Five Questions With: Kenneth Sherman

NOAA researcher Kenneth Sherman looks at the Deepwater Horizon disaster as more than an oil spill, thanks to his pioneering concept of Large Marine Ecosystems. /
NOAA researcher Kenneth Sherman looks at the Deepwater Horizon disaster as more than an oil spill, thanks to his pioneering concept of Large Marine Ecosystems. /

Pioneering National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration researcher Kenneth Sherman recently was picked as one of two winners of the Göteborg Award for Sustainable Development, considered the environmental equivalent of the Nobel Prize.
Sherman, an adjunct professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography, created the concept of Large Marine Ecosystems in the 1980s with URI professor, Lewis Alexander. It was a revolutionary way to view the oceans as a series of linked, yet distinct ecosystems. To date, 64 LMEs have been identified in the world’s oceans, determined by distinct combinations of ocean depth and mapping, productivity and food chain dynamics.
Sherman took some time to discuss how he came to the concept of LMEs and what it might mean for how we look at oceans.

PBN: What started you down the path that your research has taken? When did you start thinking of oceans as interrelated ecosystems?

SHERMAN: What started me on this path of research was the propinquity of living across the road in Peace Dale from a rather experienced marine geographer. Discussions with Lewis Alexander of the University of Rhode Island, who was the first director of URI’s Marine Affairs Program, led to the idea of linking his regional approach to the Law of the Sea as a framework for sustainable development of marine resources, to the study I was conducting at NOAA of the Northeast Shelf as a Large Marine Ecosystem. This led us to divide coastal ocean areas into 64 LMEs based on four ecological criteria: distinct bathymetry, hydrography, productivity and food chain dynamics.

PBN: How have your tools changed since you started doing this line of research? Have advances in information technology and the Internet changed how you do your work?

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SHERMAN: We initiated an ecosystem-based approach for recovering and sustaining the goods and services of the 64 LMEs around the globe, using a combination of science-based indicators of changing ecosystem conditions and a methodology that examines ecosystems holistically through a time series of measurements of primary productivity, fish and fisheries, pollution and ecosystem health, socioeconomic benefits and governance.
The advances in Internet technology, the capacity for measuring changing ocean conditions from remote sensing instruments carried on satellites orbiting the globe and acoustic devices towed in the coastal ocean have allowed us to obtain the quantitative measurements of changing conditions, including basic plankton productivity and sea surface temperature changes at a sufficient space and time frequency in near real time over distances encompassed by the LME.

PBN: How do you see marine research changing over the next few decades? Will there be a fundamental change in the way we understand marine life or will it just become more rich based on the increase in sophistication of the tools researchers are using?

SHERMAN: What is now being realized by the marine science community is the need for more efficient and effective means to link scientific assessments with management policies to accelerate efforts around the globe to recover and sustain marine fisheries, restore degraded habitats, including coral reefs, sea grasses and mangroves, and control nutrient over-enrichment causing harmful algal blooms and oxygen depleted dead zones from excessive uses of nitrogen-based fertilizers.
As an example, the Gulf of Mexico’s recent Deepwater Horizon blowout increased stresses on an ecosystem that has already been significantly stressed by a very large dead zone caused by excessive fertilizer input from the Mississippi River into the delta region off the coast of Louisiana.
The problems of nutrient over-enrichment, unsustainable fisheries and climate warming are multiple sources of stress that require mitigation actions if we are to realize the full benefits from the $12.6 trillion in goods and services that are contributed annually to the global economy by the 64 LMEs.

PBN: What are the LMEs in U.S. waters?

SHERMAN: The Obama Administration has identified the 11 LMEs of the United States as areas for coastal and marine spatial planning. NOAA has the leadership role within the federal government to promote the health of the nation’s 11 Large Marine Ecosystems including the West Bering Sea, East Bering Sea, Chukchi Sea, Beaufort Sea, Gulf of Alaska, California Current, Gulf of Mexico, Southeast U.S. Continental Shelf, Northeast U.S. Continental Shelf, Insular Pacific-Hawaiian, and Caribbean Sea LMEs.

PBN: How many LMEs are off the East Coast of the United States?

SHERMAN: Two Large Marine Ecosystems are located off the East Coast of the United States: the Northeast Continental Shelf LME, extending from the Gulf of Maine to Cape Hatteras, over 260,000 square kilometers, and the Southeast Continental Shelf, extending from Cape Hatteras to the Florida Straits, of approximately 280,000 square kilometers.
Both LMEs are important to the economies of the coastal states as vital centers for fisheries, tourism and transportation industries.

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