My principal scientific interests and experiences focus on understanding fisheries sustainability in an ecosystem context as part of renewable natural resource conservation and management programs. I have been involved in a variety of interdisciplinary projects that aim to quantitatively assess how natural and human-induced stressors may interactively modulate harvested fish and shellfish population dynamics and influence policy decision-making. Examples include interactive effects of species invasion & eutrophication, chemical pollution & hydrological alteration, and climate variability & harvesting on the sustainability of pelagic and demersal species exploited by commercial, recreational, and subsistence fisheries in marine and freshwater systems in North America (e.g., New England/Mid-Atlantic, the Laurentian Great Lakes, Flemish Cap) and Europe (e.g., Barents Sea, North Sea).

My recent work entails quantitative method (statistical and mathematical model) development and application to assess exploited living marine resource status, forecast sustainable yields, and evaluate management strategies by integrating large-scale survey and fishery catch sampling data at population, community (incl. food web), and ecosystem levels in the context of ecosystem-based management. Here are some examples:

• Recovery of depleted fish stocks in the northeast Atlantic hampered by changing climates
• Multispecies management strategy evaluation of Flemish Cap fisheries
• Management strategy evaluation to improve catch forecasts from biased stock assessments
• Management implications of accounting for climate and prey variability in marine fish stock assessment
• Cascades of trophically-mediated regime shifts in fishery-ecosystem dynamics
• Eco-evolutionary approach to fish diurnal vertical movement ecology
• Fishing down the lake food web revealed by 148 yr of fisheries catch data
• Recruitment success of migratory predators driven by spatially dynamic seasonal cues under climate change
• Widespread declines in fish biomass production and their implications for fisheries sustainability
• Regional drivers of long-term trends in harvested fish body size
• Sustainable exploitation of inland fish stocks revealed by half a century of fish production data
• Hydrological alteration and recruitment dynamics of sturgeon in the Missouri River
• Larval fish dispersal  and recruitment dynamics in Lake Michigan
• Forecasting the causes, consequences and remedies for hypoxia in Lake Erie
• Urban coastal food web ecology and trace element trophic transfer to predators in the northwest Atlantic

For more on my research: Google Scholar or ResearchGate.

Links

Ecologists find strong evidence of fishing down the food web in freshwater lake

Researchers document walleye decline in Wisconsin waters

Study Confirms Walleye Populations Are In Decline

Ambitious new pollution targets needed to protect Lake Erie from massive 'dead zone'

Heavy Metal in the Food Chain