Forecasting species ranges and spatial overlap

The Eastern Bering Sea (EBS) is a productive and economically important ecosystem - supporting over 40% of the annual landings in the US - but as the dynamics of the EBS are largely dependent on winter sea ice, it is also very susceptible to climate change. I’m working with researchers from NOAA’s Alaska Fisheries Science center to build species distribution models to understand how climate change is driving the redistribution of several species of groundfish and crabs. Using these models, we’re also working to forecast changes in spatial predator-prey overlap, with the goal of incorporating spatial distribution shifts into non-spatial multispecies and ecosystem models and enabling climate-ready fisheries management.

Predator-prey overlap and predation

As waters warm, species are redistributing in space and in relation to one another - but what are the implications of these range shifts for species interactions? In my first thesis chapter (published in the journal Ecography in 2022), I used 30+ years of species biomass and stomach contents data to assess whether changes in species distributions in the Bering Sea have altered the extent of spatial overlap between juvenile walleye pollock and their predators, and whether those overlap changes have led to predictable changes in predation on the pollock stock.

Small-scale fisheries embedded in global trade networks

Small-scale fisheries are immensely important for the livelihoods, nutrition, and cultural identities of millions of people around the world. However, many are intricately interwoven with global trade networks which reshape cultural relationships with resources such as sharks, enabling serial depletion of the stocks of some species. Focusing on Kiribati, we evaluate the impacts of a small-scale reef shark fishery and the cultural attitudes surronding reef shark fishing and Kiribati’s recent shark fishing ban.