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
A two-day workshop next month will seek industry input on the future of NOAA’s fishery-dependent data for the Northeast region.
SMAST researchers are part of a team helping NOAA to streamline, update and modernize its fisheries data systems. SMAST Prof. Steve Cadrin and post-doctoral researcher Cate O’Keefe are working with lead investigators from the Gulf of Maine Research Institute (GMRI) to collect information from external stakeholders and involve them in the development and testing of new data systems for commercial fishing and seafood distribution.
SMAST’s specific contribution will be to engage harvesters from various Northeast fisheries—as well as seafood processors, dealers, marketers, and industry associations—to identify areas that need improvement in current data systems, and envision new data systems for implementation in the Northeast. The workshop will focus on results of industry interviews and discussions to move forward with new data systems.
The workshop will be held June 30-July 1 at the Waypoint Event Center in New Bedford, MA. Registration is required by June 13. (See invitation.)
The School for Marine Science and Technology has announced the appointment of Dr. Gavin Fay as Assistant Professor in the Department of Fisheries Oceanography.
A fisheries modeler, Dr. Fay received his BSc in Marine Biology from the University of Stirling, Scotland, and his MS and PhD from the University of Washington. He is currently employed as a Postdoctoral Research Associate with the Ecosystem Assessment Program of the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) in Woods Hole.
Fay’s expertise is in quantitative fisheries science and ecosystem modeling, with a research focus on spatial modeling and statistical analyses of marine fisheries populations. He has published in the area of population assessment for both fisheries and marine mammals.
The faculty position was created under a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration program called Quantitative Ecology and Socioeconomics Training (QUEST), which also created three new fellowships for Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution scientists with NMFS funding.
Dr. Fay (left in photo with WHOI QUEST fellows) will officially join the faculty for the fall 2014 semester.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has announced the funding of three research proposals submitted by principal investigator Prof. Kevin Stokesbury and co-investigators from the faculty and staff of SMAST’s Department of Fisheries Oceanography. The funded work includes survey studies on Georges Bank and the Mid-Atlantic Shelf as well as a study of the role of persistent aggregations of scallops that may play a disproportionate role in recruitment to the fishery.
The three projects total nearly $2.5 million, but Prof. Stokesbury emphasizes that the dollar total includes the value of harvest from the Atlantic Scallop Research Set-Aside Program, which is awarded to compensate the commercial scallop fleet for its substantial contributions to the cooperative research. “Only about one-third of the funded amount actually comes here,” Stokesbury notes.
Stokesbury and company are also subcontrators on two NOAA-funded scallop research projects led by the Coonamessett Farm Foundation: a seasonal bycatch survey on Georges Bank, and a study of factors that may enable managers to “buffer” the resource against natural fluctuations. An additional NOAA award to Prof. Steve Cadrin will fund the continuation and expansion of SMAST’s Scallop Fishery Bycatch Avoidance System.
NOAA’s Bycatch Reduction Engineering Program has announced an award of $184,674 to SMAST to test modified gear designed to reduce catch of yellowtail flounder and juvenile cod in the Georges Bank groundfish fishery. Co-Principal Investigators SMAST Research Technician Sally Roman and Prof. Pingguo He will work with a commercial fishing vessel to test modified gear developed based on the escape behavior of flatfish species. The NOAA Fisheries Service website says “This project could give fishermen an increased ability to reduce discards of yellowtail flounder and juvenile cod, allowing the fishermen to make the most of their limited catch allocations and fish more sustainably.”
SMAST oceanographer and Professor Cindy Pilskaln is one of a team of Massachusetts scientists recently funded to begin a new modeling phase of their study of the harmful algal blooms which have plagued the Gulf of Maine for several decades. The team, which includes Woods Hole Oceanographic and U.S. Geological Survey investigators, will use the data they have collected over the past six years, along with new lab experiments and sediment maps, to improve operational forecasting capability for such blooms. The project is supported by NOAA’s ECOHAB (Ecology of Harmful Algal Blooms) program.