Seminar Series: “Dolphin Wahoo Participatory Workshops”

Drs. Mandy Karnauskas and Matt McPherson, NOAA Fisheries, provide a description of the Dolphin and Wahoo fishery based on participatory workshops held with stakeholders from North Carolina, Virginia, and Florida.  The researchers met with fishermen to discuss key factors that influence the fishery and identify major concerns and important values for the stakeholders.  The fishermen emphasized the social and economic dimensions of the fishery over biological stock drivers.  Sub-regional and species differences were observed based on the linkages developed during the workshops.  Two key differences between the areas were the number of species available to target and the lack of large Dolphin in south Florida.  The researchers focused on the Dolphin abundance change and developed potential explanations.