/filters:quality(90)/prod01/production-cdn-pxl/media/umassdartmouth/smast/news-images/GavinFay_horizontal-1.jpg?text=945+WebP)
Dr. Gavin Fay, who is the recipient of multiple awards, focuses on fisheries management strategies, statistical modeling, and population and ecosystem assessment.
Dr. Gavin Fay, Assistant Professor of Fisheries Oceanography at Umass Dartmouth's School for Marine Science & Technology, is principal investigator on projects funded by the Gulf of Maine Research Institute (GMRI), International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES), Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council (MAFMC), and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Fay’s research activities include management strategy evaluation to test the performance of ecosystem-based fisheries management strategies, assessing economic effects of fishing scenarios through model coupling, and applying statistical methods for marine population assessment.
Grants & awards
As part of an award from NOAA’s Climate Program Office, and in collaboration with Professor Steve Cadrin of SMAST and NOAA Fisheries and GMRI scientists, Fay’s GMRI grant of $540,191 is for “Development of Robust Management Strategies for Northeast Groundfish Fisheries in a Changing Climate.” The project will assess how the performance of rules used to manage fisheries in New England will be affected by warming ocean temperature, and develop climate-responsive methods for fisheries assessment and management.
Additionally, Fay received $210,000 from NOAA’s National Marine Sanctuaries Program to investigate the productivity and ecology of sand habitats, and $57,400 from the MAFMC to determine feasibility of fishing mortality-based approaches for managing the recreational summer flounder fishery, which supports the Council’s requirements for annual catch limits. Fay also received $29,129 from ICES for his study “Comparison of IUCN Categories of Conservation Status and Fisheries Reference Points.”
Mentorship
His professorial leadership also led to a $105,419 award from the NOAA Fisheries-Sea Grant Population and Ecosystem Dynamics Fellowship program to PhD candidate Megan Winton for her project “Integrating telemetry data to improve abundance estimates and management advice for a highly migratory marine predator.”