Data and code for: Marine mammal and seabird reductions are unlikely to benefit salmon due to indirect ecosystem effects

This is the data and code repository for the manuscript titled "Marine mammal and seabird reductions are unlikely to benefit salmon due to indirect ecosystem effects" Authors: Dylan G.E. Gomes, Lisa G. Crozier, James J. Ruzicka, David D. Huff, Joshua D. StewartCorresponding author email: [e-mail] Abstract:Pacific salmon are depleted due to historical and modern impacts, and management strategies have struggled to recover populations. Predation on salmon by pinnipeds and seabirdshas been suggested as a barrier to recovery, leading to calls for predator culls. However, no studies have evaluated the whole-ecosystem impact of removing predators or estimated thecombined direct and indirect effects of these culls on salmon. We use an end-to-end ecosystem model to assess the efficacy of culls and other potential interventions. On average, we find that culls have little to no positive effect on salmon across reasonable estimates of uncertainty, due to the indirect food web effects of predator reduction and the relatively low biomass of top predator groups. Instead, more abundant fish predators, northward-expanding competitors, and temperature-sensitive prey have larger effects on salmon.