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

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

• Project Webpage

The Mid-Atlantic Council recently completed a contract with the Parnin Group to conduct a program review of the Mid-Atlantic Council and Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office (GARFO) process of developing federal fisheries management regulations. This program review identified process improvements that would increase adaptability and nimbleness of our management systems in the face of climate change and to identify efficiency improvements that could be made in overall mission delivery, internal processes, and stakeholder engagement.This IRA project will address the priority outcomes and recommendations identified by this review. Part of this project will also include an evaluation of the use and structure of the Council’s committees, in coordination with the other East Coast Councils and Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, previously identified as a priority resulting from the East Coast Climate Change Scenario Planning Initiative.

• Anticipated Timeline: Spring 2025 – Spring 2027

• Contractor: TBD

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

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: April 2025 – April 2027

• Contractor: TBD

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

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

Thisproject 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