Research Document 2017/020
Potential for measuring production forgone as a metric for assessing project impacts to habitat on fisheries productivity
By Randall, R.G., Bradford, M.J., Koops, M.A., and van der Lee, A.
Abstract
Production forgone is defined as the fish biomass that would have resulted from the survival and growth of the fish lost to a project because of changes to habitat quantity or quality. Production forgone is advantageous as a productivity metric because it accounts for the energy (biomass) that could potentially be transferred to other trophic levels or be available for harvest. In this pilot study, it was shown to be feasible to estimate production forgone for two species where detailed data on age-specific densities, growth and survival were known. Production forgone was estimated for the area-per-recruit of each species, to provide a metric of productivity that complements adult equivalents as a common currency for estimating fish productivity. Because of the extensive data requirements, production forgone would most likely be a useful metric if a detailed assessment was needed to determine offsets for a large project.
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