ICES Working group on maritime systems (WGMARS)

The Working Group on Maritime Systems (WGMARS) is a forum for interdisciplinary perspectives on ecosystem science, advice, and governance. It engages with maritime stakeholders from across the North Atlantic to take into consideration and better understand their perspectives. From 2020-2022 WGMARS is focused on methodological, operational, contextual, and science management aspects enabling ecosystem-based maritime management/governance. Topics addressed in this report include the ways that behavioural economics could inform and could be used for an enhanced understanding of fisheries management, the development and use of integrated ecosystem assessments (IEA) in ICES, the types and extent of connectivity among ICES expert groups based on Social Network Analysis (SNA) and the ways in which (IEA), Ecosystem Based Management (EBM), and MSP (Marine Spatial Planning) are implemented in different European Union (EU) member states, the EU, and the United States. Plans for a systematic literature review of the relevance of behavioural economics in fisheries management were developed. Related work on nudging in fisheries management and compliance with marine mammal protection regulations was summarized. Interviews with ten ICES regional IEA expert groups have been completed. Preliminary analyses have identified commonalities and differences among groups, in relation to topics such as contributions to ICES advice, the role of social scientists, the maturity of the IEA they conduct, resource needs, the role of stakeholders and the balance between descriptive and quantitative science. SNA, using a database of 2015-2019 attendees at ICES expert groups, is being used to quantify the centrality of a node expert group in relation to other expert groups in any given year. Four measures of centrality have been adopted: degree centrality, betweenness centrality, closeness centrality, and eigenvector centrality. Results of the analysis will reveal the strengths and types of connections among ICES expert groups, which are expected to influence the effectiveness and impact of ICES ecosy stem and sustainability science.With regard to the implementation of IEA, WGMARS reviewed the development of the national IEA program in the United States, based on reported talks from relevant scientists and managers. At future meetings, the outcomes of this review will be compared those for IEA implementation in other countries and regions .