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  SMAST prof to chair int'l group

May 20, 2013

SMAST Prof. Pingguo He has been elected to chair the ICES/FAO Working Group on Fishing Technology and Fish Behavior (FTFB) at their recent meeting in Bangkok, Thailand. The FTFB is the preeminent group working on fishing technology and fish behavior, providing advice to ICES and its member countries on fishing gear, bycatch reduction measures, ecosystem survey gears, and technical measures supporting fishery management. The chair serves for a three-year term starting this September.

SMAST, together with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries and NOAA's Northeast Fisheries Science Center, will host next year's FTFB working group meeting in New Bedford in May 2014. The FTFB is co-sponsored by the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

  $225 K awarded for SMAST-Navy collaboration

May 24, 2013

A new award from the Office of Naval Research will “enhance the close ties” between SMAST and Navy research interests, according to recipient Dr. Louis Goodman, Professor and Associate Dean of SMAST.  The award, $225K over three years, will primarily support the ongoing research of Dr. Goodman’s graduate student Dana Brown. 

The funding, through the ONR University/Laboratory Initiative Program, involves the student conducting collaborative research with the university and a Navy laboratory—in this case, the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, NUWC, in Newport, RI.  The collaborating NUWC scientist is Dr. Andrew Green, who is also an Adjunct Professor at SMAST. Brown’s research involves modeling and measurements of the onset and spatial structure of ocean stratified turbulence.

  Students weigh in on int’l fisheries management

May 23, 2013                                                                                                       

Since 2009, SMAST students have been participating directly in international fisheries management through the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES).  Each year, students from the Department of Fisheries Oceanography, with a faculty co-chair, undertake to review stock assessments of a variety of species and geographical locations. This year, the group has reviewed 25 stock assessments from the Arctic and Northwest Atlantic.  As student co-chair, Greg DeCelles is presenting the group’s review to ICES this week in Copenhagen.  The student reviews are taken into account as ICES advises member countries on fisheries management.

The student reviewers this year are Greg DeCelles, Dan Goethel, Adam Barkley, Cate O'Keefe, Judith Rosellon-Drucker, Erin Adams, Sean Lucey and Ben Galuardi.  Prof. Steve Cadrin co-chairs the group.  In exchange for their efforts, students will receive a travel award from ICES to partially fund their attendance at the ICES Annual Science Conference in Reykjavik, Iceland.

ICES is an intergovernmental organization of more than 4000 scientists whose main objective is to increase the scientific knowledge of the marine environment and its living resources and to use this knowledge to provide advice to management.