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Trade is a critical component of the U.S. seafood industry's supply and demand. In 2018 total seafood imports were $22.4 billion and total exports were $5.6 billion with a trade deficit of approximately $16.8 billion. Furthermore, imports and re-imports are reported to constitute greater than 85% of domestic seafood consumption. Recognizing the importance of the U.S. seafood trade, an interagency Seafood Trade Task Force, cochaired by the U.S. Department of Commerce and the Office of the United States Trade Representative, was initiated in May of 2020 through the 'Executive Order on Promoting American Seafood Competitiveness and Economic Growth.' The objectives of the Executive Order are to explore policies to improve access to foreign markets, reduce barriers to exports, and more generally to promote seafood trade. Given this recent focus on the seafood trade deficit, we thought it important to describe critical aspects of the deficit. We do this by providing detailed case studies of eight U.S. harvest species categories with large trade flows., Introduction The NMFS Strategic Plan for 2019-2022 (1) identified 'increasing U.S. seafood production and reducing the seafood trade deficit' as one of its challenges that must be addressed. The first [...]

Quantifying spatiotemporal dynamics of ecosystem services is an emerging approach for informing and managing trade-offs among cumulative or competing activities in marine environments. As one proxy for ecosystem services and benefits, we quantified and mapped catch and economic value of California commercial fisheries removals using a 75-year spatially explicit time series. From 1931 to 2005, approximately 88% of the catch was attributed to finfish. However, there has been an increasing reliance of proportional value from invertebrates over the last 25 years. The spatial organization of historical catches suggests species composition varies substantially by depth and latitude, and an evaluation of changes in the spatial distribution of catches in three different time periods suggests that spatial shifts in catch locations have occurred for some taxonomic groups over time. A spatial assessment of historical catches and value benefits marine spatial planning, informs stock assessments, provides a quantification of ecosystem services, and facilitates ecosystem-based approaches to marine fisheries management. La quantification de la dynamique spatiotemporelle des services ecosystemiques est une nouvelle approche pour mieux comprendre et gerer les compromis entre des activites cumulatives ou concurrentes dans les milieux marins. A titre de variables substitutives pour les services et avantages ecosystemiques, nous avons quantifie et cartographie les prises et la valeur economique des retraits des peches commerciales en Californie en utilisant une serie chronologique spatialement explicite de 75 ans. De 1931 a 2005, environ 88 % des prises etaient attribuees aux poissons a nageoires. Depuis 25 ans, il y a toutefois un recours croissant de valeur proportionnelle aux invertebres. L'organisation spatiale des prises passees donne a penser que la composition des especes varie considerablement selon la profondeur et la latitude, et une evaluation des changements de la repartition spatiale des prises durant trois periodes de temps distinctes porte a croire que des deplacements des lieux de prises se sont produits au fil du temps pour certains groupes taxonomiques. Une evaluation spatiale des prises passees et de leur valeur est utile pour la planification spatiale marine et revaluation des stocks, permet de quantifier les services ecosystemiques et facilite les approches ecosystemiques de gestion des peches marines. [Traduit par la Redaction], Introduction The world's oceans provide provisioning (e.g., food production), regulating (e.g., climate regulation), supporting (e.g., nutrient cycling), and cultural (e.g., aesthetic) ecosystem service benefits to humankind (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005). [...]