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SMAST Fisheries: the SMAST Decision Support System for Fisheries Science

A necessary component of moving forward in fishery management is the development of sets of calibrated and scale-matched measurements of fish stocks and the ocean environment that can be used to substantially improve the assessment of fish abundance, to develop a suite of ocean observations that are relevant to the recruitment and adult fish distribution, and to develop a means to inter-calibrate the abundance of fish with the ocean environment.

Decision Making Flow Chart

The flow chart in Figure 1, above, describes a framework for a decision support system forfisheries management. (Rothschild, B.J., J.S. Ault and S. G. Smith. 1996. Chapter 9: A system science approach to fisheries stock assessment and management. In Stock Assessment: Quantitative Methods and Applications for Small-Scale Fisheries. Edited by V. F. Galluci, S. B. Saila, D. J. Gustafson and B.J. Rothschild. CRC Press Inc. pp 473 – 492.)
To do this, we are proposing the following four programs:

1. Fisheries Observation
2. Ocean Observation and Dynamics
3. Ecosystem Modeling and Data Assimilation
4. Fish Population Dynamics, Statistical Analysis, and Optimization

The outcomes of these four programs are manifest in enhanced decision support and the impacts are projected to result significantly in social and economic benefits in the national application of environmental indicators for coastal management. We are presently placing the programs in the NASA specified format.

The flow chart below (Figure 2) depicts the SMAST decision support system for fisheriesscience.

SMAST Decision Support System

Areas of collaboration between SMAST and the University of Alaska Fairbanks:

  • Development of the next generation high resolution coastal models for the Gulf of Alaska (GOA) and Georges Bank (GB) regions
  • Development of two CODAR systems, one for the GOA and one for GB region; exchange technology information on installation, processing and analysis of data
  • Development and application of modern methods of cooperative fisheries data program, tagging and fish stock abundance and fish biomass transport measures and understanding catch variation.
  • Exchange of technology and information on the usage of underwater vehicles (AUVs) for application to operational and fisheries ocean problems

Note: Partnering UAF Project is: Sea-Air-Land Modeling and Observing Network (SALMON) , PI Dave Musgrave



SMAST Fisheries: A Decision Support System for Fisheries Science
The School for Marine Science and Technology, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
706 South Rodney French Blvd., New Bedford, MA 02744-1221 • Tel. 508.999.8193
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