Research Awards Research Awards: Investigating The Effects of Climate on Fishery Catch Rates of New England Groundfish

$ 15,900 awarded to Steven CadrinGavin FayPingguo He sponsored by MA Division of Marine Fisheries

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries awarded School of Marine Science and Technology (SMAST) Professor Steven Cadrin a $385,573 grant to develop standardized indices of groundfish abundance that can contribute to improved stock assessments. The initiative, called the Analysis of New England Groundfish Catch Rates, intends to contribute to the improvement of groundfish stock assessments in the Northeast United States by providing fishery perceptions of relative abundance and potentially including fishery catch rates as indices of abundance in stock assessment models.

Stock assessment of New England groundfish (such as Cod, Haddock, and Flounder) rely primarily on fishermen’s catch and resource surveys, which is an imperfect science, Cadrin says. The idea to create new standardized indices from fishery catch rates has been a long developing idea and research agenda in SMAST, so when the New England Fishery Management Council recommended the project, Cadrin was thrilled to get to work.

“This award allows us to continue and expand our research on using fishery catch rates to potentially improve groundfish stock assessments so we can estimate abundance and advise sustainable catch rates,” said Cadrin. “We’ve invested in much greater monitoring, aiming to put observers on 100% of fishing trip boats to estimate catch and fishing effort.”