Abstract
Elasmobranchs support human livelihoods and well-being and perform diverse ecosystem functions. Among global conservation and management efforts, one common challenge is how to plan for a changing environment. Chapter two synthesized research addressing environmental factors’ impacts on elasmobranchs and contextualized these issues and themes for resource managers and conservation practitioners. In chapter three, I present and test a satellite-transmitted metric for the remote monitoring of changes in activity (ATS, the Activity Time Series), measured via a pop-off satellite archival tag. My results suggest that ATS is a practical metric for remotely monitoring and transmitting relative high activity data in large-bodied aquatic species with variable activity levels, under changing environmental conditions, and across broad spatiotemporal scales. Chapter four compared sharks’ physiological indicators of stress during fishery capture with environmental conditions. My results contribute to prior evidence of variation in the elasmobranch stress response with water temperature, highlighting the potential to mitigate accumulated stress through incorporating temperature and regimes in fisheries management. Chapter five used participant observation at public meetings, semi-structured interviews, and an online survey with key stakeholders to understand how their values and worldviews relate to perception and participation in policymaking for shark fisheries. I found that conflicts arose from a diversity of perspectives and experiences among fishers, management, scientific, and environmental advocacy organizations, despite similar values towards sharks. To examine the practice of climate vulnerability assessments (CVAs), Chapter six used an online survey of assessors’ experiences. Interpreting results through a climate justice lens, I found awareness of justice concepts such as stakeholder communication. However, there was ample room to improve the empowerment of those stakeholders from the outset of a CVA.