Biology subjects

Lacko, L.

Publications and source records attributed to Lacko, L..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2025

A quantitative risk assessment approach for longline fishing gear impacts on seafloor habitats

Bottom longline fishing gear used worldwide to capture fish and invertebrate species can impact seafloor habitats, leading to increased use of spatial closures (e.g., MPAs) in areas where habitat risks are considered high. However, such closures often rely on limited data, because fishing impacts on habitat are rarely quantified and fine-scale habitat maps are often unavailable. In this paper we develop fine-scale species distribution models for coral and sponge habitats and demonstrate a quantitative risk assessment framework for habitat impacts from bottom longline trap and hook fisheries, using the British Columbia Sablefish fishery as a case study. We estimate a 4% (95%CI: 2-7%) reduction in coastwide sponge habitats due to Sablefish fishing from 1965 to 2024, compared to pre-fishery levels. Habitat status at finer spatial scales of 1 km2 shows similar trends to the coastwide aggregate status, with habitat declines less than 10% for 99% of fishing grounds. Our analysis provides fine-scale information on habitat distribution and the impacts from Sablefish longline trap and hook fishing gear, providing key information for conservation planning and fisheries management. Our risk assessment approach provides quantitative metrics (relative benthic status) for ecosystem objectives focused on fishery impacts on habitat. Such habitat metrics can be incorporated into fisheries management strategy evaluation, allowing resource managers to compare performance of alternative strategies against a broader suite of sustainability objectives that include habitat, fish stocks, and fisheries catch.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2024

Treading lightly: Quantitative estimates of seafloor contact for longline trap and hook fishing gear

Despite increasing calls for sustainability and ecosystem objectives to manage fishing gear interactions with bottom habitats there are few quantitative approaches for assessing risks from bottom contact fishing. Risk assessments for bottom longline fisheries are particularly challenging due to a lack of information for estimating bottom contact areas from longline gear. In this paper, we demonstrate how data sensors and video cameras deployed on fishing gear can be used to quantify the bottom contact area for longline trap and hook fishing gear from the British Columbia Sablefish fishery. Our bottom contact estimates indicate that Sablefish fishing risks to bottom habitat are low in the majority of fishing areas, since 91.8% of the area fished is expected to have had zero bottom contact over the last 17 years. For the other 8.2% of Sablefish fishing areas that experience some contact from fishing gear, the majority are only contacted once. This indicates that most habitats contacted by Sablefish gear can be expected to have a minimum of 17 years to recover between subsequent bottom contact events. We demonstrate an approach for estimating fisheries bottom contact that can be widely implemented across longline fisheries. Our findings address key data gaps in bottom impacts research for longline gear fisheries, allowing fishing risks to be quantified over fine spatial scales. Such quantitative approaches for habitat risk assessment can provide essential information for management decisions aimed at determining acceptable trade-offs between habitat preservation and fishery benefits.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2024

Atacama Clear for Complex 3D Imaging of Organs

3-dimensional (3D) imaging is a powerful tool for interrogation of intact tissues, but can suffer from poor resolution due to impediments such as high tissue autofluorescence that remains a significant challenge in imaging cleared samples, including human clinical specimens. We developed Atacama Clear (ATC), a 3D imaging technology that increases signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) while simultaneously augmenting the capacity of tissue to be cleared. ATC exhibited SNRs that are up to 200% of widely used 3D imaging methods, potentiated all tested optical clearing solutions by up to 600%, decreased the time of optical clearing by up to a factor of 8, and enabled detection of poorly recognized antigens with a remarkable 4-fold increase in signal detection while using up to 10-fold lower antibody concentrations. Strikingly, ATC produced up to a 5x increase in transgenic fluorescent reporter protein signal detection, which is instead often diminished with currently used 3D imaging methods. This increased imaging efficacy enabled multiplex interrogation of tough fibrous tissue and specimens that naturally exhibit high levels of background noise, including the heart, kidney, and human biopsies. Indeed, ATC facilitated the use of AI based auto-segmentation with simple low tech stereo fluorescence microscopy, visualization of previously undocumented adjacent nephron segments that exhibit notoriously high autofluorescence, elements of the cardiac conduction system, and distinct human glomerular tissue layers, with cellular resolution. Taken together, these studies establish ATC as a platform for complex 3D imaging studies of basic and clinical specimens with superior resolution.

molecular biology↗