Sustainable global fisheries production depends largely on the accuracy and availability of the necessary scientific information which is too often lacking due economical or technological limitations. As such, there is an imminent need for alternative or complementary approaches that can inform fisheries assessment and management. Recent advances in DNA sequencing technologies have revolutionized the life sciences and genomic approaches represent a new paradigm for fisheries assessment, providing cost-effective alternatives to understanding on the past, present, and future of marine populations and ecosystems. A growing number of studies have highlighted the potential of genomic methods to improve fisheries assessment and management through the quantification of individual, stock, and ecosystem diversity and biological characteristics (e.g., age, sex, population size, distribution, climate adaptation). Nonetheless, the integration genetic information into fisheries management has been slow, likely due to both limited communication between geneticists and resource managers and a lack of case studies that demonstrate the value of inclusion.
This theme session will highlight the latest opportunities for the integration of genetic data into the fisheries assessment processes including studies on sex or age determination, biomass estimation, stock delimitation/identification, detection of illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing, compliance with the landing obligation and forecasting changes, among others. Selected contributions are expected to provide practical or theoretical examples of the integration of state-of-the-art genetic approaches (population genomics, environmental DNA metabarcoding/qPCR, Close Kin Mark Recapture, adaptation genomics, genomic forecasting, transcriptomics, epigenetics, etc.) into the fisheries assessment and management processes.
The session will identify barriers to the integration of genomic methods in fisheries assessment and discuss strategies for improved implementation throughout global fisheries.
