A career linking silos in the evolving quilt of Integrated Marine Management Science

This paper is a reflection on my career of 40 years as a participant in national and international marine science. The period of my employment at the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans St. Andrews Biological Station (1984–2024) saw considerable evolution of science in support of management of fisheries and other ocean activities. My career spanned the maturing of the modern fisheries management experiment, and the resulting impacts of quota management and an increasingly complex regulatory structure. There was an evolution of management to articulate a broader set of objectives and to diversify information from within and beyond fisheries to enhance decision-making. Stock structure, and especially appreciation of sub-stock structure, was a major issue in the first half of my career, and a move to ecosystem-based and integrated management in the context of climate change dominated in later years. There was increasing recognition of the need to consider fisheries as part of a social-ecological system, and with that the need to address ecological, economic, social-cultural, and governance objectives in a more holistic management approach. The need for more holistic management created the need for more comprehensive and interdisciplinary advice. This pointed to the need for structured decision-making informed by management science (Fisheries Management Science or Integrated Marine Management Science) and of consideration of fisheries along with other activities in ecosystem-based integrated management. Looking back, it seems we have been constantly linking silos in an attempt to create a quilt of sustainability. Looking ahead, there remains the need for a more strategic forward-looking approach (using foresighting) with more rigorous comparison of scenarios against a broad set of objectives, and development of an enhanced and enabling governance structure. I am fortunate to have had a research career in which I was able to grow from fisheries biology and assessment to integrated management and foresighting, from biology to transdiscipinarity, and to have been able to collaborate nationally and internationally across government, academia, industry, and non-governmental organizations.