Inflation Reduction Act Funding for Climate Ready Fisheries
On June 6, 2023, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced historic funding for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). As part of this funding, $20 million was made available to the regional fishery management councils to support the development and advancement of climate-related fisheries management and implementation efforts. The funding is dedicated to Council fishery management and governance actions in support of the following objectives:
Implementation of fishery management measures necessary to advance climate ready fisheries by improving climate resiliency and responsiveness to climate impacts; and
Development and advancement of climate related fisheries management planning and implementation efforts in support of underserved communities
This IRA funding provides an unprecedented opportunity to build upon the Council’s past and ongoing efforts to build climate resilience in Mid-Atlantic fisheries and ecosystems.
Mid-Atlantic Council Projects
NOAA Fisheries has approved funding for eight Mid-Atlantic Council projects. These projects, totaling $2.6 million, include large, cross-Council initiatives that will involve engagement and input from management partners, science experts, and stakeholders to ensure greater support and successful outcomes.
Click on the project titles below for additional information about each project.
An Operational Forecast to Reduce Bycatch of River Herring in the Mid-Water Trawl Fishery
Collaborative Strategies to Adapt Scup GRAs to Changing Ocean Conditions
Evaluating Data Needs and Management Strategies to Support Climate-Ready Fisheries Management
Developing a Framework and Indicators to Evaluate Stock Distribution Changes and Governance Issues
Advancing Scenario Planning Outcomes: Strategizing for Complex Actions
Project 1: An Operational Forecast to Reduce Bycatch of River Herring in the Mid-Water Trawl Fishery
Monitoring and minimizing river herring and shad (RH/S) bycatch continues to be a high priority management issue for both the Mid-Atlantic and New England Councils. The Councils’ RH/S bycatch caps limit RH/S catch but can result in substantial closures of the commercial Atlantic mackerel and herring fisheries. Environmental drivers of abundance and distribution of both RH/S and the target species are likely to complicate bycatch mitigation efforts. This project will develop short-term forecast maps identifying areas of high river herring bycatch risk that will be provided to industry as a voluntary bycatch avoidance tool to minimize impacts to both RH/S and directed fishing operations.
River Herring Avoidance Program Forecast (RHAPCAST) (updated Mondays)
Anticipated Timeline: July 2024 – January 2027
Contractor: Dr. Janet Nye, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Project 2: Collaborative Strategies to Adapt Scup GRAs to Changing Ocean Conditions
Scup Gear Restricted Areas (GRAs) were implemented by the Mid-Atlantic Council to reduce juvenile scup discards in small mesh fisheries at certain times of year. The GRAs have been in place for nearly 25 years and were developed at a time when scup were overexploited and under a rebuilding plan. Since then, the scup population has reached all-time highs while changing ocean conditions are altering the spatial and temporal distribution of scup. These biological and environmental changes may be impacting the overall effectiveness of the GRAs to minimize discards. This project will investigate potential modifications to the current scup GRAs using fisheries and environmental data along with fishing industry input.
Anticipated Timeline: July 2024 – January 2026
Contractors: Scott Curatolo-Wagemann and Emerson Hasbrouck, Cornell Cooperative Extension and Dr. Patrick Sullivan, Cornell University
Project 3: Operationalizing Outcomes of MAFMC/GARFO Program Review and Improving Council Governance Structures and Processes
This project will be split into two parts, aiming to address several recommendations from the recent Mid-Atlantic Council program review and the East Coast Scenario Planning Initiative. The first project component will address governance structures and processes (see a. below), and the second will address other aspects of the program review (see b. below).
a. Improving Mid-Atlantic Council Governance Structures and Processes
Changing species distributions increasingly pose challenges for East Coast marine fisheries governance and management structures, which were established under the assumption that stock distributions would remain relatively stable over time. The inherent complexity of these management systems also poses challenges for nimbleness and adaptation to changing conditions. As stock distributions and dynamics change, it is increasingly critical to ensure that representation on various management bodies remains fair and effective. This project will work with regional management partners and stakeholders to identify ways to increase efficiency, transparency, responsiveness, and effective representation in Mid-Atlantic Council decision-making and management structures.
