Recommendation to Endorse Approaches for Identifying Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems (VMEs) from Imagery and Species Distribution Models in the NPFC Convention Area

Please find below recommendations for the endorsement of by the NPFC for approaches to identifying vulnerable marine ecosystems (VMEs) from imagery and species distribution models in the NPFC Convention Area along with two papers attached:

1.    Baco et al., (2023) provides a consensus method for using imagery data to identify VMEs; and,
2.    Tong et al., (2023) provides species distribution models that can be used to identify locations of VMEs likely to occur for reef-forming scleractinian corals in the NPFC Convention Area.