Fisheries managers typically strive to strike a delicate balance between two, often competing, types of needs: the needs for fishermen’s profits and the needs for the planet. But in 1994, entrepreneur John Elkington posited that true sustainability requires consideration of a third “P” — the needs of the people. In making this argument, he coined the term “.”

In a , an interdisciplinary group of researchers used Pacific herring in Haida Gwaii, British Columbia, as a case study for modeling the implicit tradeoffs within the triple bottom line that result from various fisheries management decisions. They found that considering spatial dynamics is a key component of this modeling process — for example, considering the geographic areas of the fish populations, the areas that are important to the various communities of people, and the areas that are impacted by management decisions.

Published Sept. 30 in the journal Fish and Fisheries, the study is one of the outcomes of the , a collaboration between the 91̽�� and The Nature Conservancy that aims to use models to provide insights on how to best address complex ocean issues.

Pacific herring provided a relevant and timely prototype for modeling the economic, ecological and socio-cultural tradeoffs within a fishery. Herring is in high commercial demand, is a vital part of the food web, and has been central to the social, cultural and economic life of Indigenous communities in the Pacific Northwest for millennia. Herring fisheries have also borne out steep management consequences: the collective North American herring fishery collapsed in 1993, and has required careful management to recover.

“There are so many people who rely on fishing as part of their way of life,” said , assistant professor of biological science at Florida State University who led the modeling component of the study. “Everyone wants their piece of the pie. But we need a better way of making decisions regarding fisheries.”

While most herring fisheries remain closed or severely limited, some British Columbia stocks have rebuilt to a level at which managers are considering reopening the fishery. However, several critical factors that would determine the success of reopening these fisheries are still missing, the researchers said, including a social-ecological framework to address issues of equity in decision making by integrating traditional knowledge and ecosystem services into management. This study demonstrates a new and concrete way to fill this void.

These social and cultural considerations are notoriously difficult to quantify in such a way that they can be measured against the economic and ecological ones.

“We started from qualitative ethnographic information, including local and traditional knowledge, to identify indicators linked to various benefits and values of herring,” explained co-author , a social scientist at Washington Sea Grant based at the 91̽��. “We then surveyed different user groups to generate quantitative scores for select indicators to determine outcomes for various fishing sectors, abundances of herring and places of harvest.”

The social benefits of the herring fishery included in the study were the ability for the commercial fishing fleet to practice harvest, the ability for Indigenous Haida to practice harvest, and community and social relationships within the Indigenous Haida community.

The researchers incorporated these social-ecological indicators along with economic and ecological metrics into a model to analyze their relative tradeoffs under different management scenarios. These management scenarios included four target harvest rates of the total herring population, ranging from 10% to 37.5%; three upper-limit harvest thresholds, ranging from 25% to 70%; and two spatial closures, in which a traditional roe, or egg, harvest area is closed to commercial fishing.

“As expected, many management options result in sharp tradeoffs in the triple bottom line,” said co-author , managing director of the Ocean Modeling Forum and lead ecosystem ecologist with the Puget Sound Institute at 91̽��Tacoma. “For example, higher commercial catches reduce ecological and social benefits — this could have been predicted. What’s interesting is where we found more balance among the multiple benefits.”

Spatial closures often resulted in win-win-wins: they allow for commercial harvest at open locations while also protecting cultural benefits and reducing the risk of collapse in protected areas. That said, the location of these closures must be carefully considered, accounting for both ecological productivity and the implications to different user groups. For example, while commercial fishermen are relatively mobile, Indigenous harvesters are often constrained to fishing in traditional areas. This shows the need for fishery management models that allow for evaluation at a spatial scale that is culturally relevant.

No one management strategy within the study’s model optimized the benefits to all of the people, planet and profit factors. However, having a framework to understand the relative tradeoffs to each of these factors is the first step toward responsibly balancing them, the researchers said. The model developed in this case study could be used not only to evaluate management strategies for Pacific herring fisheries as managers consider reopening them, but also for other fisheries that face similar dilemmas across the globe.

“This work has the potential to be game changing,” said co-author , 91̽��professor of practice and lead scientist at the Nature Conservancy. “For years researchers have talked about the triple bottom line but lacked the ability to really assess it. By directly linking quantitative fisheries models for social and cultural outcomes, we now have the ability to truly evaluate the full impacts of alternative management strategies.”

