Staff Spotlight: Meet Dave Bengtson

The newest face of Rhode Island Sea Grant Sustainable Fisheries Extension is not new to the University of Rhode Island; in fact, he received his master’s and doctorate degrees there in 1974 and 1982, respectively.

“Back when I was a senior in college in the early 70s, we all wanted to save the world, much like all college seniors,” he says, adding that hunger was a major issue. He read an article about the seas having great potential to feed the world’s people, which, though more related to aquaculture, also applied to fisheries. As a biologist interested in vertebrates, he wanted to go to graduate school, and fish seemed perfect to study.

Since then, he says, “Broadly the growth of aquaculture in the past 30 years has been phenomenal, especially over the last decade plus. Fisheries have essentially stabilized.”

“It’s kind of been a long and winding road; for the past 15 years, I’ve been working on aquaculture issues and maintaining a presence in working on fish ecology,” Bengtson says.

He has graduate students who have been working on fish biology issues in an area he describes as being somewhere between basic and applied science. For instance, one student’s research on the metabolism of larval and juvenile cod and haddock has been incorporated into biophysical models for the management of Georges Bank.  Another student is studying the otolith* microchemistry in tautog, examining chemical markers in otoliths of tautog to see where they spent their juvenile lives.

Now professor and department chairman of the Department of Fisheries, Animal and Veterinary Science, David Bengtson is a new co-principal investigator for the Sustainable Fisheries Extension program.

In this role, Bengtson says, “One of my main goals is to try to reinvigorate the Fish, Fisheries, and Aquaculture Initiative.” The initiative sought communication and collaboration among the many departments and colleges that are in some way involved in those areas.

Bengtson has a background in fish ecology, and also plans to address the issue of ecosystem-based management: “Everybody wants ecosystem-based management, but nobody is quite sure how to do it,” he says.

Bengtson hopes to offer his perspective on how ecosystem-based management is going to influence fisheries and on how information can flow back and forth between managers and those involved in fisheries, as has been happening elsewhere, such as in France. There, Bengtson says, managers have “tried to begin to integrate some of their fishers in the process.”

While the Sustainable Fisheries Extension program has traditionally focused primarily on capture fisheries, one of Bengtson’s primary research interests is the aquaculture of marine fish species. Bengtson acknowledges that there have been conflicts between the two groups, saying that “Aquaculture was essentially monoculture in which you transform the environment from a diverse community into a monoculture crop. Aquaculturists have more of a “farmer mentality – culturing a crop every day. Fishers have more of a hunter-gatherer mentality; people go out and take what nature provides.”

However, he adds, “Both contribute to the spectrum of seafood products that are available. Both of them are being forced by consumers and nongovernmental organizations to become more ecological, more sustainable. That’s where I see an overlap between the two.”

Bengtson takes part in a working group on aquaculture regulations for the R.I. Coastal Resources Management Council that brings shellfish aquaculturists and quahoggers together in the same room to search for common ground.

“They respect each other,” Bengtson says, “Both groups are out on the water, and they see each other working hard, but they are competing for a shrinking resource.”
Bengtson hopes to continue to play a role with that group, nurturing a sense that “they’re both sort of in it together; they both want a healthy environment.”

*  Otoliths are inner ear structures that may be used to determine the age of fish, and whose trace elements may be examined to see what bodies of water fish have lived in, among other uses.