The New Year marks the beginning of the winter flounder and longfin inshore squid working groups and the culminating peer review meetings for applied state space models, February 12–16, and golden tilefish, March 11–15. It also marks a return to hybrid peer review meetings. You can join us in person at our Woods Hole Lab for both the state space and golden tilefish peer reviews or virtually via phone or web. All meeting information is available on the web pages and for a five-year stock assessment schedule visit the Northeast Region Coordinating Council website.

Last year, our Population Biology Branch’s Food Web Dynamics Program reached two incredible data milestones: 

• In 50 years, they’ve analyzed 712,850 stomachs from 197 predators collected during our Bottom Trawl Survey.
• In 10 years, they’ve analyzed 3,657 stomachs from nine fish species that prey on diadromous fish, collected during the New Hampshire and Maine Inshore Trawl Survey.

Diadromous fish are fish that spend part of their lives in saltwater and part of their lives in freshwater. These include American shad, hickory shad, and river herrings. The nine predators included hakes, monkfish, Atlantic cod, spiny dogfish, sea ravens, and skates.

Prey dissected from predator stomachs are in various stages of digestion. This can make prey identification challenging. To analyze the complete diet, the team uses three different methods: 

• Naked eye while at sea
• Microscope in the lab
• DNA analyses in the lab

Using DNA to identify prey is part of a collaboration between our Food Web Dynamics Program and our Atlantic Salmon Ecosystems Research Program to evaluate the effects of dam mitigation on diadromous fish in coastal Maine.

LeVar Burton—yes, that LeVar Burton—has a new children’s podcast called “Sound Detectives.” In episode 8, “The Confrontation,” the team goes on an epic journey to track down the source of a haunting and melodic mystery sound. During their sound search, they meet up with our Passive Acoustics Branch acoustician Julianne Wilder who tells the team all about the source of their mystery sound: the humpback whale.

Sound Detectives is a funny, engaging, and thought-provoking podcast that invites you to solve the mysterious case of missing sounds. 

Offshore Wind Energy and Wildlife Research Plan for U.S. Atlantic Now Available

The Regional Wildlife Science Collaborative for Offshore Wind has just released a collaborative research plan to guide studies of interactions between offshore wind, wildlife, and habitat in U.S. Atlantic waters. The RWSC includes state, federal, industry, and non-profit entities. NOAA Fisheries is one of six federal agencies participating in the group. The successful collaboration to develop this plan is a notable accomplishment and lays important groundwork for the major task ahead, which is to conduct effective research and monitoring. 

For more on the plan, register to join RWSC’s informational webinar on February 9 from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m.

In 2023, we had 13 bloggers who wrote 16 blogs that netted nearly 10,000 views! The act of sharing first-hand experiences through blogs is a powerful tool that cultivates understanding and trust, humanizes complex issues and science, and more. Blogs are also a fun and engaging way to share our science with the world. Check out our Field Fresh blog series today! And if you like photography, check out our photo gallery highlighting a few of our favorite blog photos in 2023.

New blog from field biologist Emma Fowler shares some of the surprising sights and wondrous wildlife she and the rest of the Gulf of Maine Cooperative Bottom Longline Survey team were treated to this fall. Highlights include a huge Atlantic cod nearly as long as Emma is tall, some fine-feathered friends, curious pilot whales and bottlenose dolphins, and more! 

Marine mammal observer Alison Ogilvie and others regularly take to the skies to document and monitor endangered North Atlantic right whales, including a female named Fenway. Learn all about Fenway, her journey along the East Coast in 2023 and 2024, and her brand new calf spotted off the coast of Georgia in early January 2024 in Alison’s new blog!

There are approximately 360 North Atlantic right whales remaining, including fewer than 70 reproductively active females. With so few of these whales left, researchers are closely monitoring the waters off the Southeast United States for new offspring during the 2024 right whale calving season.

This month we featured two new blogs highlighting our Bottom Trawl Survey and its 60th anniversary. Learn about Justin DaSilva, his work, and what the survey and anniversary means to him as a survey technician aboard the NOAA Ship Henry B. Bigelow. Then check out data quality specialist Liz Ouellette’s blog to find out what the scientific staff and crew read during the fall survey. From science and sci-fi, to linguistics and church history, there’s something for everyone!

We need your help! Sharks in our region are more likely to wash ashore during winter. If you see a shark washed ashore in Rhode Island or Connecticut, please take a few photos if possible and report it to our Apex Predators Program by calling 401-782-3281. When reporting, please include:

• Date and time
• Location (GPS, closest street address, etc.)
• Species (if known)
• Approximate length
• Condition (alive, freshly dead with little decay, dead with some decay, dead very decayed)
• Name and contact information for follow-up

Scientists from our Apex Predators Program collect important data and biological samples from reported sharks that help us better understand shark biology and ecology. 

Our Cooperative Shark Tagging Program owes much of its continued success to the volunteer citizen scientists who use NOAA Fisheries’ tagging standards. The program started in the early 1960s with fewer than 100 volunteer fishers eager to help with scientific research. It evolved into a significant source of shark data and an opportunity to promote conservation through catch-and-release fishing. Thousands of U.S. and international fishers have contributed data since the program started. Here are some of the stand-out taggers we’ve worked with, and why they participate in our shark tagging program. 

The Northeast Sea Grant programs and our science center are seeking proposals for $1 million in funding to advance actionable social science research to improve understanding of fishing community interactions with offshore wind development. Applicants may request up to $400,000 over the duration of the project (up to 3 years). A 25 percent non-federal match is required. Letters of Intent are due by 5 p.m. on February 15, 2024. Full proposals are due April 1, 2024. 

Our annual Collaboration Award is one way that our science center recognizes staff and volunteers who go above and beyond. This internal award recognizes a group led by one of our federal staff who engaged in a collaborative effort that made significant contributions to further our mission and its successful operation. 

We presented the 2023 Collaboration Award to the Atlantic Cod Stock Structure Working Group. This group formed in 2018 to inventory, summarize, and analyze all relevant peer-reviewed information about Atlantic cod stock structure off New England. The Working Group included: 

• Rich McBride, Northeast Fisheries Science Center (co-chair)
• Kent Smedbol, Fisheries and Oceans Canada (co-chair)
• Micah Dean, Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries 
• Greg Puncher, Fisheries and Oceans Canada
• Adrienne Kovach, University of New Hampshire
• Ted Ames, Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries and Bowdoin College
• Irene Andrushchenko, Fisheries and Oceans Canada
• Steven Cadrin, UMass Dartmouth’s School for Marine Science and Technology 
• Nina Overgaard Therkildsen, Cornell University
• Yanjun Wang, Fisheries and Oceans Canada
• Lisa Kerr, Gulf of Maine Research Institute
• Douglas Zemeckis, Rutgers University
• Gregory DeCelles, Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries and Orsted
• Jamie Cournane, New England Fishery Management Council 

The diverse expertise and perspectives of this group strengthened their interdisciplinary approach to defining Atlantic cod stock structure. Congratulations to all and thank you for your high-quality, comprehensive, inclusive, and well-documented approach and results. Thank you also to all the people involved in the peer review of the group’s report, as well as those who shared their experiences, ideas, and observations during the engagement workshops, the research-track stock assessment, and the ongoing re-evaluation of Atlantic cod management. 

The impact of this working group shows the utility of the interdisciplinary approach to define stock structure and more generally, it shows the value of a collaborative approach to complex problems.