College of Engineering at UMass Dartmouth

Department of Fisheries Oceanography

"An Overview of the U.S. Lobster Stock Assessment Process "

Tracy Pugh, Invertebrate Fisheries Project Leader, Mass Division of Marine Fisheries

Wednesday, March 19, 2025
3pm-4pm
SMAST E 101-102 and via Zoom

Abstract:

American lobster (Homarus americanus) is managed in the U.S. by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) under the authority of the Atlantic Coastal Fisheries Cooperative Management Act (ACFCMA), along with 27 other nearshore species of commercial or recreational importance. Each species (or group of species) has at least a management board and one or more advisory and/or technical committees. The US Lobster Stock Assessment is conducted by the Lobster Stock Assessment Subcommittee (SAS), which is comprised of species experts and stock assessment specialists. The assessment occurs roughly every 4-5 years, and the SAS is currently working on the 2025 assessment, which will be submitted to an external peer review this summer then finalized and presented to the Board this fall. The lobster assessment focuses on population change over time and stock status is determined using trend-based reference points. The assessment is primarily driven by a length-based model which operates in quarterly time steps. Data provided to the model include basic life history information, multiple fishery-independent surveys, and fishery-dependent landings data as well as sex ratio and length composition data collected by at-sea samplers. The SAS also compiles empirical stock indicators which are independent of the model and provide additional information on the health of each stock. This presentation will provide an overview of the US lobster stock assessment process, some details on the types of data included and how they are used, and will describe assessment outputs and stock status as of the previous (2020) assessment. .

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https://umassd.zoom.us/j/93758230260?pwd=OHJ5UDloQkZZaCtXcTlBNlR6Qm0rQT09
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Department of Estuarine and Ocean Sciences

"Clouds, Wind, and Rain: Shaping the Marine Boundary Layer One Gust at a Time"

Alex Kinsella 
Postdoc, WHOI

Wednesday, March 19, 2025
12:30pm-1:30pm
|SMAST E 101-102 and via Zoom

Abstract:

Clouds over the oceans are key regulators of global weather and climate due to their effects on radiative balance and the transport of heat, moisture, and momentum through the atmosphere. These clouds interact with the upper ocean in a complex, coupled system where heat and momentum are constantly exchanged across the air-sea interface. In this talk, I will present observations and findings from the ongoing Wind Forecast Improvement 3 (WFIP3) field campaign, focused on marine atmospheric boundary layer behavior on the Atlantic US continental shelf. In particular, I will focus on a case study of Potential Tropical Cyclone 8, which passed over the region in September 2024, testing our wind forecasting capabilities. I will also describe some of the instrumentation and methods used in marine meteorology, highlighting tools that may be less familiar to the audience, such as Doppler wind lidars, flux buoys, and cloud radars. These observations provide a unique opportunity to improve our understanding of marine clouds, air-sea interaction, and their influence on predictive models, with implications for weather forecasting and offshore wind energy.

Join Zoom Meeting
https://umassd.zoom.us/j/97440069270?pwd=L2Z1bDZESTFCKzJYZWduYVhWenYvZz09

Note: Meeting passcode required, email contact below to receive

To request the Zoom passcode, or for any other questions,