Announcements

This page serves as a clearinghouse for CRSS documents, including monthly meetings minutes, policy position statements, and awards.

AFS 2025 Annual Meeting

The CRSS is sponsoring and and supporting several symposia at the AFS 2025 Annual Meeting in San Antonio. These symposia, which take place on Tuesday, August 12, include the following:

Advances in Release Mortality and Depredation Science in Marine Recreational Fisheries

Advancing the Use of Cooperative Research in Fisheries Management

Collaborative Science through Angler-Researcher Partnerships

Cooperative Research with Stakeholders Section Business Meeting Minutes, December 4, 2024

Welcome/Introductions (Jocelyn Runnebaum)

  • Executive Committee introductions
  • Attendee introductions
  • Attendee List

Andie Painten, Andrew Petersen, Angela Collins, Brett Pierce, David Bethoney, Doug Zemeckis, George Maynard, Jane Rogosch, Jocelyn Runnebaum, Kaleoni Hurley, Lee Benaka, Mark Chandler, Samantha Alaimo, Sean Simmons, Tiffany Hopper

Approval of Agenda (Jocelyn Runnebaum)

  • Following Robert’s Rules for our business meeting
  • Establishing a quorum – vote to make the quorum to the number of people attending (bylaws dictate 10 members required)
  • 2024 Agenda for Approval – Agenda was Approved.

Officer’s Reports

  • President’s Report – Jocelyn Runnebaum
  • President Elect/Vice President Report  – Sean Simmons

Sean reported that In the lead up to the 2024 American Fisheries Society (AFS) Annual Meeting,  AFS and MyCatch -Angler’s Atlas’ Sean Simmons hosted a Hawaii Invasive Species Roundup tournament with primary goal of culling as many invasive target fish as possible, with secondary objective of some research questions being examined for demonstration purposes.  An event summary was presented in available at the following link: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1VhCHgPDs-7UNTCTPJ3i-hzBgLm4dP6JaaBvcnXfxi40/edit#slide=id.gee8ebfe7f5_0_114

Additionally, the CRSS-sponsored AFS meeting symposium Collaborative Science through Fisher-Research Partnerships was also detailed. This symposium was co-organized by Sean and NOAA’s Keith Kamikawa.  There was a shout out to Jeff Kopaska who was recently selected as the next Executive Director of AFS. He was most recently Fisheries Biometrician for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.

Doug Zemeckis provided a briefing on the CRSS-sponsored 3-Day symposium Addressing Contemporary Fisheries Issues Through Effective Scientist-Stakeholder Collaborations at the World Fisheries Congress in Seattle. Around 75 countries were represented at this meeting. Doug, Sean, and David Bethoney presented at the symposium.

It should be noted that the World Fisheries Congress is hosted every 4 years. Details on when the 2028 meeting will be held are not yet available. The Congress organized by the World Council of Fisheries Societies.

  • Financial Report – George Maynard

George reported that the CRSS account initially started with just $5.00 and then reach a highpoint of $500.00 recently due to an influx of $250.00 in funding from the Estuaries Section that was subsequently used for co-sponsorship of the Stakeholder Engagement Day (SED) networking event at the AFS annual meeting.  The current CRSS account balance is $250.00.

  • Secretary’s Report – Mark Chandler

Mark reported on the CRSS-organized SED networking event co-sponsored by the American Institute of Fisheries Biologists (AIFRB) and the AFS Estuaries Section at the Hard Rock Café – Honolulu. Additionally, it was mentioned that a NOAA Fisheries Open Funding Opportunities for Citizen Science (with approximately $600K available) recently closed. A report on the awarded grant projects is pending.

CRSS Survey

  • Membership feedback/input

During the Q&A session, it was noted that there was solid interest in all of the topic areas. Jocelyn strongly supported efforts to engage tribes and indigenous peoples and foster more indigenous knowledge/traditional ecological knowledge exchange. She thought this area deserves a lot more attention. Additionally, in terms of frequency of CRSS meetings, annual and quarterly were the highest ranked. David Bethoney advocated that (at least at this stage) full Section Meetings should probably be done annually with smaller working group meetings being held at a higher frequency as needed. There was support for this suggestion.

There was also support for the idea of CRSS-sponsored webinars –but how frequent was not certain.  Moreover, there was also support for the suggestion of rather than CRSS hosting its own webinars, use the CRSS listserv to showcase/alert members of interesting cooperative research webinars being carried out by others. Potential sources for scoping for webinars were SMAST weekly seminars: https://www.umassd.edu/smast/events/seminar-series/ and NOAA Science Seminars: https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/star/NOAAScienceSeminars.php.

Doug had another suggestion was to reach out to folks like AFS’ Lauren Maza with the idea that either select cooperative research recorded talks from the AFS meeting that could be circulated or to possibly recruit AFS meeting presenters to do follow-on cooperative research webinars. Basically, saying that it seems like it might work well to potentially promote other seminars already happening or to possibly partner with Lauren at AFS to do a continuing education program, rather than try to build something else from scratch.

  • Identify who can take on what

There was a general discussion/inquiry on interest in serving on the Executive Committee, Program Committees, Communications Committee, forming Working Groups, etc. For these position and Committee posts, it was suggested that written descriptions be developed for advertising/circulation both within the Section membership and externally. 

For a CRSS Newsletter, there were many ideas on what to include such as:

  • Story highlights,
  • Upcoming funding opportunities,
  • Highlight recent cooperative research publications –including ones produced by members, and 
  • Produce something along the lines of The Fishwrapper.

It was remarked that Newsletter often start out strong initially, but over the long-term can lose momentum as it does require consistent effort over time. A follow up suggestion on this was to do an occasional email blast to member capturing elements of a proposed newsletter instead.

For the CRSS Stakeholder Engagement Day (SED), there was a suggestion to take the lessons learned from the Nation CRSS SED event as the AFS Annual Meeting and disseminate this out to AFS Section and Chapter Presidents to assist/encourage these type of events at their regional/local meetings.

New Business

  • Fishing Buddies (Sean)

The “fishing buddy” program was a great success at the National AFS meeting in Honolulu, HI (More details at the following link: https://afsannualmeeting2024.fisheries.org/find-a-fishing-buddy/) and was viewed as something that should go forward for the National AFS meeting in San Antonio.  It is another concept that would be good to disseminate this out to AFS Section and Chapter Presidents to assist/encourage these type of events at their regional/local meetings.

  • AFS in San Antonio August 10 – 14, 2025

Session proposal submission is now open for the 155th Annual Meeting. The deadline for session proposal submission is January, 24, 2025 and more info can be found at the following link: https://afsannualmeeting.fisheries.org/call-for-sessions/.  This led to the recommendation to submit a new CRSS symposium‒possibly with a general big-tent cooperative research-theme.  There was a lot of traction for the suggestion to have a symposium that explores the barriers/challenges to overcome cooperative research data being incorporated in science products for decision makers. For example, it was mentioned that survey funding is declining –so there is a need to find ways to better utilize cooperative research efforts and data.  Jocelyn and David mentioned that both TNC and CFRF respectively would support this.  A working group was established to develop a draft abstract of this theme.  The members of this working  group are: Andrew Petersen, Brett Pierce, David  Bethoney, Jocelyn Runnebaum, Lee Benaka, Mark Chandler, and Sean Simmons.  A follow up meeting for this working group has been established for Wednesday January 15, 2025 from 11:00am – 11:30am.  In the interim, Mark Chandler will develop a draft abstract to circulate to the working group for further editing/refinement.  This symposium would in additional to a CRSS-sponsored angler engagement symposium.