The productive ocean off Washington state’s Olympic Coast supports an abundant web of life including kelp forests, fish, shellfish, seabirds and marine mammals. The harvest and use of these treaty-protected marine resources have been central to the local tribes’ livelihoods, food security and cultural practices for thousands of years. But ocean acidification is changing the chemistry of these waters, putting many coastal species – and the human communities that depend upon them – under threat.

With a new $700,000 grant awarded from the NOAA Ocean Acidification Program, scientists from the 91̽��’s Applied Physics Laboratory, Washington Sea Grant and the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean have teamed with federal and tribal partners to study the social and ecological vulnerabilities of Olympic Coast ocean acidification. The collaborative team hopes their work will enable Pacific Northwest decision makers to better anticipate, evaluate and manage the significant and unique risks that ocean change presents to tribal communities.

“The goal of this project is to marry two currently disparate data sets; ocean chemistry and biological data collected by natural scientists, and social science data that includes how people use the resources that may be impacted,” said , an oceanographer at the 91̽��Applied Physics Laboratory.

Much of the first dataset already exists, as researchers from groups including UW, NOAA, the local tribes and the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary have been measuring these biological and chemical trends for the past few decades. The group will synthesize these existing data sets, and use social science to help to hone in on the trends that will have the biggest impacts to the local people – including members of the Hoh, Makah and Quileute tribes, and the Quinault Indian Nation – whose ways of life are inextricably tied to the marine environment.

When it comes to understanding the effects of ocean acidification, “there’s a whole ocean of species scientists could focus on,” explained , social scientist at Washington Sea Grant. “But we want to focus on the ones that are identified as the most important by the communities. What are the species and the food webs that the community depends upon for economic and cultural well-being – for their identity and traditional practices?”

The collaborators will assess these and other questions related to the social dimensions of ocean acidification through community-participatory methods such as ethnographic interviews and workshops. Once they have synthesized the existing chemical and biological datasets and determined the roles of key marine species to the communities, the team will model future projections and estimate the impacts that ocean acidification will have on those species. Then, they will identify the aspects of community well-being that are most vulnerable to these ecological changes.

The researchers and tribal members will use the data to work together to find the next step: viable solutions that will help the community navigate these impacts. Ultimately, the group hopes to find community-driven strategies that can increase the ability of the tribes to prepare for and respond to how ocean acidification will affect them. They also hope the approach and techniques used in the project will be transferable to other communities who face similar challenges.

“The tie to the ocean is fundamental to who tribal people are – to their history, relationships, homelands – everything. The impacts to the ocean are felt deeply and in complex ways,” said Poe. “And so the solutions also need to be carefully matched and driven by the community needs and priorities.”

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For more information, contact Poe at mpoe@uw.edu or 206-685-8209 and Newton at newton@apl.washington.edu or 206-543-9152

, a former economist at NOAA’s and a 91̽�� economics graduate who died in 2014, exemplified the traits of a skilled interdisciplinarian. As a tribute to his life and career, Plummer’s former colleagues and collaborators — including several 91̽��researchers and many alums — have contributed articles published this week in a of the environmental science journal Coastal Management.

“Mark Plummer challenged conventional wisdom and sought practical solutions appropriate to the realities of our ever-changing world and diverse stakeholder values,” said , a professor of practice at the 91̽��and lead scientist at The Nature Conservancy who worked for years with Plummer at the fisheries agency. “He is an example of an interdisciplinary person — a translator and the glue who can connect people from different disciplines.”

Levin served as co-editor and contributed to several articles in the special edition, including two on the , particularly in academics where subject-matter silos still exist. Levin argues that “while our disciplinary homes may provide us with a sense of place, the fences that separate us are an artifact of the past that must be breached.”

The special issue’s other co-editor is , Plummer’s former colleague at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center.

All of the articles in the special edition spawned from Plummer’s existing projects or were inspired by his research and influence.

“The theme issue is a reflection of Mark Plummer’s remarkable career,” said , editor-in-chief of Coastal Management and a 91̽��professor of marine and environmental affairs.

“He worked to improve our understanding of marine and coastal policies, with a particular eye for how the integration of social sciences could improve science and policy. The papers, written by individuals inspired by Mark and his life’s work, cover topics and methods that represent Mark’s vision.”

Plummer’s expertise was on the integration of economics and other social sciences into natural resource management, but he is also recognized for his interdisciplinary research, including in the areas of fisheries management, conservation, ecosystem services and social-ecological systems.

