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Chris Free

@cfree14.bsky.social

Fisheries scientist interested in climate change and ecosystem-based management who runs too much and plays trombone too little | he/him

Posts Replies Media

Chris Free @cfree14.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

We identified species that are high priorities for having their depuration rates studied because they are widely produced in areas with known HAB risk. Let's get to work!

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Chris Free @cfree14.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

We predicted PST (paralytic shellfish toxin) depuration rates for unstudied species based on life history and taxonomy:

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Chris Free @cfree14.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

Depuration rates are understudied for non-bivalves and for toxins besides paralytic shellfish toxins, despite diverse toxin risk in many finfish, crustaceans, gastropods, and more.

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Chris Free @cfree14.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

This figure shows how projections of depuration timelines can be used to optimize the cadence of biotoxin monitoring. We even built a Shiny app to help you do this: emlab-ucsb.shinyapps.io/depuration_f...

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Chris Free @cfree14.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

Our new paper in Harmful Algae systematically reviews biotoxin depuration rates in marine seafood and illustrates how depuration rates can be used to make monitoring more cost-effective, financing monitoring for more species, in more places, at more times: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

sciencedirect.com

Marine biotoxin depuration rates: management applications, research priorities, and predictions for unstudied species

Monitoring and managing the public health risk posed by marine biotoxins is a daunting challenge. With expansive coastlines, 1000s of seafood species,…

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Chris Free @cfree14.bsky.social · 24/10/2025

The California Dungeness crab season is delayed yet again due to elevated levels of the domoic acid neurotoxin. The fishery has been heavily squeezed by climate change since 2015. wildlife.ca.gov/News/Archive...

A timeline of closures and other restrictions to the West Coast commercial Dungeness crab fishing from 2015-2024.

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Chris Free @cfree14.bsky.social · 17/10/2025

I should have put this above but the estimated bycatch is 1-4% of the potential biological removal and marine mammal populations are recovering.

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Chris Free @cfree14.bsky.social · 17/10/2025

As a result, she mapped bycatch risk to identify areas of high risk that disproportionately contribute to bycatch. These were areas of relatively low fishery importance, suggesting that temporary closures could curb bycatch risk with small fishery impacts, should managing bycatch become necessary

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Chris Free @cfree14.bsky.social · 17/10/2025

Are there other management levers we can pull to find more efficient solutions? Yutian used random forest models to explore the drivers of bycatch risk and found that regulating spatial-temporal dynamics of the fishery could have more impact than regulating things like mesh size and soak time (4/X).

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Chris Free @cfree14.bsky.social · 17/10/2025

However, this progress has been made through management-induced reductions in fishing effort, which have had huge impacts on particaption and revenues. See below (3/X).

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Chris Free @cfree14.bsky.social · 17/10/2025

First, she combined observer and logbook data to estimate bycatch of six species over time. Bycatch, high and unsustainable in the 1980s and 1990s, has fallen precipitously.

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Chris Free @cfree14.bsky.social · 17/10/2025

My PhD student, Yutian Fang, just had her first chapter published! She shows that marine mammal & seabird bycatch has precipitously decreased in the California set gillnet fishery, but at high costs to fisheries participation and revenues. Read on for the evidence and more efficient solutions! (1/X)

sciencedirect.com

Estimates and potential drivers of protected species bycatch in the California set gillnet fishery

The identification of efficient management strategies that reduce protected species bycatch while also minimizing impacts on fishing livelihoods is a …

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Chris Free @cfree14.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

Our new paper examines impact of historical warming on 521 freshwater fish populations. Warm water species benefitted while cool water species suffered. However, overfishing has a larger impact, indicating that fisheries mgmt can offset many negative climate impacts: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

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Chris Free @cfree14.bsky.social · 30/06/2025

I'm thrilled to share our new Fish & Fisheries paper synthesizing U.S. fisheries quota allocation policies and best practices for advancing their equity and fairness goals under climate change: t.co/JqjYR32qHc

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