ORAL - Gallager

The Northeast Bentho-pelagic Observatory (NEBO) is designed to produce unique data products for fisheries and marine protected area managers and to foster development of ecosystem approaches to management (EAM). We are observing and quantifying key taxa, benthic community structure, species diversity, seafloor habitat characteristics, and coincident water column properties with repeated measurements in multiple, sentinel sites on time scales of weeks to years. At sentinel sites along the U.S. Northeast coast that have both high fisheries and conservation value, we are quantifying how communities respond to system change (climate events, fishing activity, position of oceanographic features [fronts], etc). This requires fusion of disparate, synoptically acquired data sets, including high-resolution acoustic bathymetry and backscatter (on scales of meters to kilometers), stereo optical imagery (on scales of millimeters to meters), water column plankton distributions (microns to millimeters), and the development of image bioinformatic tools for classifying targets and substrates. Integrated data products are being developed using advanced visualization tools so key fishery target species and non-target community responses to regulatory practices can be observed and quantified at multiple, relevant space and time scales, in relation to variations in seafloor habitat and boundary layer conditions. Data products will be incorporated into predictive community dynamics models for use in fisheries and sanctuary management. Data products will be of direct utility to fishery and conservation scientists, fishery and sanctuary managers, and environmental policy makers and evaluated for their impact on management practices through socio-economic modeling.