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NOAA Fisheries Strategic Plan
Foundations for Stewardship - Foundation 1
FOUNDATION 1: Science which is of the highest quality and which advances our ability to make living marine resource management decisions
During the next 5 years, we will improve the quality and credibility of our science by:
- Expanding and improving our system for peer review of scientific advice by panels of knowledgeable scientists from both within and outside government.
- Improving our professional standards for research and scientific advice by establishing national guidelines for technical program and staff performance evaluations, performance award programs, and professional career development opportunities.
- Implementing policies for ensuring the integrity and independence of science to ensure that our science programs, analyses, and products are sound, credible, and provide an objective basis for management.
- Implementing our vessel replacement plan that integrates government, university, and industry vessel capabilities to provide the state-of-the-art facilities necessary for the advancement of our varied at-sea research programs.
- Developing new science-based resource assessment and management techniques, including multi-species and limited access approaches to living marine resource conservation and management.
- Improving our data collection and analysis techniques and systems.
- Improving our fishery management data systems.
- Increasing our ability to incorporate economic and social factors into our decision-making. This includes expanding the publication Our Living Oceans to include economic and sociocultural assessments of the nation’s fisheries.
- 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.
- Providing a core fishery statistics program based on our strategic and operational needs. This will include the development and publishing of a strategic plan for fisheries research in cooperation with Councils, affected states, and other research entities. As mandated by the Sustainable Fisheries Act, this plan will identify and describe a comprehensive program with a limited number of priority objectives; identify goals and timetables for those objectives; provide a role for commercial fishers in such research, including involvement in field testing; and provide for timely collection and dissemination of research results.
- Involving constituents in research programs. To the extent practicable, we will charter fishing vessels to participate in research projects, invite constituents to participate aboard NOAA research vessels during resource surveys, encourage frequent contact and cooperation between scientists and constituents, and incorporate scientifically valid observations by fishers and others into fish stock assessments and other analyses related to living marine resources and their habitat.
- Providing a forum for answering questions and educating user groups on how research is conducted and how stock assessments are performed.
- Developing a new series of reports and presentations to communicate scientific results in simplified language that is easier to understand than traditional scientific publications.
- Requiring the various NOAA Fisheries grant programs to solicit input from external scientists in topical areas when identifying research initiatives.
- Participating in international scientific initiatives.
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