustainability. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 112, 5979–5984 (2015).

“Even in the face of the challenges to coastal communities and ecosystems created by the climate and biodiversity crises, I am hopeful,” said Heather Leslie, a faculty member with 91����’s School of Marine Sciences and Darling Marine Center. “We have made tremendous progress in understanding marine ecosystems in recent decades, and that knowledge is helping to support implementation of marine ecosystem-based management throughout the world’s oceans.”

/news/blog/2024/05/09/transformation-of-ocean-management-is-underway-study-finds/

We will dig into questions like, “What do you value about the river?” or “How do you think how people use and think about the river may change in the future?” The information we gather will be summarized for the Shellfish Committee and others who are interested, and may be used to support planning for a more resilient and sustainable future for the Damariscotta River and the people who value it and depend on it.

This research is supported by the US Department of Commerce, through the NOAA Saltonstall-Kennedy Program (Grant NA22NMF4270122, “Community Science to Support Sustainable and Local Seafood Production in Maine”). More information about this project is available here.

If you are interested in participating or know of someone else who may be, please call Sarah Risley at 207-558-3195.

Learn more about the study ������.��

Since 2019, researchers at 91����’s Darling Marine Center and members of the joint shellfish committee of Damariscotta and Newcastle have collaborated on a community science project focused on the ecology and shellfish resources of the upper Damariscotta River estuary.

We have gathered information on both the ecological and human dimensions of the wild shellfish fisheries in the estuary and worked together with harvesters and other local experts to identify the importance of the river to so many and also how it is changing through time. We also have identified sites where we will continue to monitor the abundance of harvested shellfish (including soft-shelled clams, oysters, quahogs and razor clams) as well as the recruitment of soft-shelled clams (see map to right).

Information like this can be used for many purposes including:

• Determining the location and timing of conservation activities.
• Informing committee decisions about license allocation.����
• Helping to identify ways to expand participation in shellfish management and conservation.��

To learn more about the project, download this two-page summary or read on for details of our activities and results from summer 2019 through summer 2023.

For more information about the project and to access related publications, please visit: /leslie-lab/research-2/damariscotta-community-science-project/

What Have We Learned?

Summer 2019

• Shellfish populations vary among locations and by tidal height, with greater numbers of shellfish in the upper intertidal zone.
• Soft-shell clam recruitment was highest in the upper intertidal zone.
• Harvesters shared that they have observed an increase in wild oyster abundance and a decrease in soft-shell clams. Many have begun to harvest oysters.

Fall 2020 – Winter 2021

• Shellfish harvesters and others identified changes in the upper estuary, including: 1) Increases in aquaculture, coastal development, tourism, and boating; 2) Growth of the wild oyster fishery; 3) Declines in the soft-shell clam fishery and other commercial fishing; and 4) Diminishing access and navigability in the upper estuary.
• Local knowledge is important for understanding how and why shellfish populations are changing and to guide research.

Summer 2021 and Summer 2022

• Green crab numbers vary, peaking in summer.
• Wild oysters are found at all monitoring sites.��
• Shellfish populations vary among locations: Westview has the most quahogs and fewest clams.

Summer 2023

• Oyster spat (i.e., baby oysters) recruit to the intertidal zone in the upper estuary near areas with many oyster farms.
• We did not find oyster spat in Great Salt Bay.��
• Adult wild oysters are attached to rock and under rockweed in the upper estuary, south of the Damariscotta-Newcastle bridge.��

Next Steps: Spring and Summer 2024

• Focus groups: Early this spring we will host a series of focus groups to identify and share people’s knowledge and goals for the future of the estuary.����
• Continued wild oyster research: We will survey wild oyster populations in the intertidal and subtidal and continue to study oyster spat settlement.��

To learn more about this project and how you can get involved, please contact Prof. Heather Leslie or graduate student Sarah Risley.

To learn more about the program and how to apply, please review material on our program website. ��While I will not be recruiting a student into my research group until Fall 2025, I encourage prospective graduate students to reach out to other potential advisors listed on the website.

Best of luck in the next steps of your graduate school search!

View the��poster��that PhD candidate Sarah Risley presented at the�� in August 2023 as well as reports on the work we’ve done in this area over the last four years here.

I wrote a picture book about renewable energy for a 5th grade project. The pages were filled with drawings of solar panels and plants and wildlife: a ten-year-old’s vision of environmental utopia. I remember carefully tracing wind turbines from a projector onto the page, complete with sunny skies and rolling green hills.

