Portfolio III: Fisheries and Seafood Production

The Issue • Our Response • Managing for Success • Impacts

Our Response

In general, the challenge for fisheries stakeholders is to sustain or improve the health of those fishing resources that now comprise the major part of Maryland's fishing industry, to restore other fisheries such as shad and oysters, and to ensure that the economic benefits - commercial, recreational, processing and consumer - derived from the resources are as great as possible. The role for Maryland Sea Grant is to support targeted research for improving resource management and to promote decision making based on sound science, while actively engaging the stakeholder community.

The Maryland Sea Grant Extension Program (SGEP) has assembled a staff that includes the following key experts: a fisheries economist, a fish aquaculture and restoration specialist, a shellfish aquaculture specialist, a seafood technology specialist, and a seafood consumer education specialist. This team, along with two Sea Grant Extension agents, works with Sea Grant-funded and other fishery scientists, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, the Chesapeake Bay Program, the Maryland Watermen's Association, seafood processors, and NGOs such as the Chesapeake Bay Foundation to improve the management of our fishery resources. Over the past decade, Maryland Sea Grant has played a significant role in fisheries issues in the state and region.

Though much of our outreach work focuses on commercial fisheries, the Sea Grant Extension resource economist has also conducted applied research on the economic value of recreational fishing. In particular, he has helped to relate water quality changes to impacts on recreational fishing values. This work has been useful in determining the economic impact that Pfiesteria events have had on recreational fishing, for example, and more recently for calculating the lost-use value for the damage assessment undertaken for the April, 2000 oil spill in the Patuxent River.

Biological research undertaken by Maryland Sea Grant over the past decade has focused on such issues as fish population dynamics, and is therefore relevant to both recreational and commercial uses of the resource. Maryland Sea Grant's research efforts in this area have been strategic and targeted, especially since other organizations have supported much of the basic stock assessment research on fisheries, the first step in effective fisheries management. These efforts include programs supported by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources and the Chesapeake Bay Program through their Chesapeake Bay Stock Assessment Committee (CBSAC).

Focused Sea Grant-supported fisheries research includes notable projects by Ed Houde on the trophic dynamics of pelagic fish and by Stephen Brandt and Denise Breitburg (R/F-79) - linking water quality to fish production. These scientific efforts have helped to make a link between Sea Grant and work supported by others on Chesapeake Bay ecosystem dynamics and fisheries issues. Due to the success of the Brandt/Breitburg project, for example, Denise Breitburg (R/PT-05) was able to organize a multi-institutional, multidisciplinary project for the NOAA Coastal Ocean Program for five years and $5 million that attempts to link land use change to ecosystem effects - and ultimately to fishery and other economic effects on the Patuxent River.

Another research area has focused on fish diseases, an issue of emerging importance in the Chesapeake Bay due both to disease impacts on fish populations, and to implications for consumer safety and seafood demand. Maryland Sea Grant's response has joined strategic research with ongoing technical and outreach programs aimed at understanding, managing and improving the region's fisheries.