“Mark Plummer was really a vanguard for social sciences in Puget Sound. He pushed for space in thinking about socioeconomics as an important contribution for restoration,” said , an environmental anthropologist at the UW-based and a contributor to the journal. “This special edition is a really instrumental focus on what integrated social-ecological science can look like.”

Poe is the lead author on an that examines connections between sense of place and human well-being in the context of shellfish harvesting in Puget Sound. Through analysis and interviews of tribal and nontribal shellfish harvesters, the researchers found that for Washingtonians who started digging for clams and oysters as children, the activity became a significant part of their identity as adults.

Similarly, other types of shoreline-based activities like beach-walking and kayaking helped forge strong place attachments among residents, the researchers found. People who were tied to a place were also more likely to support restoration and stewardship activities.

These findings helped inform the Puget Sound Partnership’s recently updated , or targets, for human well-being. Plummer, who served on the agency’s social science advisory committee, provided critical insight and constructive feedback on this sense of place research, Poe said.

“This is a topic that resonates with people,” she said. “We can find lots of gloomy, difficult conservation failures. Sense of place orients us to where people’s direct engagement with the environment has motivated them to steward the ecosystem and healthy communities.”

Each of the special edition’s 12 articles originated from a symposium last year in which Plummer’s colleagues presented their research that was inspired by or in collaboration with the economist. Other articles look at the benefits of green infrastructure on coastal areas, capturing energy from the ocean’s motion and income diversity of West Coast fishermen, to list a few.

with the UW’s Center for Creative Conservation is another university co-author, and many alums across disciplines — fisheries, economics, psychology, biology and marine affairs — are contributing authors.

For too long, sustainability goals and environmental management have failed to consider the human side of conservation — how decisions affect people’s lives, and how human culture, values and equity affect conservation outcomes.

Social science can contribute significantly to advancing and assessing conservation efforts. These are the conclusions of a published April 1 in Science by a team of researchers from 17 British, American and Australian institutions including the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s , the 91̽��’s and .

The authors propose a set of social indicators that can be used to gauge how ecosystem management affects four essential factors in human lives: well-being, values, agency (the ability to act purposefully) and inequality. Considering such indicators, they note, serves not only to describe what exists but to define what is important in setting sustainability goals.

Suitable indicators can ensure accountability and overcome a “bias toward easily quantifiable concepts” in the natural sciences that may hinder progress toward those goals. And understanding social and cultural factors is essential to defining sustainability in local contexts: cherished landscape elements such as lawns in American suburbs and badgers in Britain help shape residents’ sense of well-being.

“Evaluating how well we are meeting sustainability goals requires more robust and inclusive indicators of the health of both people and nature,” said co-author , a social scientist at Washington Sea Grant and the Northwest Fisheries Science Center. She and the other authors are members of the (SWIMM) working group, which began convening in 2014 in Seattle to explore the social dimensions of marine and coastal environments.

“We are unique, the only group I know of that consists almost entirely of environmental social scientists working on applied environmental science,” said Sara Breslow, who spearheaded the project and is now a program manager at UW’s

The Science article is the first of five peer-reviewed papers from the SWIMM group to be published. SWIMM-developed indicators of human well-being are already being used in integrated marine management, marine spatial planning and resilience assessments in the Pacific Northwest, thanks to an initiative by Washington Sea Grant and NOAA’s Integrated Ecosystem Assessment Program.

“Culture, values, equity and a sense of self-determination are the known unknowns in conservation management,” said , acting director of conservation biology at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center and another co-author. “The time has come to make them known.”

That knowledge has practical implications; as the paper notes, before undertaking collective ecosystem management, it’s important to know whether local values are conducive to it.

“Without attention to whose well-being is measured and the values that underlie goals, we risk exacerbating inequalities and eroding the connections to nature that motivate people to practice stewardship and care for one another,” Poe added.

Prudent planning means including social scientists from the start, rather than bringing them in later to clean up the damage, argues the paper’s lead author, Christina Hicks of Lancaster University’s .

“With humans altering climate processes and ecosystem functions, it is important that we consider things from a social science as well as natural science perspective,” she said.

“For decades we viewed people and nature as separate and we managed nature by excluding people,” Levin said. “We now know that is a flawed perspective. Nature and people are intertwined.”

This work was funded by Washington Sea Grant and NOAA Fisheries. , a professor of marine and environmental affairs, is another 91̽��co-author.

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For more information, contact Poe at mpoe@uw.edu.