Anticipated Timeline: October 2025 - June 2027
Contractor: Kimberly Gordon (Resource Logic), Deirdre Boelke and Dr. Sean Lucey (Fisheries Insight Network)
b. Addressing Outcomes of the MAFMC/GARFO Program Review
This part of the project will address additional program review recommendations and process improvements to increase adaptability and nimbleness of our management systems in the face of climate change and to identify efficiency and communication improvements that could be made in overall mission delivery, internal processes, and stakeholder engagement.
Additional project details will be coming soon.
Project 4: Climate-Ready Updates to the Essential Fish Habitat (EFH) Source Documents: Life History and Habitat Characteristics for Federally Managed Fish in the Northeast
EFH source documents were published by the Northeast Fisheries Science Center to support the Mid-Atlantic and New England Councils’ work on fish habitat in the early 2000s. These were comprehensive documents that described what was known about fish species and their habitat requirements and provide support for EFH designations. These documents also supported other needs within the region such as stock assessments and fishery management actions. However, they have not been updated in nearly 20 years and are not available for newly added managed species (e.g., blueline tilefish). This project will update or create EFH source documents for all fishery council managed species in the Northeast to include new information on life history and ecology, distribution, habitat requirements, and climate impacts.
Anticipated Timeline: March 2025 – February 2027
Contractor: Dr. Gavin Fay, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth's School of Marine Science and Technology
Project 5: Operationalizing Ecosystem and Habitat Indicators to Support Climate-Ready Fisheries Management in the Mid-Atlantic
Ecosystem indicators are measurements or observations that can help track ecological, environmental, socioeconomic, and management trends. As part of the Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries Management(EAFM) process, the Mid-Atlantic Council has regularly received ecosystem and habitat indicator information through State of the Ecosystem reports, the EAFM risk assessment, and Ecosystem and Socioeconomic Profiles developed during stock assessments. While significant advancements have been made in providing ecosystem indicators to managers, incorporating this information into fisheries management remains a challenge. This project seeks to develop and test indicators in order to improve the integration of ecosystem and habitat indicators into Mid-Atlantic Council management processes and tactical decision making.
Anticipated Timeline: July 2025 – June 2027
Contractor: Dr. Sarah Gaichas (Hydra Scientific) and Dr. Gavin Fay (University of Massachusetts Dartmouth)
Project 6: Evaluating Data Needs and Management Strategies to Support Climate-Ready Fisheries Management
Species are undergoing changes in their distribution, abundance, and productivity, and historical data may no longer accurately predict future conditions. In addition, many of our most important, longest running federal data collection programs face a significant number of challenges resulting in fewer samples and increased uncertainty. This project seeks to evaluate the levels of data collection needed under different climate scenarios to support robust stock assessments, and identify management tools and risk policies that can minimize both the risk of overfishing and the loss of fishing opportunities under those scenarios.
Anticipated Timeline: October 2024 – February 2027
Contractor: Dr. Lisa Kerr and Dr. Roger Brothers, University of Maine
Project 7: Developing a Framework and Indicators to Evaluate Stock Distribution Changes and Governance Issues
Climate-driven changes in species distribution can create a variety of management challenges and uncertainties, particularly as species move across jurisdictional boundaries. These distribution changes can also have important effects on fishery behavior, fishing locations, and market/shoreside trends. As conditions continue to change, understanding these dynamics and their impacts will be critical for reducing uncertainties in the management process. This project seeks to evaluate changes in species and fishery distributions for all Mid-Atlantic Council managed stocks and develop a framework for using this information to support climate-ready fisheries management.
Anticipated Timeline: December 2024 – March 2027
Contractor: Dr. Kathy Mills, Dr. Andrew Allyn, and Jonathan Labaree, Gulf of Maine Research Institute
Project 8: Advancing Scenario Planning Outcomes: Strategizing for Complex Actions
Scenario planning is a tool that helps people and organizations prepare for uncertain futures. From 2021 to 2023, the East Coast fishery management and science organizations conducted a scenario planning exercise to explore jurisdictional and management issues related to climate change and shifting fishery stocks. One of the products of the scenario planning effort was the development of an Action Menu that includes a collection of potential actions and strategies designed to improve East Coast fisheries management in an era of climate change. This project will review the progress made on action items developed during the scenario planning process, and will seek to develop more detailed strategies for addressing particularly complex and challenging action items.
