Wednesday February 12, DFO will be hosting Kathryn Ford, Director of Population and Ecosystems Monitoring and Analysis Division at the NEFSC to discuss “Developing the NEFSC Bottom Trawl Survey Contingency Plan”. This seminar will take place from 3-4 in SMAST East 101-103 and will also be available on Zoom.

Abstract:

NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) collects data relevant to the sustainable management of fisheries under the mandates of the Magnuson Stevens Act and to meet the mission of NMFS, which is responsible for the stewardship of the nation’s ocean resources and their habitat. One of the preeminent data collections in the NMFS Northeast Fishery Science Center (NEFSC) survey enterprise is the Bottom Trawl Survey (BTS). The NEFSC BTS is a fishery-independent survey which informs population assessments for more than 50 fisheries stocks and the Status of the Ecosystem assessments. A fishery-independent survey utilizes scientific methods within an experimental design in order to measure fish populations and vital rates. They are distinct from fishery-dependent surveys, which sample data from commercial and non-commercial fisheries. The main advantage of including fishery-independent surveys in the fisheries management context is that they provide less biased estimates of trends of fish populations and biological information than fishery dependent data alone. In the case of the NEFSC BTS, the survey also provides the most consistent long term information for assessing ecosystem trends on the U.S. east coast shelf. The value of this survey is linked to its stability and consistency. However, the survey is facing increasing pressures that are making fundamental methodological and statistical design changes necessary. The BTS is facing four primary pressures: marine development, lost sea days, a multi-season loss of the sampling vessel, and lapses in appropriations. These four pressures were assessed in the context of developing a contingency plan for the BTS to consider avenues available for ensuring the long term viability of the survey. This presentation will describe the ongoing process to develop the contingency plan cooperatively with the Mid-Atlantic and New England Fisheries Management Councils and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission via the Northeast Trawl Advisory Panel.

Wednesday February 12, DEOS will be hosting Ali Johnson Exley, Postdoctoral Inverstigator at WHOI to discuss “Patterns and drivers of cross-frontal exchange diagnosed in the Southeast Indian Ridge sector of the Southern Ocean“. The seminar will take place in SMAST East 101-103 from 12:30 to 1:30 or can be joined via Zoom!

Abstract:

The Southern Ocean plays a fundamental role in the meridional overturning circulation by ventilating deep, carbon-rich waters to the surface ocean, and through the conversion to bottom and intermediate waters, largely compensates sinking in the subpolar North Atlantic. Central to the Southern Ocean overturning circulation is the role of mesoscale eddies which are the primary mechanism by which heat, carbon, nutrients and other properties are transported poleward across fronts of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC), effectively balancing the wind-induced equatorward transport. Satellite altimetry has revealed distinct spatial patterns in eddy kinetic energy around the ACC, suggesting mesoscale eddy fields are largely confined to relatively small regions downstream from topographic ridge systems. Despite the outsize importance for meridional heat transport however, we lack an accurate estimate of fluxes across the ACC due to the challenges of observing mesoscale eddy fluctuations on the temporal and spatial scales required. Additionally, the physical mechanisms responsible for initiating and maintaining these mixing regimes remains poorly constrained. Here, observations from Argo are used together with high-resolution numerical model output to investigate horizontal patterns of eddy diffusivity and to diagnose eddy-mean field interactions in the Southeast Indian Ridge system, a relatively under-observed region known to be a hot spot of exchange in the Southern Ocean. We find a highly localized pattern of diffusivity, peaking between the crest and trough of the first standing meander in the lee of the ridge system, which correlates with an along-stream increase in eddy kinetic energy. Additionally, by adopting a wave-activity flux framework traditionally employed for atmospheric storm track studies, we decompose the role of barotropic and baroclinic instabilities as well as the ageostrophic fluxes which sustain the growth, flux and decay of energy in the along-stream direction. This work is an early step towards quantifying the contribution of these processes on the large-scale overturning circulation which ultimately will be essential for a comprehensive understanding of the system and how it might respond to future change.

UPDATE: THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELED

Wednesday February 5th, DFO will be hosting Bianca Lopez, Associate Editor (Ecology), at Science Journal, AAAS. She will be discussing “Publishing at Science” in SMAST East 101-103 from 3:00-4:00. This seminar can also be attended via Zoom!

Abstract:

Publishing research is a key part of the scientific process and is essential for many science careers. Though everyone does it, the inner workings of journals and how decisions get made can be opaque. In this talk, I’ll provide an overview of how the process works at Science and its family of journals, as well as qualities we look for in submissions. I’ll also talk a bit about what a professional editor does and how the peer review process differs between Science and other journals.

Join the DEOS community Wednesday, February 5th for a presentation by PhD candidate Raquel Peñas-Torramilans from the Laboratori d’Enginyeria Marítima, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya – BarcelonaTech, Spain! Raquel will be discussing her work on “Hydrodynamic and ecological interactions in the highly pressured coastal bays of the Ebro Delta (NW Mediterranean): insights from observations, modeling, and remote sensing”. The seminar will be held in SMAST East 101-103 from 12:30-1:30, or can be attended via Zoom!

The Department of Estuarine and Ocean Sciences will be hosting Michael Sheriff as the seminar speaker on Wednesday 1/29 from 12:30-1:30. Sheriff, Associate Professor at UMass Dartmouth in the Biology Department, will be discussing “Coping with a Changing Environment.” This seminar can be attended in person in SMAST East 101-103 or via Zoom! Check out the abstract below:

Abstract:

Anthropogenic disturbances are wide-spread around the globe and impact free-living animals in myriad ways; including direct disturbance, changes to food quality and quantity, invasive species, as well as changes in temperature and climate. As ecologists, we are challenged with the difficult task of predicting how individuals and populations will respond to human-induced changes to local and global ecosystems. Human-induced stressors can impact animals through changes in their physiology, behaviour, and fitness. Here I will discuss two major axes of work that occurs in my laboratory. First, I will examine how environmental stressors impact glucocorticoid levels (stress hormones) in free-living animals. Specifically, I will focus on how altered land use and reduced food quality impacts GC levels in wild impala within the Serengeti Ecosystem, and how changes in winter temperature and snow cover alters GC levels in free-living ruffed grouse. Second, I will examine how an invasive predator is interacting with a local predator within a New England inter-tidal ecosystem and altering prey behaviour and growth in unpredictable ways.

Don’t miss this seminar by Hannes Baumann on “The unusual ecology and climate sensitivity of sand lance, key forage fishes on the Northwest-Atlantic Shelf”! Baumann, Assistant Professor at the University of Connecticut, will be presenting at SMAST East 101-103 on January 29th from 3-4 pm. This seminar can also be attended via Zoom! Read more about Dr. Baumann’s research HERE!