Adrian Stier

This plays out in real West Coast fisheries—Pacific hake, petrale sole, sablefish—where assessments update every 1-4 years. Climate-ready doesn't mean win-win. It means being transparent with communities about whether we're prioritizing conservation or catch.

We modeled fish populations under climate change and found consistent trade-offs. When productivity declined, adaptive management kept populations 42% larger but reduced harvest. When it increased, adaptive rules boosted harvest >100% but populations ran 40% smaller.

Our new study by Jameal Samhouri in @PLOSClimate reveals an uncomfortable truth about climate-ready fisheries: adaptive management strategies can boost population biomass OR harvest—but rarely both. The 'right' choice depends on what we value as a society.
journals.plos.org/climate/arti...

YouTube video by Tom Shlesinger Cryptic predation on coral spawn: Hidden trophic links in the dead of night

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HTj...

Coral spawning = nature’s biggest party 🎉🌊
But while corals release their eggs + sperm into the night, a hidden guest list shows up hungry… 🦀⭐🐚🦪

@TomShlesinger reveals crabs, barnacles, brittle stars & more secretly feasting on coral spawn. doi.org/10.1002/ecy....

Changing Feeding Levels Reveal Plasticity in Elasmobranch Life History Strategies We analysed life history traits of 151 elasmobranch species for two contrasting feeding levels in a principal components analysis. Two axes, reproductive output and generation turnover, structure ela...

🦈 Sharks, skates, and rays aren’t locked into slow, “fixed” life histories. New work in Ecology Letters shows they can shift to higher reproductive output when food availability increases — a surprising plasticity in elasmobranch biology! 👉 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Fate-tracking early coral recruits following bleaching in a remote reef ecosystem - Coral Reefs As coral reefs face increasingly frequent and severe disturbances, their condition relies more heavily on recovery dynamics. Understanding reef recovery is essential for assessing the long-term ecolog...

Stratford et al. tracked >1,000 coral “babies” in the remote Chagos Archipelago after bleaching. Survival & growth were high, but after 3 yrs they still made up just 2.4% cover. Even “ideal” reefs often recover painfully slow. 🌊🌱
👉 link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00338-025-02732-8

Take-home: Indonesia’s reefs may be showing more resilience than expected, but cover alone doesn’t capture species shifts, functional change, or hidden vulnerability.

3/ The “shifted baseline” point is key: most data begin after the 1998 global bleaching event. What looks “stable” may already reflect reefs that declined before monitoring began.

2/ This stability is surprising given repeated mass bleaching and local disturbances.
So what’s going on? The authors suggest 4 possibilities:
• shifted baselines (post-1998 data dominate)
• averaging masks local losses & gains
• sampling biases
• true resilience of Indonesian reefs

Long-term dynamics of hard coral cover across Indonesia - Coral Reefs Most comparative studies assessing reef health focus on living hard coral cover as the key metric. In Indonesia, in situ monitoring of coral cover has been ongoing for over five decades. However, as m...

1/ New paper in Coral Reefs compiles 7,600+ observations of coral cover across Indonesia (1994–2022).
Surprisingly, they find no clear national-level decline in coral cover over nearly 30 years. 🤯
link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00338-024-02540-6

Had so much fun visiting @ucdavis.bsky.social Bodega Marine Lab today and learning about all of the amazing work going on here. Thank you @dranyabrown.bsky.social , @rachaelabay.bsky.social , @tessahill.bsky.social and Jay for such a nice visit! 🐳

After marine heatwaves, removing dead coral skeletons cuts macroalgae in half and boosts coral recruitment 5-fold.
A novel, field-tested strategy to promote reef resilience.
Bravo, Kai Kopecky!
🧠📸🪸
Open access @ESA_org doi.org/10.1002/eap....

Securing a sustainable future for US seafood in the wake of a global crisis The United States seafood industry is undergoing rapid change, as a result of the current trade war with China, ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic, and …

Just wrote and submitted a paper with another co-author in less than a week as a follow up to our Froehlich et al. 2021 pub (below), focused on comparing the U.S. Seafood Executive Order from 2020 to the one that was just released in 2025. Preprint coming soon 👀
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

New in Coral Reefs ! 🐟🪸 Our review of how coral-associated fishes boost coral health by enhancing oxygenation, nutrients, and defense—key allies for coral resilience. With Craig Osenberg and Tory Chase!
drive.google.com/open?id=1s57...
#coralreef #marineecology

Maine Sea Grant in jeopardy after Trump administration terminates $4.5 million grant program The move to discontinue the four-year agreement — which comes amid the White House's efforts to slash the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's budget — leaves the fishery organization’s p...

Sea Grant is a powerhouse for coastal communities! Through research, education, and outreach, it helps protect marine ecosystems, support sustainable fisheries, and boost coastal economies. Sea Grant keeps our waters and communities thriving. We need sea grant!
www.pressherald.com/2025/03/01/m...

To all my colleagues in government who work tirelessly to try to make our world a better place, I'm so sorry you're going through this and am so grateful for your service, thank you ❤️

wondering about a log scale to make the smaller values more visible, is it zero bounded?

Coral Restoration Assistant Specialist, Marine Science Institute, University of California Santa Barbara University of California Santa Barbara is hiring. Apply now!

🌊🚨 We're hiring ! 🚨 🪸 a specialist to conduct Management Strategy Evaluation for coral reef restoration! Collaborate with Jameal Samhouri (NOAA) and Darcy Bradley (TNC)

Skills: Quant analysis, Ecosystem modeling, Marine ecology.
🗓️ Apply: recruit.ap.ucsb.edu/JPF02914

pls RT!

How fishes and invertebrates impact coral resilience Adrian Stier and Craig Osenberg discuss how understudied coral-associated fishes and invertebrates can both enhance and erode coral resilience.

Craig and I have a new paper out today in Current Biology highlighting the key role of fishes and invertebrates in driving coral resilience www.cell.com/current-biol...

Would love to hear more about what you’re up to!!

Raine Detmer offers important insight into connectivity and grazer effects in Southern California !

Modeling grazer-mediated effects of demographic and material connectivity on giant kelp metapopulation dynamics
www.int-res.com/abstracts/me...

Just published: 🦀 Quick Guide to Coral Crabs! w @OsenbergLab in @CurrentBiology Take a crabtastic voyage into the fascinating world of Trapezia. Learn about their unique biology, habitat, and vital role in coral ecosystems. #MarineBiology www.cell.com/current-biol...

Love this optimism 👏

👋🥳

Pete's new paper on algae is important and interesting www.cell.com/current-biol...