On the birth and death of ideas in marine science†

ICES Journal of Marine Science ICES Journal of Marine Science (2015), 72(5), 1237– 1244. doi:10.1093/icesjms/fsv027 Food for Thought On the birth and death of ideas in marine science† Brian J. Rothschild* School for Marine Science and Technology, 706 Rodney French Boulevard, New Bedford, MA 02744-1221, USA *Corresponding author: e-mail: Received 23 January 2015; accepted 31 January 2015; advance access publication 11 March 2015. In this essay, I review six decades of my career in marine science and fisheries, considering the ideas that came and went in the period as “food for thought”. I describe my inspirations and successes, and my disappointments and failures. My activities were both administrative and researchoriented. As regards the former, I was part of major changes in ocean policy and new ocean research programmes that gave me a unique perspective. For example, I was responsible for the implementation of the US extended jurisdiction in fisheries under National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Also I conceived and led the creation of the Global Ocean Ecosystem Dynamics Programme (GLOBEC) and guided it in many international contexts, including its integration with the International Geosphere Biosphere Programme (IGBP). From a research standpoint, my efforts leading up to GLOBEC strongly influenced the introduction of ocean physics into biological oceanography. This led me into plankton dynamics, food signals, small-scale turbulence and physical forcing, even into the stochastic geometry of the plankton. My life-long interest in the dynamics of marine fish populations was strongly influenced by the seminal thinkers in fisheries and my research explored population regulation processes as well as practical applications of statistics and operations research to fisheries management. In my last academic post, I became founding Dean of the School for Marine Science and Technology (SMAST) at the University of Massachusetts. This position required integrating administrative and research (both pure and applied) perspectives to create an institution of academic excellence which was at the same time actively responsive to issues arising in our local, nationally prominent fisheries. I end the essay with a consideration of “what has changed”. Keywords: fisheries management, marine science, plankton dynamics, turbulence. Introduction In this essay, I review my career of six decades considering which aspects were successful, which were not, and why. I have conducted research, taught students, managed major research centres, and provided scientific leadership and administration to regional, national, and international programmes. I have published 100+ papers; wrote Dynamics of Marine Fish Populations (Rothschild, 1986), and edited seven books including The Sea Volume 12: Biological Physical Interactions in the Sea (Robinson et al., 2002). In the 1970s, I led the implementation of the US’ Extended Jurisdiction Programme that initiated federal fisheries management within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). In the 1980s, I conceived the idea of the Global Ocean Ecosystem Dynamics Programme (GLOBEC) and led its organization (Rothschild et al., 1989). In the 1990s, I was founding Dean of the School for Marine Science and Technology at the University of Massachusetts. Here, I trace the evolution of my thinking and where it led me in my research and other activities. I also attempt † Food for Thought articles are essays in which the author provides their perspective on a research area, topic or issue. They are intended to provide contributors with a forum through which to air their own views and experiences, with few of the constraints that govern standard research articles. This Food for Thought article is one in a series solicited from leading figures in the fisheries and aquatic sciences community. The objective is to offer lessons and insights from their careers in an accessible and pedagological form from which the community, and particularly early career scientists, will benefit. In this particular case, Brian Rothschild was asked to discuss what surprised him regarding which of his works became popular and which did not, and what might be learned from that. The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) and Oxford University Press are pleased to make these Food for Thought articles immediately available as free access documents. # International Council for the Exploration of the Sea 2015. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: Rothschild, B. J. On the birth and death of ideas in marine science†. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 72: 1237 – 1244. 1238 to evaluate the influence of my activities. At the end of the essay, I consider what has changed over six decades. Scientific beginnings The transition to multidisciplinary oceanography During my stint as Director of the Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, and from many discussions with Reuben Lasker in the 1960s and 1970s, I realized that explaining the mechanisms that generated the considerable variations in fish-population abundance were no easy task. Recruitment seemed to depend to a considerable degree on the trophodynamic setting of fish eggs and larvae, which in turn depended on the population dynamics of plankton. While there was considerable information on plankton life history, information on the primary components of plankton population dynamics (e.g. growth, mortality and reproduction) was basically unavailable. This suggested that an understanding of plankton population dynamics and how they were affected by physical forcing was key to understanding variation in fish population dynamics and recruitment. This stimulated me to push for new recruitment studies, not in the traditional context of fish eggs and larvae per se, but in the context of the dynamics of the plankton. I was convinced that new insights into plankton dynamics might contribute to understanding how ocean physics generated variability in trophodynamics, population dynamics, and ecosystem dynamics, eventually leading to new insights into fish population dynamics. The recruitment experiment (REX) My first effort to recast recruitment studies in the context of plankton population dynamics began at the University of Miami in 1982. With the encouragement of Mike Reeve at the US National Science Foundation, I convened a workshop entitled REX, The Recruitment Experiment (Rothschild and Rooth, 1982; Rothschild et al., 1982; the meeting report including contributions and participants is available as Supplementary material). The objective of the REX workshop was to advance beyond ascribing recruitment variability to fishlarval nutrition. The workshop was attended by 41 scientists who discussed conceptual and theoretical issues, research implementation, and specific research scenarios. The REX workshop did not result in a recruitment experiment per se. However, it stimulated me to atte (...truncated)