In Southern California the inherent tension between conservation and fisheries is evident in the trade-off between the need to protect endangered sea turtles from getting caught in fishing nets and the importance of commercial swordfish as a source of income and livelihood for California fishers.
This month the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration once again used a novel management approach to mitigate the trade-off — dynamic ocean management. The approach uses boundaries that are flexible in space and time to manage mobile species and dynamic human activities such as fishing…