Anticipated Timeline: Spring 2026 – Summer 2027
Contractor: TBD
Documents and Resources
Requests for Proposals (RFPs)
Open:
There are currently no open RFPs
Closed:
Project 2: Collaborative Strategies to Adapt Scup Gear Restricted Areas (GRA) to Changing Ocean Conditions (closed 5/24/24)
Project 3a: Improving Mid-Atlantic Council Governance Structures and Processes (closed 7/18/25)
Project 4: Climate-ready updates to Essential Fish Habitat (EFH) source documents (closed 12/20/24)
Project 5: Operationalizing Ecosystem and Habitat Indicators to Support Climate-Ready Fisheries Management in the Mid-Atlantic (closed 5/30/25)
Project 6: Evaluating the Data Needs and Management Strategies to Support Climate-Ready Fisheries Management (closed 8/30/24)
Project 7: Developing a Framework and Indicators to Evaluate Stock Distribution Changes and Governance Issues (closed 10/18/24)
Related Webpages
Contacts
Brandon Muffley, bmuffley@mafmc.org, (302) 526-5260
Kiley Dancy, kdancy@mafmc.org, (302) 526-5257
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River herring bycatch continues to be a management issue of high concern for both the MAFMC and NEFMC. This project will produce maps of areas of high river herring bycatch risk weekly during the midwater trawl fishery based on sea-surface temperatures, and work with industry to achieve voluntary avoidance of these areas so that bycatch avoidance is highly responsive to current climate impacts for both river herring and the target species.
Anticipated Timeline: July 2024 – January 2027
Contractor: Dr. Janet Nye, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
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The Mid Atlantic Council’s two scup Gear Restricted Areas (GRAs) are intended to reduce juvenile scup discards in small mesh fisheries during certain times of the year. The GRAs are currently static area closures. Recent data suggest shifts in where/when discards occur, and we anticipate that changes may continue to occur as oceanographic conditions and species distributions continue to change. This project aims to model and map bycatch/discard hotspots for scup over time, identify areas where a reduction in fishing effort could reduce impacts on juvenile scup, explore the regulatory and economic factors driving scup discards, and identify potential biological and socio-economic tradeoffs between management strategies to reduce scup bycatch and impacts on fishermen.
Anticipated Timeline: July 2024 – January 2026
Contractors: Scott Curatolo-Wagemann and Emerson Hasbrouck, Cornell Cooperative Extension and Dr. Patrick Sullivan, Cornell University
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This project will be split into two parts, aiming to address several recommendations from the recent Mid-Atlantic Council program review and the East Coast Scenario Planning Initiative. The first project component will address Council governance structures and processes (see a. below), and the second will address other aspects of the Council program review (see b. below).
a. Improving Mid-Atlantic Council Governance Structures and Processes
The contractor selected for this portion of the project will: (1) document the existing structure, representation, and use of Mid-Atlantic Council committees and advisory bodies, (2) document existing joint and cooperative management arrangements and procedures with other management organizations, (3) develop recommendations for potential improvements to these governance structures and procedures to address representation concerns and increase the efficiency and efficacy of the management process.
Anticipated Timeline: October 2025 - June 2027
Contractor: Kimbely Gordon (Resource Logic), Deirdre Bolke and Dr. Sean Lucey (Fisheries Insight Network)
b. Addressing Outcomes of the MAFMC/GARFO Program Review
This part of the project will address additional program review recommendations and process improvements to increase adaptability and nimbleness of our management systems in the face of climate change and to identify efficiency and communication improvements that could be made in overall mission delivery, internal processes, and stakeholder engagement.
Additional project details will be coming soon.
