Status of the Habitat of U.s. Living Marine Resources

Policymakers' Summary, 1 st Edition Our Living Oceans: Habitat FOREWORD Our Living Oceans: Habitat. Status of the Habitat of U.S. Living Marine Resources joins editions on living marine resources and economics as the third and final part of the Our Living Oceans publication series. Taken together, the volumes in this series serve as a report card on the state of U.S. living marine resources, their economic contributions to the Nation, and the condition of their habitats and availability of habitat use information. This Policymakers' Summary, an abridged version, and the complete Our Living Oceans: Habitat report provide the foundation for more targeted research and comprehensive and detailed reports in the future. The most important laws governing activities of the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) pertinent to habitat are the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSFCMA), recently reauthorized in 2006, and two laws on protected species, the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA). The MSFCMA includes provisions to help manage and protect Essential Fish Habitat (EFH) which is defined as ". .. those waters and substrate necessary to fish for spawning, breeding, or growth to maturity " for commercially and recreationally harvested fish and invertebrates within the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ, typically 3–200 nautical miles from shore). The ESA as it applies to NMFS includes provisions to help conserve ecosystems and habitats required by those marine species threatened with, or in danger of, extinction (e.g. listed fish, invertebrates, sea turtles, marine mammals, and marine plants). The MMPA places restrictions on any habitat alteration that could adversely impact a marine mammal by disrupting behavioral patterns. This report covers the habitats of all species managed or protected by NMFS under the MSFCMA, ESA, and MMPA. That this report is the first comprehensive nationwide review of the status and trends of these habitats, as well as the first comprehensive summary of information available on habitat use at the fishery management or species-group level, underscores the difficulty of the task. In addition to cataloging what is known about our Nation's aquatic habitats and the patterns of their use by living marine resources, the report also indicates what remains unknown. This will help to guide and prioritize research to address the most important gaps in knowledge. Recent technological advances in autonomous underwater vehicles, multibeam sonar, and satellites have increased our ability to fill in these gaps in habitat knowledge. Our …