Saving Seafood

Ocean Data Portal Maps Show Significant Shifts by Mid-Atlantic Fish Species

March 30, 2020 — The following was released by the Urban Coast Institute:

A series of interactive maps published on the Mid-Atlantic Ocean Data Portal illustrates the shifts that have taken place over the last five decades by several commercially and recreationally important fish species living along the East Coast.

Users of the free and publicly accessible Portal (portal.midatlanticocean.org) can automatically animate or toggle through hundreds of maps representing fish distributions during the spring or fall seasons in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s or 2010s. These maps can be activated in combination with any of the Portal’s 5,000 map layers showing data for commercial fishing hot spots, marine life habitats, zones being examined for offshore wind development and much more. 
 
The Fish Species Through Time map collection was made possible by a grant from the Virginia Coastal Zone Management Program (CZM) to The Nature Conservancy. It was created based on an analysis of federal Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) bottom trawl survey data collected between 1972 and 2017. 
 
Many of the maps show a trend in fish moving to waters further north and further offshore from the 1970s to the present day. Some fish species that showed little presence off the New England coast decades earlier have since migrated past Cape Cod and established themselves in the Gulf of Maine. 
 
“Our analysis and the maps make no assumptions as to the factors causing these shifts,” said Chris Bruce, GIS manager at The Nature Conservancy in Virginia and a member of the Portal’s technical team. “However, there is no shortage of scientific research to refer to on how factors like climate change and increasing water temperatures are impacting marine habitats.”
 
The fish species analyzed were alewife, American shad, Atlantic mackerel, black sea bass, blueback herring, bluefish, butterfish, longfin squid, monkfish, northern shortfin squid, red hake, sand lance, scup, spiny dogfish, spot, summer flounder, winter flounder and yellowtail. In addition to individual species, a pair of summary maps was created to illustrate shifts by demersal fish and forage fish. “Overlap Area” maps were also created for each species showing the places where fish were consistently present each decade. 
 
The Portal also added a collection of maps projecting future shifts by the fish species through the year 2100. Users can animate these maps, which are based on data previously released by OceanAdapt (https://oceanadapt.rutgers.edu/), a collaboration between the Pinsky Lab of Rutgers University, NMFS, and Fisheries and Oceans Canada.
 
Users can access these maps in the Portal’s Marine Planner application by clicking on the Marine Life theme and then clicking on the dropdowns for Fish Species Through Time (for the data showing the 1970s-present) or Fish Species Future Projections.
 
“These maps tell an important story about the challenges our region’s economies and communities face due to the rapid changes taking place in our ocean,” said Laura McKay, program manager with Virginia CZM and the chair of MARCO’s mapping and data team that manages the Portal. “We hope that they help the region’s ocean stakeholders and decision-makers understand the trends so they can plan and adapt accordingly.”
 
The Portal is an online toolkit and resource center that consolidates available data and enables state, federal and local users to visualize and analyze ocean resources and human use information such as fishing grounds, recreational areas, shipping lanes, habitat areas, and energy sites, among others. With financial support through The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Portal is maintained by a team consisting of the Monmouth University Urban Coast Institute, Ecotrust, The Nature Conservancy and Rutgers University’s Center for Remote Sensing and Spatial Analysis under the guidance of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Council on the Ocean (MARCO). Established by the governors of the five coastal Mid-Atlantic states in 2009, MARCO is a partnership of Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and Virginia to enhance the vitality of the region’s ocean ecosystem and economy.
 
“Regional coordination on ocean use planning is essential to ensure the long-term health of our invaluable ocean resources, and an important piece of this coordination is data accessibility,” said Kisha Santiago-Martinez, chair of MARCO and deputy secretary of state at New York’s Department of State. “Information on the Portal is available to anyone who wishes to view data for any reason, such as ocean planning, education, or decision-making.”

Explore Commercial Fishing in the Mid-Atlantic with New Interactive Maps

April 19, 2016 — The following was released by Monmouth University’s Urban Coast Institute:

Over two dozen maps now available on the Mid-Atlantic Ocean Data Portal present a more detailed picture than ever before of the extent and locations of commercial fishing activities throughout the upper East Coast.