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In the past, the Northeast Fisheries Science Center has compiled information on the distribution, abundance, and habitat requirements for each MAFMC and NEFMC species in Essential Fish Habitat Source Documents. These comprehensive source documents provide foundational information to support EFH reviews and designations and provide a comprehensive baseline for habitat and life history information for our managed species. While these documents continue to be used by managers and researchers, new source documents are not being prepared as species are added to fishery management plans, and the existing source documents have not been revised or updated since the mid-2000s. This project will (1) develop new source documents (for those species added to FMPs) and update existing source documents for all Federally managed species in the Northeast (i.e., Mid Atlantic and New England Council managed species), (2) update baseline, foundational information about fish life history and ecology, including food habits, predator-prey dynamics, movement/migration, and stock genetics/structure, with an emphasis on new information available, including climate change effects, and (3) facilitate easy uptake of climate information using an already utilized, regionally familiar scientific product (EFH Source Document - NOAA Tech Memos) to support a climate-ready and resilient fisheries management process.
Anticipated Timeline: March 2025 – February 2027
Contractor: Dr. Gavin Fay, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth's School of Marine Science and Technology
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The regional Science Centers provide ecosystem-level indicators and information to evaluate the status and trends of ecological, environmental, economic, and social components of the relevant ecosystem. While substantial advancements have been made to identify ecosystem information and develop priority ecosystem indicators for management consideration, to date, fishery managers have struggled to effectively incorporate this information into their decision making in tactical, concrete ways. This project will seek to (1) review all existing and potentially new ecosystem information and indicators available in the Northeast, (2) identify priority ecosystem and habitat information and indicators to support management objectives, (3) investigate, develop, and refine ecosystem and habitat indicators and, if appropriate, associated targets and thresholds to monitor, (4) identify specific management processes, documents, or actions where indicator information could be directly incorporated (e.g., risk policy, EAFM guidance document, catch recommendations, SOE report, EFH designations), and (5) develop indicator and communication tools that can be easily updated.
Anticipated Timeline: July 2025 – June 2027
Contractor: TBD
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Species are undergoing changes in their distribution, abundance, and productivity, and historical data may no longer accurately predict future conditions. This proposal seeks to use a management strategy evaluation framework to quantify the levels of data collection needed under different climate scenarios to support robust stock assessments, and identify risk policies that can minimize both the risk of overfishing and the loss of fishing opportunities under those scenarios. This proposal will (1) catalog and document the challenges and associated changes in federal survey and fishery-dependent data collection programs along the entire East Coast from 2010 to the present, (2) quantify the scientific and management uncertainty and implications of changing data availability under different climate change scenarios, (3) evaluate the performance of alternative management risk policies and harvest control rules and the associated tradeoffs under different data and climate projection scenarios, (4) identify climate-ready fishery management strategies and processes that account for these uncertainties, and (5) develop recommendations to improve and/or modify survey and fishery-dependent data sources along the East Coast.
Anticipated Timeline: October 2024 – February 2027
Contractor: Dr. Lisa Kerr and Dr. Roger Brothers, University of Maine
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Climate-driven species distribution changes create uncertainties in the management process, and in some cases, lead to governance issues as species move across jurisdictional boundaries. Species distribution changes can also have important effects on changes in fishery behavior, fishing locations, and market/shoreside dynamics. Evaluating changes in fishery distribution is a complex endeavor, and different conclusions may be reached with different data sources or methods. This project will aim to 1) Characterize species and habitat distribution trends for Mid-Atlantic Council managed species by synthesizing a variety of information sources, 2) characterize recreational and commercial fishing effort and infrastructure changes, 3) develop a set of indicators and methodologies for evaluating and monitoring changes in fishery distributions for Mid-Atlantic managed species, to inform Council consideration of whether a governance response is needed.
Anticipated Timeline: December 2024 – March 2027
Contractor: Dr. Kathy Mills, Dr. Andrew Allyn, and Jonathan Labaree, Gulf of Maine Research Institute
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This project will build on the East Coast Scenario Planning Initiative, and will include 1) a comprehensive status update of actions previously identified from the initial scenario planning process, 2) a review of fishery conditions used to inform the first scenario building effort and summary of changes that have occurred, 3) seeking public input on progress toward and barriers to addressing these actions, and 4) a strategizing and implementation planning process, including a second summit meeting, to develop a coordinated strategy and detailed action plan for addressing a subset of more complex and challenging actions. CEFI products would likely only be relevant to the second objective under this project.
Anticipated Timeline: Spring 2026 – Summer 2027
Contractor: TBD