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Fisheries Closed Areas Strengthen Scallop Larval Settlement and Connectivity Among Closed Areas and Across International Open Fishing Grounds: A Model Study

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Abstract

This study examined whether a measured increase in average body size of adult sea scallops inside three fishery closed areas on Georges Bank (GB), United States (US), was sufficient to increase larval supply to closed areas and open fishing areas in both US and Canadian areas of the Bank. The effects of adult scallop density-at-size and fecundity-at-size on egg production were compared among open and closed fishery areas, countries, and time periods before and after the closed areas were established. Estimated egg production was then used to define spawning conditions in a coupled biological–physical larval tracking model that simulated larval development, mortality, and dispersal. Results showed that order of magnitude increases in larval settlement after closure were facilitated by increases in size-dependant egg production inside and dispersal from Closed Areas I and II, but not Nantucket Lightship Closed Area. The distributions of both egg production and larval settlement became more uniform across the Bank, causing the relative contribution of Canadian larvae to US scallop aggregations to decrease after establishment of Closed Areas I and II. Decreases in small and medium-sized scallop density in Canada and decreases in large scallops over the US-Southern Flank after closure caused local declines in egg production but were not sufficient to negatively affect larval settlement at the regional scale. Our model suggests that the establishment of fishery closed areas on GB considerably strengthened larval supply and settlement within and among several adult scallop aggregations.

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Acknowledgments

Thank you to the scallop stock assessment division at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography, Stephen Smith (Fisheries and Oceans Canada), Brad Hubley (Fisheries and Oceans Canada), Deborah Hart (National Marine Fisheries Service), and Penny Kuhn for providing scallop tow data and discussion on the manuscript, as well as two anonymous referees for providing comments. Thank you to Brittney Vujcich and Jesse Burgess for assisting in model development. We are grateful to Jamie Pringle and Changsheng Chen for producing and providing Lagrangian physical fields from the FVCOM hydrodynamic model, to Chad Gilbert for developing an earlier iteration of the scallop biological model and data fields, and to anonymous reviewers for providing comments. Funding provided by NSERC Discovery Grant to WCG and by Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s Ecosystem Research Initiative to CDB and CLJ.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Engineering Mathematics and Internetworking, Dalhousie University, 5269 Morris Street, Halifax, NS, B3H 4R2, Canada

    Kimberley T. A. Davies & W. C. Gentleman

  2. Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Bedford Institute of Oceanography, Dartmouth, NS, B2Y 4A2, Canada

    C. DiBacco & C. L. Johnson

  3. Department of Oceanography, Dalhousie University, 1355 Oxford Street, Halifax, NS, B3H 4R2, Canada

    Kimberley T. A. Davies

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  1. Kimberley T. A. Davies
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Correspondence to Kimberley T. A. Davies.

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Davies, K.T.A., Gentleman, W.C., DiBacco, C. et al. Fisheries Closed Areas Strengthen Scallop Larval Settlement and Connectivity Among Closed Areas and Across International Open Fishing Grounds: A Model Study. Environmental Management 56, 587–602 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-015-0526-9

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