Potential of dynamic ocean management strategies for western Pacific leatherback sea turtle bycatch mitigation in New Zealand

Western Pacific leatherback sea turtles ( Dermochelys coriacea ) are a priority bycatch mitigation concern due to the projected extinction of the population before the end of the 21st century. The species regularly occurs as bycatch in gillnet and surface longline fisheries. Here, we explore the potential for dynamic ocean management in an emerging hotspot of leatherback sea turtle bycatch in the New Zealand pelagic longline fishery. We compared spatial areas of different sizes built from single oceanographic covariates as well as built from a composite risk surface developed through ensemble random forests. We found that, individually, the Okubo–Weiss parameter, sea surface temperature (SST) anomaly, SST, moon phase, and distance to the SST front were important oceanographic covariates for leatherback sea turtle bycatch. However, the spatial areas built from the composite risk surface were the most effective at discriminating sets with and without bycatch across a range of risk cutoffs. When we also considered implementation metrics of spatial area and coherence as part of performance, the area derived from the composite risk surface with a risk of interaction per set greater than 52% performed best. This spatial area was ephemeral, occurring 1 or 2 weeks each year, and localized, occurring along the north coast of East Cape in the North Island of New Zealand. The apparent presence of discrete spatial areas with elevated risk may be useful to inform future management in the area. Considering implementation metrics in defining utility was useful for identifying tradeoffs between the total size and the underlying covariates delineating a spatial area. As such, we recommend these types of metrics to be included when designing spatial bycatch mitigation strategies elsewhere.