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Happy New Year everyone,
I think it goes without saying that 2025 was a year of unprecedented change. NOAA Fisheries is now a much leaner agency than it was a year ago, and the Southeast Fisheries Science Center has its smallest workforce in 50 years. In response, we have spent considerable effort retooling our enterprise, implementing new technologies to make us more efficient where we can, and requesting support from other agencies or handing off activities altogether where we can’t. Some of this progress was stymied by the longest shutdown in American history, and we have been busy implementing mitigation measures to help us catch up. I could go on about the loss of an entire building in Beaufort, reductions in funding and contracts and a host of other challenges, but for me the real story has been the resiliency of our staff. In that regard, 2025 has been a remarkable year.
Incredibly, our survey teams have managed to maintain all of our core surveys in spite of reductions in staff and substantial losses in days at sea aboard the large NOAA ships, in large measure due to their creative use of volunteers from within and outside the SEFSC and by contracting other agencies to fill important gaps. We also made important strides in automated image analysis for underwater video surveys (greatly reducing the time to count dozens of species) and automated aging for menhaden and several reef species, which we expect to implement in 2026.
This summer we completed the most comprehensive study of sperm whales in the Gulf in over two decades. This survey was a complex, multi-partner undertaking that included tagging, drones, biopsies, and acoustics. It was the first targeted research on the species since the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and will be critical for evaluating restoration activities and future management priorities. We also successfully tested a new prototype tag design in Massachusetts to deploy tags on leatherback turtles without capturing them.
The stock assessment enterprise, despite being hindered by the loss of eight positions, still managed to complete over 80% of the stock assessments for seven management bodies on schedule. Not only that, our team of scientists led an innovative close-kin mark recapture study on western Atlantic bluefin tuna that provided the scientific support needed to negotiate the largest increase in the western bluefin tuna quota in decades (and this despite having the smallest science delegation in nearly 30 years). We also participated in a study confirming that the Slope Sea is an important spawning ground for bluefin tuna (see the article below) and groundbreaking work estimating the abundance of red snapper in the South Atlantic region also using advanced genetic techniques.
This year our OMI (Operations Management and Information) team initiated the design and development of the Administrative Information Management System (AIMS), a budget platform that will replace legacy budget execution and strengthen financial controls by directly linking expenditures to activities and congressional mandates, improving allocation management, and ensuring audit readiness. The system has already drawn enterprise-wide attention, with SEFSC on track to begin using AIMS operationally for budget execution in FY26 and to lead rollout to others in FY27. This positions SEFSC at the forefront of modernizing financial management practices across NOAA Fisheries.
The SEFSC also sustained its enterprise leadership in cloud migration, positioning the Center ahead of schedule in meeting government-wide mandates. Our information technology team delivered the technical assessments, infrastructure validations, and communication planning that are enabling a smooth and manageable transition. These efforts not only ensured SEFSC’s compliance but also established a model approach for NOAA-wide adoption, reinforcing our role as a leader in modernizing mission-critical IT capabilities.
As if all that weren’t enough, our SEFSC team also published over 50 articles in peer review journals and 12 technical memoranda, including the first Caribbean Ecosystem Status Report in history! I could go on and on, but you get the picture.
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Thank you for your continued support and interest and keep reading!
Clay Porch, Ph.D
Southeast Fisheries Science Center Director
clay.porch@noaa.gov
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