Climate change and anthropogenic stressors affect the distribution, abundance, and diversity of fish communities across the world. To understand rapidly changing biotic communities, resource managers need a method to quickly and efficiently document temporal and spatial changes in community assemblages across various spatial scales. In this study, we describe the use of new video lander tools to survey fish communities in rock...

Atlantic menhaden is an important forage fish and the target of the largest fishery along the US East Coast by volume. Since 1999, managers at the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, stakeholders, and scientists have been interested in developing ecological reference points (ERPs) that account for menhaden’s role as a forage species. To accomplish this, we developed a suite of modeling approaches that incorporated pre...

Although many countries have formally committed to Ecosystem-Based Fisheries Management (EBFM), actual progress toward these goals has been slow. This paper presents two independent case studies that have combined strategic advice from ecosystem modeling with the tactical advice of single-species assessment models to provide practical ecosystem-based management advice. With this approach, stock status, reference points, and in...

Variability in life history traits and structural diversity of commercially exploited fishes in response to stress can impact their population dynamics and sustainability. Using data from a fishery dependent sampling program from 1978 to 2011, we evaluated temporal variability of size and growth of adult Atlantic herring ( Clupea harengus ) in the Gulf of Maine. We then developed and tested the hypotheses on the links of such...

Isotopically labeled nitrate ( 15 NO 3 − ) was added continuously to the Rowley estuary, Massachusetts, for 22 d to assess the transport, uptake, and cycling of terrestrially derived nitrogen during a period of high river discharge and low phytoplankton activity. Isotopic enrichment of the 3.5‐km tidal prism (150,000 m 3 ) was achieved for the 3 weeks and allowed us to construct a nitrogen mass balance model for the upper estu...