{"id":57690,"date":"2015-11-02T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-11-02T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/gso-doctoral-student-named-ridem-marine-fisheries-chief\/"},"modified":"2015-11-02T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2015-11-02T00:00:00","slug":"gso-doctoral-student-named-ridem-marine-fisheries-chief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2015\/11\/gso-doctoral-student-named-ridem-marine-fisheries-chief\/","title":{"rendered":"GSO doctoral student named RIDEM marine fisheries chief"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tNARRAGANSETT, R.I. \u2013November 2, 2015 — Jason McNamee works at the intersection of science, policy and management as the new chief of marine resources at the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management. It\u2019s a balancing act that the 溏心vlog免费B站 Graduate School of Oceanography doctoral student says he is navigating by keeping open lines of communication with all involved parties.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cI\u2019m right in the middle of the conflicts between fishermen and scientists, but I\u2019ve worked really hard to ensure that our public processes are very open, which has helped the situation in the state a great deal,\u201d said McNamee, who grew up in Connecticut and earned a bachelor\u2019s degree in zoology at 溏心vlog免费B站 in 1996.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cThere are still a lot of conflicts between fishermen, the federal government, which controls a lot of the fish stock assessment work that goes on, and state government. But I believe that many fishermen recognize the value of science and agree that it should be used when setting up our management programs. We do a lot of collaborative work with our fishing community, as well, which helps to improve communication,\u201d he said. \u201cBut it\u2019s still a work in progress.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nMcNamee decided to earn a doctorate almost 20 years after completing his undergraduate education because he found that he enjoyed the analytical component of being a fisheries scientist and manager, yet he felt he needed some additional schooling to succeed.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of math involved in the field of fisheries, which are managed with complex mathematical models, and my background was really more on the ecology side,\u201d he said. \u201cI wanted to get better at my job, and I first tried to learn some of it on my own. But in the end I felt I wasn\u2019t going to get to the level I wanted without going into a Ph.D. program.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nFor his dissertation, McNamee is working under the guidance of Professor Jeremy Collie to create a fish stock assessment model that examines multiple species at one time. \u201cWe tend to assess fish populations by themselves \u2013 siloed and alone \u2013 and we\u2019re beginning to realize there is a flaw in a system that doesn\u2019t acknowledge that what\u2019s going on with one population impacts other populations.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nMost of his dissertation work is computer-based, but he doesn\u2019t mind spending so much time in front of a computer since he gets to do plenty of fieldwork for his job at RIDEM. He hopes that the eventual outcome will be a tool that can be used to improve fisheries management in the region.<\/p>\n


\nAccording to McNamee, Rhode Island is facing a number of challenging issues related to fisheries management. Many of the species important to the commercial fishing industry and the economy of Rhode Island, including summer flounder, black sea bass, and squid, are primarily southern species managed by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, where Rhode Island does not hold a formal seat.<\/p>\n


\nHe said that this is also a challenging time to be a fisherman, since fish stocks are dynamic and quotas sometimes change dramatically. Summer flounder quotas, for example, are expected to decline significantly next year, which will have a serious effect on local fishermen at a time when lobsters and most groundfish species are also at historic lows.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cBut there\u2019s some good news, too,\u201d McNamee noted. \u201cRhode Island is one of the biggest harvesters of scup, and the scup stock is doing well. We just have to make sure our system is flexible enough that we can switch from one species to another to keep the fishing industry economically viable while still keeping populations of important species healthy and sustainable.\u201d<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NARRAGANSETT, R.I. \u2013November 2, 2015 — Jason McNamee works at the intersection of science, policy and management as the new chief of marine resources at the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management. It\u2019s a balancing act that the 溏心vlog免费B站 Graduate School of Oceanography doctoral student says he is navigating by keeping open lines of communication […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57690\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}