Select Publications

Improving fisheries assessments using historical data | with Alan Friedlander & Haruko Koike | Methods to find fisheries reference points using historical information, with a description of the challenges of estimating reference points | link

Casting deeper and more widely to perform stock-specific fisheries assessments when data are sparse | Methods to fill data gaps in stock assessments using economic and ecological data, and how robust management systems reduce the importance of data gaps | link

Economic determinants of fishing effort in Colombia's Caribbean spiny lobster fishery | with Erick Castro, Martha Prada, Trisha Forbes, Hugo Wilson, Heins Bent, & Lucy Alvarez Bustillo | An assessment of a fishery in remote waters, with an emphasis on the use of economic analysis to estimate the scale of illegal fishing activity | link

Do property rights lead to sustainable catch levels | with Arthur Van Benthem | An explanation of the subtleties and complexities of the effects of property rights, via individual transferable quotas, and a counter-proposal that empirical catch increases that follow the adoption of property rights may simply be due to improved catch reporting systems | link

Marine reserve design and function for fisheries management| with Alan Friedlander | A comprehensive exploration of the fisheries considerations and implications of establishing no-take marine protected areas | link

Performance indices taht facilitate informed, value-driven decision making in fisheries management | A management strategy evaluation examining the performance of a suite of harvest control rules across multiple competing objectives | link

Multiple chapters in Marine Reserves: A Guide to Science, Design, and Use | with Alan Friedlander | "Design and designation of marine reserves," "Research priorities and techniques," and "California's Channel Islands and the U.S. West Coast" describe various general findings about the design, function, and implementation of no-take marine protected areas | link link link

Designing effective marine protected areas in Seaflower Biosphere Reserve, Colombia, based on biological and sociological information | with Alan Friedlander, Juan Sanchez, Richard Appeldoorn, Paulo Usseglio, Claudia McCormick, Sonia Bejarano, & Anthony Mitchell-Chui | Rapid surveys identified clearly-defined habitat types, whether examining benthic communities or fish assemblages; these findings and habitat maps were used to guide the design of one of the largest marine protected areas in the Caribbean | link

Improving the ecology-policy interface | An argument that ecologists focus too much on perceived credibility challenges when the larger danger is that their advice on environmental policies may lack relevance, with a discussion of institutional barriers to addressing this problem | link

Methods for increasing the likelihood of restoring and maintaining productive fisheries | with Bruce Bollermann | It does take a rocket scientists to manage a fishery; we show that applying the engineering field of control theory to fisheries can maintain healthy stocks and catches even in the face of large uncertainties, but at a cost of highly variable catches | link

Monitoring the effects of land development on the near-shore reef environment of St. Thomas, USVI | with Rick Nemeth | Additional evidence, building on the paper below, of the significant threat to coral reefs that comes from sedimentation during wet storms exacerbated by land-based activities | link

Short- and long-term effects of three fishery management tools on depleted fisheries | A management strategy evaluation of potential techniques for rebuilding fish stocks, including minimum size limits, temporary closures, and the establishment of no-take marine protected areas | link

Fisheries benefits and optimal design of marine reserves| with Callum Roberts | The definitive theory for the design of no-take marine protected areas with an emphasis on fisheries impacts, and a recognition that the optimal design of marine reserves is complicated by multiple competing objectives | link

Human-enhanced impacts of a tropical storm on nearshore coral reefs | with Callum Roberts, Allan Smith, & Erkki Siirila | Direct evidence of the significant threat to coral reefs that comes from sedimentation during wet storms exacerbated by land-based activities | link

You can have your fish and eat it, too: theoretical approaches to marine reserve design | with Callum Roberts | The first theory paper to address fisheries consequences of population growth potential from no-take marine protected areas, in particular the trade-off between short- and long-term effects of rebuilding depleted stocks | link

Mate- and oviposition-influenced host preferences in the coral-feeding snail Cyphoma gibbosum | The first-ever demonstration that mating opportunities and other reproductive behaviors can influence host preferences | link