Sharks are a taxon of significant conservation concern and associated public interest. The scientific community largely supports management policies focusing on sustainable fisheries exploitation of sharks, but many concerned members of the public and some environmental advocates believe that sustainable shark fisheries cannot and do not exist and therefore support total bans on all shark fisheries and/or trade in shark products. The belief that sustainable shark fisheries cannot and do not exist persists despite scientific evidence showing that they can and do, and are important to livelihoods. Additionally, many concerned members of the public are only aware of one threat to sharks and are unaware of other threats-or of most available policy solutions. Here we assess whether the popular press plays a role in spreading misinformation and misunderstanding about these issues via the agenda-setting, priming, and cultivation roles of the media, with the goal of better understanding the causes and consequences of public confusion.

The timing of reproduction influences key evolutionary and ecological processes in wild populations. Variation in reproductive timing may be an especially important evolutionary driver in the marine environment, where the high mobility of many species and few physical barriers to migration provide limited opportunities for spatial divergence to arise. Using genomic data collected from spawning aggregations of Pacific herring ( Clupea pallasii ) across 1600 km of coastline, we show that reproductive timing drives population structure in these pelagic fish. Within a specific spawning season, we observed isolation by distance, indicating that gene flow is also geographically limited over our study area. These results emphasize the importance of considering both seasonal and spatial variation in spawning when delineating management units for herring. On several chromosomes, we detected linkage disequilibrium extending over multiple Mb, suggesting the presence of chromosomal rearrangements. Spawning phenology was highly correlated with polymorphisms in several genes, in particular SYNE2 , which influences the development of retinal photoreceptors in vertebrates. SYNE2 is probably within a chromosomal rearrangement in Pacific herring and is also associated with spawn timing in Atlantic herring ( Clupea harengus ). The observed genetic diversity probably underlies resource waves provided by spawning herring. Given the ecological, economic and cultural significance of herring, our results support that conserving intraspecific genetic diversity is important for maintaining current and future ecosystem processes.

The cumulative effects of human stressors are threatening marine ecosystems. While spatial management tools such as marine conservation areas can help mitigate cumulative effects, several decision-making challenges remain. A limited availability of information and lack of knowledge, inconsistent management approaches, and ineffective consideration of social-ecological interactions hinders current cumulative effects assessment and management efforts. We examined if and how ocean managers assess cumulative effects and incorporate them into their management practices. A survey of the three Canadian federal departments responsible for marine conservation areas was conducted, and focused on the extent to which social and economic factors are considered. Managers seemed to favor ecological factors over social and economic ones when evaluating cumulative effects, such as when defining the spatial and temporal scales to use in their assessments. Managers also indicated a need for greater access to social and economic data and information to improve their assessment and management decisions. Lastly, the lack of a standardized cumulative effects assessment framework and fragmented management approaches appeared to limit managers' ability to adequately incorporate social and economic factors into assessments. The survey results indicated that a cumulative effects assessment framework that explicitly includes social and economic factors in addition to an enhanced understanding of the suite of factors that influence social-ecological interactions should be developed. This type of framework is essential to help achieve the long-term management solutions required to conserve the health and integrity of Canada's oceans and beyond.

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