Category Archives: Research

SMAST professors receive grant for “Sustainable Seafood Collaboratory”

Professor Cindy Pilskaln

Professor Cindy Pilskaln

A grant from UMass President Robert Caret’s 2015 Science and Technology Initiatives Fund has been awarded to SMAST Professors Cynthia Pilskaln, research leader, and Brian Howes, collaborator, for the “Sustainable Seafood Collaboratory” project.

With a focus on assessing and advancing opportunities for marine aquaculture in the Commonwealth, the Collaboratory integrates sustainable seafood research across the academic, non-profit, and industry sectors. The Collaboratory will facilitate the development of marine aquaculture research through design and testing of mariculture systems that support healthy, sustainable, and resilient fisheries in the Commonwealth.

“The project is focused on shellfish (primarily oysters) health and development–we would like to examine this relative to changing nutrient, dissolved oxygen and pH regimes,” says Pilskaln.

Portions of the grant totaling $125,000 will also be divided among UMass Amherst, UMass Boston, and the New England Aquarium to address issues in the state’s marine economy.

The SMAST grant amount, which will be distributed over an 18-month period, will provide partial salary support for the lead scientist, a technician, and graduate research assistants, as well as support costs of stakeholder workshops. Seed funding will be utilized for pilot research on monitoring and mitigation of seafood-borne illnesses.

Additionally, the grant will be leveraged to secure funding from federal agencies such as the USDA, NOAA, and NMFS; private foundations such as the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation; and private sector partners, including Benchmark Holdings, PLC.

Judith Rosellon-Druker awarded $500 for excellence in doctoral research

Rosellon-Druker-ccJudith Rosellon-Druker, a PhD candidate at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, School for Marine Science and Technology, has been selected to receive an American Institute of Fishery Research Biologists (AIFRB) Clark Hubbs Research Assistance Award in the amount of $500.00 for excellence in graduate-level research.

Rosellon-Druker’s research examines the population dynamics of four groups of echinoderms—brittle stars, sand dollars, sea stars, and sea urchins—in both open and closed fishing areas of the Georges Bank ecosystem from 2005-2012. Continue reading

NOAA Fisheries awards SMAST researchers more than $950,000 in Saltonstall-Kennedy grants

June 25, 2015

SMAST photo for BOT video

Department of Fisheries Oceanography research

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has awarded SMAST $956,000 under the 2014-2015 Saltonstall-Kennedy (S-K) Grant Program for six projects that help build and maintain sustainable fisheries.

Saltonstall-Kennedy grants, administered by the U.S. Department of Commerce, fund projects that address the needs of fishing communities. Continue reading

SMAST at NSA Annual Meeting

SMAST_and_Shumway_320x186SMAST faculty, staff, and students contributed to the scientific program of the National Shellfisheries Association’s 107th annual meeting in Monterey, California, last week.

Seven oral and poster presentations were authored by SMAST personnel from the Department of Fisheries Oceanography (DFO), reporting on research focused on scallops, lobsters, and surfclams. Prof. Kevin Stokesbury, chair of DFO, also moderated a session on commercial fishing. Continue reading

Stokesbury to Keynote Pectinid Workshop

seafood_fest_2014 016_320x240Prof. Kevin Stokesbury, Chair of SMAST’s Department of Fisheries Oceanography, has been chosen ‌to deliver a keynote address at the 20th International Pectinid Workshop in Galway City, Ireland, in April.

In the words of the workshop organizing committee, “We are very fortunate to have Dr. Kevin Stokesbury attend and be a keynote speaker at this year’s IPW. Dr. Stokesbury, from the UMass-Dartmouth School for Marine Science and Technology (SMAST) in New Bedford, USA, is well respected for his innovative work in surveying scallops and groundfish by developing the SMAST Scallop Video Survey. Continue reading

New Instrument Unveiled at AGU

wp_altabet_GTDSMAST Professor Mark Altabet is part of a multi-institutional team that introduced a novel oceanographic instrument to the scientific community at December’s fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). Researchers from the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory and SMAST/UMassD developed the instrument to monitor the biogeochemistry of oxygen minimum zones (OMZs) in the ocean on time scales impractical for shipboard studies.

