Coastal Services Center

Northeast Projects

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A Northeast Benthic Observatory (NEBO) to Support Multi-Species Fisheries and Ecosystem Management

Date project initiated: October 1, 2007

Principal Investigator:
Scott M.Gallager
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Woods Hole, MA 02543
(508) 289-2783
sgallager@whoi.edu

Brief project summary:
This project will collect and analyze spatially comprehensive high resolution seafloor imagery to quantify key taxa, benthic community structure, species diversity, seafloor habitat characteristics, and coincident water column properties with repeated measurements on time scales of weeks to years. Data collection will be at locations with high fisheries and conservation value, such as the western Gulf of Maine. Project objectives are to: 1) establish four locations to collect imagery where benthic community structure, the coupling between the water column and benthic community, and system change over time scales of days to years will be quantified; 2) develop tools for integration of fisheries relevant data to segment and classify epi-benthic targets and substrate, and to visualize the results in near real-time; and 3) establish metrics for quantifying change in benthic community structure, organism abundance and size distribution of a variety of taxa relative to substrate composition in relation to water column processes.

 

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