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Worldwide, enhancement of oyster populations is undertaken to achieve a variety of goals including support of food production, local economies, water quality, coastal habitat, biodiversity, and cultural heritage. Although numerous strategies for improving oyster stocks exist, enhancement efforts can be thwarted by longstanding conflict among community groups about which strategies to implement, where efforts should be focused, and how much funding should be allocated to each strategy. The objective of this paper is to compare two engagement approaches that resulted in recommendations for multi-benefit enhancements to oyster populations and the oyster industry in Maryland, U.S.A., using the Consensus Solutions process with collaborative simulation modeling. These recommendations were put forward by the OysterFutures Workgroup in 2018 and the Maryland Oyster Advisory Commission (OAC) in 2021. Notable similarities between the efforts were the basic principles of the Consensus Solutions process: neutral facilitation, a 75% agreement threshold, the presence of management agency leadership at the meetings, a scientific support team that created a management scenario model in collaboration with community group representatives, numerous opportunities for representatives to listen to each other, and a structured consensus building process for idea generation, rating, and approval of management options. To ensure meaningful representation by the most affected user groups, the goal for membership composition was 60% from industry and 40% from advocacy, agency, and academic groups in both processes. Important differences between the processes included the impetus for the process (a research program versus a legislatively-mandated process), the size of the groups, the structure of the meetings, and the clear and pervasive impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the ability of OAC members to interact. Despite differences and challenges, both groups were able to agree on a package of recommendations, indicating that consensus-based processes with collaborative modeling offer viable paths toward coordinated cross-sector natural resource decisions with scientific basis and community support. In addition, collaborative modeling resulted in ‘myth busting’ findings that allowed participants to reassess and realign their thinking about how the coupled human oyster system would respond to management changes. 

We investigated temperature sensitivities of picophytoplankton growth along a natural 10°C (18-28°C) temperature gradient in the eastern Indian Ocean characterized by deep mixing and consistently low dissolved nitrogen. Population biomass (B), cell carbon and chlorophyll were measured by flow cytometry. Instantaneous growth (µ) and production (P) were calculated from dilution incubations at four light levels. Contrary to most empirical and theoretical predictions, Prochlorococcus, the biomass dominant, showed insignificant temperature sensitivity, with nominal Q10 values of 1.06 and 1.18 for P:B and µ, respectively, and activation energies (Ea) of 0.05 and 0.12 eV. Q10 and Ea values for Synechococcus (1.36-1.42 and 0.23-0.27 eV) were also below prediction, and picoeukaryotes showed high variability, including negative rates suggesting lytic cycles, at high temperature. We emphasize the importance of using adapted communities in natural environmental gradients to test climate predictions and hypothesize that mortality defenses are a significant selection criterion in balanced oligotrophic systems.