Climate change will likely intensify hurricane activity in coastal regions. A thorough understanding of hurricane impacts to marine fauna is necessary to prepare for and mitigate potential impacts to social systems dependent upon adjacent fauna. Yet, research attention, conservation funding, and policy all can be biased toward taxa of societal interest, potentially favoring a limited understanding of hurricane impacts. Here, we analyzed the frequency of mentions of taxa in newspaper articles in relation to hurricane activity at three coastal US locations coupled with analysis of long-term fisheries-independent data. While economically important taxa dominate media discourse, we observed long-term hurricane-related abundance declines in ecologically important taxa having little direct human utility. We conclude that there is a potential for research and policy biases related to hurricane impacts. Preparation and mitigation efforts will benefit from researchers and managers making directed efforts to identify and incorporate hurricane sensitive taxa into their work.

气候变化可能会加剧沿海地区的飓风活动。有必要全面了解飓风对海洋动物群的影响，以准备和减轻对依赖邻近动物群的社会系统的潜在影响。然而，研究注意力、保护资金和政策都可能偏向于社会利益的分类群，可能有利于对飓风影响的有限理解。在这里，我们分析了报纸文章中与美国三个沿海地区飓风活动有关的类群的提及频率，并分析了与渔业无关的长期数据。虽然经济上重要的类群主导了媒体讨论，但我们观察到，生态上重要的类群与飓风相关的丰度长期下降，几乎没有直接的人类效用。我们的结论是，与飓风影响相关的研究和政策可能存在偏见。研究人员和管理人员直接努力识别飓风敏感类群并将其纳入他们的工作中，这将有助于准备和缓解工作。