Assessing the Relative Importance of Estuarine Nursery Habitats - a Dungeness Crab (Cancer magister) Case Study.

ABSTRACT: Estuaries serve as important nurseries for many recreationally and commercially harvested fisheries species. Recent conceptual approaches (i.e., seascape) for assessing the value of estuaries to fisheries have advocated for complex habitat-scale assessments that integrate multiple life-history responses (e.g., abundance, growth, reproduction) and ecological processes across heterogeneous landscapes. Although ecologically compelling, implementing seascape approaches may not be feasible for resource-limited management agencies. In such cases, we propose that resource managers can enhance the identification of fishery-important estuarine habitats by integrating attainable aspects of the seascape approach into a more traditional single response (e.g., abundance) model. Using Dungeness crab (

SUBMITTER: Lewis NS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8128707 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature