On July 11, our science center held a transfer of ownership ceremony at our James J. Howard Marine Sciences Laboratory in New Jersey. The lab was originally owned by the State of New Jersey. It’s been a long journey with a lot of unending support for our lab, staff, and science we conduct. Owning the James J. Howard Marine Sciences Lab better supports our mission to provide the scientific information and tools necessary for productive, sustainable, and healthy marine ecosystems in our region. We’re thrilled that our lab is now officially part of the NOAA family!

If you’re going to be on Cape Cod this summer, be sure to stop by our Woods Hole Science Aquarium and check out our twice-daily Q&A sessions in our seal exhibit area. During the session, aquarium staff will talk to visitors about harbor seals, our 23-year-old harbor seal Bubba, what our staff do, and more! So, grab your bikes, get some ice cream, and check out the live Q&A Tuesday through Saturday at approximately 11 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. Our aquarium is open to the public Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., closed Sunday, Monday, and all federal holidays. The aquarium’s upper gallery and touch tank are currently closed for construction.

The Northeast Trawl Advisory Panel is a joint advisory panel composed of regional federal fishery council members and fishing industry, academic, and government and non-government fisheries experts. The panel is investigating whether using a restrictor rope on survey gear may be a way to help standardize offshore wind company fishery surveys. We’ve been working with the captain and crew of the F/V Darana R and scientists from Virginia Institute of Marine Science to study if and how using a restrictor rope might impact catch. 

As part of their Bureau of Ocean Energy Management lease agreements, offshore wind companies are required to conduct fisheries surveys to evaluate how their operations and development in lease areas impact fishery species. To help ensure the data they're collecting are comparable and can be combined with existing regional survey data, there needs to be a consistent sampling program. A restrictor rope may help with sampling consistency. 

This year marks the 30th anniversary of NOAA Fisheries Atlantic shark management. To celebrate, our agency has put together some fun and informative features on these iconic creatures. Read more about our center’s 50+ years of shark research, access our online shark identification guide, and find out more about the Cooperative Atlantic States Shark Pupping and Nursery Program. This program studies shark nursery habitat along the East Coast and sharks within those areas. Our scientists are out on a COASTSPAN cruise now, sampling in Delaware Bay. The survey started in June, finding sand tiger sharks and juvenile sandbar sharks returning to the bay. Our staff will take their final trip for the year in August.

Last month, George Maynard, marine resources management specialist and eMOLT coordinator, attended the annual Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography Aquatic Sciences Meeting and the first in-person meeting of the Fishing Vessel Ocean Observing Network in Palma, Spain. The eMOLT program is a long-running data collection effort in which commercial fishermen, primarily lobstermen, install temperature sensors on their traps to record and report hourly values. During the network meeting, partners discussed comparing different hardware packages for at-sea data collection, standardizing database architecture, and creating data products that support fishing businesses, marine forecasts, and fisheries management. The network is led by members from Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Portugal, and the United States. The goals of this network are to foster collaborative fishing vessel-based observations, democratize ocean observation, improve ocean predictions and forecasts, promote sustainable fishing, and power the data-driven new blue economy. 

Our passive acoustics group recently released two datasets that are a compilation of acoustic data and associated annotation logs. They were collected in the Western North Atlantic Ocean, including the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary.

Oceanographer and spring Ecosystem Monitoring Survey chief scientist Jerry Prezioso treated us to a series of blogs highlighting various survey activities and on-goings aboard the NOAA Ship Henry B. Bigelow. In his first blog, he focuses on the mid-Atlantic stations and gives an overview on survey sampling activities, highlights students and their work, and tips his hat to colleagues who went above and beyond. In his second blog, he talks about diatoms, pteropods, seabirds, light measurements, and more. In his third blog, he highlights Georges Bank and Gulf of Maine sampling activities, deployment of surface velocity profilers (drifter buoys), and shares a unique discovery. In his final blog, he covers the last of the station sampling in the Gulf of Maine, Gulf Stream warm-core eddy sampling, and plankton and water movement documentation in offshore wind areas.

Fisheries observer Robert Bland has 19 years of experience. In his new blog, he shares what it’s like to fish for Atlantic deep-sea red crab, what he loves about his job, what keeps him going after 19 years, and more! It’s a fascinating and unique insight to a lifestyle and fishery many of us don't know much about.

It is unofficial, but preliminary data indicates that July 6, 2023 was the hottest day on record at 17.23°C. This is yet another piece of evidence that our climate is changing, in addition to being variable. NOAA Fisheries has been working to address the challenges presented by a variable and changing climate for decades. These efforts were organized into a Climate Science Strategy in 2015. Accompanying this strategy were regional action plans including the Northeast Regional Action Plan. In 2021, NOAA Fisheries published a 5-year progress report on the strategy and regional action plans and has recently reviewed and updated the regional action plans including the Northeast Regional Action Plan. The next couple of years will see our science center following this strategy and update plan, working with our partners and stakeholders, and continuing to advance climate science related to fisheries, protected species, habitats, aquaculture, and fishing communities.