Conservation & Sustainability Flashcards
7 cards from real CFP practice questions. Tap to flip, then mark Knew It or Still Learning — missed cards come back until you master them.
Read the first 7 Conservation & Sustainability flashcards as text
Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY) is best defined as:
Answer: The largest catch that can be taken from a stock indefinitely without causing population decline
MSY represents the theoretical maximum harvest that can be sustained over time without depleting the population's long-term reproductive capacity.
Spawner-recruit models are used in fisheries management primarily to:
Answer: Describe the relationship between parent stock size and subsequent recruitment
Spawner-recruit models such as Beverton-Holt and Ricker quantify how many juveniles are produced per unit of spawning stock biomass, informing safe harvest levels.
A stock is considered 'overfished' under US federal fisheries law when:
Answer: Biomass falls below the minimum stock size threshold (MSST)
Under the Magnuson-Stevens Act, a stock is overfished when its biomass falls below the MSST, typically set at one-half of the biomass at MSY (B_MSY).
Slot limits in recreational fisheries management are primarily designed to:
Answer: Protect both juvenile fish and large, highly fecund adult spawners
Slot limits prohibit retention of fish below and above a specified size range, protecting small fish from overharvest and large fish that produce disproportionately more eggs.
Which stock assessment method estimates fish abundance by marking a sample, releasing them, and later recapturing a second sample?
Answer: Mark-recapture (Petersen method)
The Petersen mark-recapture method uses the ratio of marked to unmarked fish in a recapture sample to estimate population size.
Ecosystem-based fisheries management (EBFM) differs from single-species management primarily in that it:
Answer: Considers the broader ecological interactions and cumulative impacts across multiple species and habitats
EBFM explicitly accounts for trophic linkages, habitat dependencies, and multi-species dynamics rather than optimizing each species' harvest in isolation.
Genetic diversity within a fish population is important for long-term conservation because it:
Answer: Increases the population's adaptive capacity to environmental change and disease
Populations with high genetic diversity have more allelic variation that can be selected for when conditions change, improving resilience to stressors like climate change or novel pathogens.