RVA-OA2020 - Assessing vulnerability of the Atlantic Sea Scallop social-ecological system in the northeast waters of the US

The vulnerability and resilience of fishing communities to the effects of warming and Ocean Acidification (OA) on Northeast species is dependent on their adaptive capacity in relation to both social and environmental exposure and sensitivity factors. Communities that harvest a diversity of species may adapt more easily than communities that specialize in one or a few species. The regional contribution of sea scallop to total regional landed value has steadily increased over recent decades as has fishing community dependence on it as a source of revenue. New Bedford, MA, the highest grossing port in the U.S., is an example of a port with both social and environmental vulnerability as several of the NOAA Fisheries Community Social Vulnerability Indicators (CSVIs) ranked high (Colburn et al. 2016) and over 80% of the value landed ($328 million) can be attributed to Sea Scallop, considered highly vulnerable to OA (Hare et al. 2016). Viable measures of social well-being, sustainability, vulnerability and resilience for the industry would be beneficial to the coastal communities and have yet to be applied to OA in the region. Recent outcomes of workshops led by the Northeast Coastal Acidification Network (NECAN) include an agreement by industry representatives that there is a need of advance warning for any changes which might impact their business (Cross et al. 2019).

This work proposes to develop a recommendation to management to assist scallop industry stakeholders and managers with changes in the fishery that result from projected OA and temperature changes, as identified for the Mid-Atlantic and New England Chapters of the NOAA Ocean and Great Lakes Ocean Acidification Plan 2020-2029 (Jewett et al. 2020). The results of this project will include a projection of changes to fishing zones used as spatial rotational management areas that considers both OA and warming and relies on critical scallop growth, reproductive, and

recruitment modeling.