The new Teflon-membrane-based “gas tension device” (GTD) measures the excess nitrogen gas microbially generated in OMZs, with a depth range from the surface to 550 meters, a significant advancement over previous GTD models. Continue reading

Awards to Support Gear Design/Eddy Research

wp_pingguoSMAST Professor Pingguo He has received a $205K award from NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service for “Avoiding Overfished Flounders: Testing of Low Seabed Impact of Semi-Pelagic Trawling Technology for Groundfish on the Georges Bank.” The project will design and test trawling gear innovations to reduce seabed impact for the New England groundfish fishery, while significantly reducing the catch of the so-called “choke” species of flounder: yellowtail, winter and windowpane. Similar technology is successfully used in the North Pacific for Alaskan pollock and in Norway for Atlantic cod. The project is a collaborative initiative involving university and state scientists and contributors from the gear technology and fishing industries.

wp_amitIn a separate award, UMass Dartmouth Professor Amit Tandon (Mech. Eng./SMAST) has received $324K from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for his part in collaborative research on the “Role of Mixed Layer Eddies on Phytoplankton Productivity in Seasonally Variable Regimes.” The total award is for $1.1 million over four years, with the remainder supporting the research of collaborator Dr. Amala Mahadevan of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. The investigators will contribute to outreach efforts, including teacher training and ocean literacy workshops through the Ocean Academy at the Ocean Explorium in New Bedford.

Scallop “Recruits” Abundant on Georges Bank

wp_2014ScPerStationThe SMAST scallop video survey team reported its 2014 findings to the Fishermen’s Steering Committee last week: populations are up, particularly the numbers of small scallops and particularly on Georges Bank.

“The overall stock biomass measured in scallop meat weight is estimated to be 320 million lbs, a substantial increase from the 243 million lbs observed in 2012,” said SMAST Prof. Kevin Stokesbury, lead scientist of the annual video survey. “However, the extraordinary news is the huge number of new recruits, small scallops less than 3 inches that will reach commercial size in the next few years.”

The US sea scallop resource averages 8 billion animals, but large increases in scallop populations seem to occur once every 10 years or so. A population spike from 2003 has supported a large part of the fishery for the past 10 years. The increase seen this year on Georges Bank is even larger than that of 2003, increasing the total estimated resource to 26 billion scallops.

“If protected and managed correctly,” said Stokesbury, “these scallops could insure sustainable catches for the next decade similar to those over the past 10 years.”

The video survey was conducted this year from May to July cooperatively with the fishing industry.

NOAA, State Fund SMAST Fisheries Research

wp_press_conf_jul14Recent awards totaling nearly $5 million from NOAA and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts will fund SMAST scallop and groundfish research over the next two years.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has announced cooperative fisheries research projects, including four led by SMAST scientists, to be funded under the “2014-2015 Sea Scallop Research Set-Aside Program. The RSA Program reserves a portion of the scallop harvest to fund cooperative research of benefit to the fishery.

Department of Fisheries Oceanography Chair Kevin Stokesbury is principal investigator on two funded video surveys and a project to track so-called “gray meat” in sea scallops, while Professor Steven Cadrin will continue as PI of the highly successful SMAST Yellowtail Bycatch Avoidance Program. The four projects total $4.4 million. In addition, SMAST researchers are co-investigators on two RSA projects led by collaborating institutions.

A separate award of $450 thousand from the state was announced at a press conference at SMAST on 21 July attended by (from left in photo) state Rep. Christopher Markey (D-Dartmouth), Professor Kevin Stokesbury, state Rep. Antonio Cabral (D-New Bedford), UMass Dartmouth Chancellor Divina Grossman, state Senator Mark Montigny (D-New Bedford), and SMAST Dean Steven Lohrenz. The funding will support the continued development of new “no-capture” technology for fishery population surveys. The elected officials in attendance were instrumental in securing the state funding.