Identifying spawning areas for economically and ecologically important fishes is critical for fisheries conservation and ecosystem‐based management. We used genetic barcoding to identify fish eggs collected across the West Florida Shelf (WFS) during September of 2013, 2014, and 2019. Fish eggs were collected on Southeast Area Monitoring and Assessment Program (SEAMAP) ichthyoplankton cruises using a Continuous Underway Fish Eg...

To help determine whether planktonic eggs of fishes on the West Florida Shelf (WFS) are retained locally or exported elsewhere, we collected fish eggs by plankton net from 17 locations (stations) and identified them using DNA barcoding. We then entered the station coordinates into the West Florida Coastal Ocean Model (WFCOM) and simulated the trajectories of the passively drifting eggs over 2 weeks at three depths (surface, mi...

The 2010 Deepwater Horizon (DWH) oil blowout in the Gulf of Mexico began on April 20, originating in the deep sea 66 km off the Louisiana coast. By early June, DWH oil had spread to coastal Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and western Florida. An estimated 2,113 km of shoreline were oiled, making DWH the largest marine oil spill in global history by length of affected shoreline. Additionally, a series of oil spill response meas...

Identifying spawning sites for broadcast spawning fish species is a key element of delineating critical habitat for managing and regulating marine fisheries. Genetic barcoding has enabled accurate taxonomic identification of individual fish eggs, overcoming limitations of morphological classification techniques. In this study, planktonic fish eggs were collected at 23 stations along the northwestern coast of Cuba and across th...

We combined research‐vessel cruises of opportunity with DNA barcoding to survey planktonic, percomorph fish eggs at 40 stations distributed across and around the Gulf of Mexico (GoM). The objectives were (a) to determine whether eggs of fishes that are potential candidates for the daily egg production method ( DEPM ) can be readily barcoded, (b) to identify taxa that are spawning in the GoM, (c) to determine encounter rates fo...