Eight years later, I declared my university major in environmental science. My view of our environmental future would change from happily spinning turbines to charts of carbon dioxide concentrations and global temperatures and sea levels, all rapidly rising toward total environmental crisis. So when I first started my research internship at the 91����’s Darling Marine Center, I knew that we needed renewable energy to meet that crisis, and offshore wind energy could be an integral part of transforming our current energy system. I was excited to join a social science research project on the topic, which felt like a tangible way to ease public concerns and facilitate that transformation.��

However, after learning more about the project, it seemed to me that the participatory social science methods we would be using, including interviews, might highlight local resistance to ocean renewable energy without moving toward a solution. If the research showed that many people are opposed to offshore wind, would that mean we should give up on a picture book clean energy future?

I imagine offshore wind farms as something like the picture-book drawings I made: turbines standing tall, the sea sparkling beneath them. I look at images of such farms and feel relieved that we’re making climate-smart energy decisions. However, when fishermen attending a public forum convened by the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management looked at a map of potential developments, they saw threats not only to the fisheries industry and their livelihoods, but their generational legacy and a way of life they hoped to pass on to their grandchildren.��

For many coastal residents and ocean users, the ocean represents a livelihood, a tradition, and a sense of place and belonging. Offshore wind developments could threaten these connections for some people. Such developments could lead to loss of commercial fishing grounds, industrialization of seascapes, and harm to seabirds and other marine life. Beyond these impacts, stakeholders may feel that planning processes do not provide them with a meaningful role in project decisions.

Learning more about these challenges was an awakening for me. Having grown up in the midst of the climate crisis, working toward clean energy development feels personal and urgent. I hadn’t envisioned that transformation forcing the consequences onto an important heritage industry and the people—fishermen and others—who love their work and lives on the sea.

I am not, of course, the first person to take an interest in making ocean renewable energy development more suited to the communities it will impact. Current approaches to mitigating conflicts include choosing development sites to avoid important animal habitats, creating methods to use turbine bases for shellfish or seaweed aquaculture, and integrating boat transit lanes between turbines. In each case, the first step was making a commitment to recognize and respect the multiple uses of ocean spaces. This approach to shared resource management is often referred to as ecosystem-based management (McLeod and Leslie 2009).��

Our oceans are a type of commons, accessible to many and managed collectively.�� Building on this idea, the concept of an “uncommons” considers the different worldviews that create and are created from different uses of a natural resource, like the oceans or the fish that live in them. In A World of Many Worlds, Marisol de la Cadena and Mario Blaser (2018) describe an uncommons as “the negotiated coming together of heterogeneous worlds (and their practices) as they strive for what makes each of them be what they are, which is also not without others” (p. 4). In offshore wind development, the ocean is the centerpoint, acting as both a potential clean energy resource and as a traditional shared livelihood. For those who work at sea, offshore waters can gain a unique significance as an identity- and community-forming place; in other words, these deep waters “make them be what they are” (p. 4). Acknowledging these diverse ways that people relate to the ocean may help facilitate more productive conversations about how these spaces might change with offshore wind development.����

After my summer research experience at 91����, my perspective on offshore wind and other renewable energy technologies has changed. I’m not universally supportive of such development, as I was before, but I still believe that ocean renewable energy can enable us to thrive in the face of the climate crisis when community needs are expressed and met as part of the development process. We need to figure out how communities and developers can navigate paths through their uncommons, finding uses of the shared commons that support renewable energy goals and community needs.

Everybody could get a marker in this new picture book. We can make the next pages together.��

To learn more about ocean renewable energy development, see the poster that Emma presented at the DMC summer research symposium in August 2023 and these resources:

de la Cadena, M., & Blaser, M. (Eds.). (2018). A World of Many Worlds. Duke University Press.

Haggett, C., ten Brink, T., Russell, A., Roach, M., Firestone, J., Dalton, T., & Mccay, B. J. (2020). Offshore wind projects and fisheries. Oceanography, 33(4), 38–47. ��

Hall, D. M., & Lazarus, E. D. (2015). Deep waters: Lessons from community meetings about offshore wind resource development in the U.S. Marine Policy, 57, 9–17. ��

McLeod, K. L., & Leslie, H. M. (Eds.). (2009). . Island Press. .

Emma’s research experience was supported by

• A grant to Drs. Leslie and Reilly-Moman (R/22-24-NESGR-Leslie) funded by a partnership among the Northeast Sea Grant Consortium, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Wind Energy Technologies Office and Water Power Technologies Office, and NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science;
• Student Research funds from friends of the 91���� Darling Marine Center; and
• ��from the Henry David Thoreau Foundation.��

To learn more about undergraduate research opportunities at the 91���� Darling Marine Center, please contact Prof. Leslie at heather.leslie(at)maine.edu or visit the DMC website at��. If you would like to support undergraduate research at the DMC, we would welcome your support; details on giving are at��