The Food Web Dynamics Program (FWDP) exists to serve four purposes: 1) to assess predation mortality (relative to fishing mortality) of commercially important fishes, 2) to mechanistically and predictively model species interactions that impact the status of these stocks, enhancing identification of critical life stages, 3) to relate changes in diet to changes in population level growth rates, and 4) to understand the structure and dynamics of the northeast continental shelf ecosystem.
The NMFS mission is:
"Stewardship of living marine resources for the benefit of the nation
through their science-based conservation and management and promotion of
the health of their environment."
Schematic of the Northwest Atlantic Food Web
1.1.5 "We will provide guidelines to assist the Councils in assessing and specifying maximum sustainable yield for managed fisheries."
5.1.2 "We will assess candidate species and strategic marine mammal stocks of uncertain status to determine whether human activities are posing a risk. These assessments require adequate monitoring of populations and ecosystem investigations, which take into account multi-species and habitat concerns.
6.1.2 "We will establish sustainable levels of takes for all protected marine species and continue to improve the estimates of these levels through ecologically sound research."
7.3.2 "We will establish criteria to define and delineate marine, estuarine, and riverine ecosystems for management purposes, and we will identify indicators for assessing the status and detecting changes in the health of such ecosystems."
F.1.5 "Developing new science-based resource assessments and management techniques, including multi-species and limited access approaches to living marine resource conservation and management."
F.1.9 "Increasing our ability to predict natural living marine resource
variation, which will result in more accurate assessments and estimation
of the uncertainty associated with them.
The recent National Research Council's Review of Northeast Fishery Stock Assessments (1998) also details areas where the FWDPs mission enhances critical activities of the NEFSC:
"A variety of assessment models should be used, and independent estimates of mortality (M) should be considered." (p. 39)
"In addition, information on stomach contents could be included as
a means of examining species interactions. Information about the man-induced
impacts (e.g., pollution, drilling, and fishing gear) on habitat and environment
could be described. Finally, complex interactions among the fish populations,
the environment, and fishery management could be explored. The exploration
of these interactions is especially valuable because harvesters who spend
time on the water believe that these factors are important." (p. 65)
Finally, many mandates, particularly from the Essential Fish Habitat provisions of both the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation Act (sections 303, 304, 305) and the Sustainable Fisheries Act also demonstrate how the FWDP's mission serves broader goals. For example:
MSFCMA Sect. 304(e)(4)(A)
"....specify a time period for ending overfishing and rebuilding the
fishery that shall--
(i) be as short as possible, taking into account the status and biology
of any overfished stocks of fish, the needs of fishing communities, recommendations
by international organizations in which the United States participates,
and
the interaction of the overfished stock of fish within the marine ecosystem;"
SFA Sect. 102
"The term `essential fish habitat' means those waters and substrate
necessary to fish for spawning, breeding, feeding or growth to maturity."
Therefore, both practical and theoretical fields of study are important, in terms of multi-species approaches from a fisheries perspective and in terms of community and system approaches from an ecological perspective.