With the new “Communities at Sea” and Federal Vessel Monitoring System (VMS) map collections, Portal users can identify the ocean places upon which the Mid-Atlantic’s commercial fishing communities most depend.  Specifically, these interactive maps enable users to better understand places that are most important for particular ports, specific fisheries, and gear types.

The public release of these datasets is an important step forward for ocean planning and education in the Mid-Atlantic. The maps can help focus and guide essential engagement and consultation with specific fishing communities for a range of ocean planning, permitting and management decision-making processes.

Over two years in the making, the Portal’s Communities at Sea maps (labeled in the Marine Planner mapping application as “Commercial Fishing – VTR”) were created using methodology developed by Dr. Kevin St. Martin at Rutgers University.  Vessel Trip Report (VTR) and permit information were integrated to create a new database that links fishing port communities to the places at sea where they spend the most time. Produced at much higher resolution than previous VTR maps, warm and cool colors are used to represent higher and lower number of days spent fishing. Portal users can click on any point on the map to activate a pop-up window that indicates which specific communities use the area. For example, clicking on an area off the New Jersey Shore may reveal that that gillnetters from Barnegat Bay or trawlers from Ocean City fish in the selected waters.

The maps were reviewed, discussed and improved though meetings with commercial fishermen throughout the Mid-Atlantic. The Communities at Sea collection currently includes eight maps based on 2011-13 data and will be expanded this summer via a new user interface for querying and selecting from the full library of over 100 maps.

“We really appreciate the critique and advice we got from fishermen from Montauk to Virginia Beach during our map review sessions,” said Jay Odell, Technical Lead for the Portal and Director of the Mid-Atlantic Marine Program at The Nature Conservancy.  “They noted some important strengths and limitations of the data and what we learned is helping to drive the development of an expanded map library that we hope to have ready for the Portal this summer.”

The Portal’s Data Catalog section summarizes some of the caveats raised by commercial fishermen. For example, the maps are based on information from recent years and may not represent fishing areas that were historically important and could be again. Also, fishing patterns are driven by complex ecological, regulatory and economic factors that can change from year to year.

The Portal’s 19 new Vessel Monitoring System (VMS) maps show areas where commercial fishing activities take place, grouped by specific regulated fishery categories (for example, scallops, herring or monkfish). These maps (labeled “Commercial Fishing – VMS”) were created by our ocean planning partners in the Northeast region using VMS data from 2006-2014. VMS data are produced by satellite technology that tracks the movements of vessels participating in several federally managed fisheries. This data is also presented in a heat map format, with cooler colors representing low activity and dark reds showing high activity.

The Communities at Sea and VMS maps can be layered together on the Portal in complementary ways to provide rich detail about the region’s fishing communities and the ocean places they depend on. Both datasets were carefully screened and aggregated by NOAA before maps were made so that the fishing activity of individual fishermen or vessels would not be revealed.

Finally, additional maps were added at the request of commercial fishing advisors to show the boundaries of some of the region’s important fishery management zones, including ocean quahogs, surf clams and scallops.  Additional regulatory boundaries may be added in the future based on specific interests and requests.

To access and explore the new maps, please visit the Marine Planner page and click on the Fishing link for a dropdown menu of map layer options. Additional map options currently available in the Fishing theme include party and charter boat fishing activity, artificial reef locations and fathom lines.

Users can register for a free Portal account to start and join online map groups, draw and share their own map shapes, create and save map bookmarks and more.  Please use the Portal’s feedback tab to share any comments, concerns or questions.

About the Mid-Atlantic Ocean Data Portal

The Mid-Atlantic Ocean Data Portal is an online toolkit and resource center that consolidates available data and enables state, federal and local users to visualize and analyze ocean resources and human use information such as fishing grounds, recreational areas, shipping lanes, habitat areas, and energy sites, among others. The Portal serves as a platform to engage all stakeholders in ocean planning from the five-state Mid-Atlantic region—putting all of the essential data and state-of-the-art mapping and visualization technology into the hands of the agencies, industry, and community leaders engaged in ocean planning. The Portal is maintained by a team consisting of the Monmouth University Urban Coast Institute, Rutgers University’s Edward J. Bloustein School and Center for Remote Sensing and Spatial Analysis, The Nature Conservancy, MARCO and other partners.