East Coast of North America Strategic Assessment Project Offshore Case Study

The East Coast of North America Strategic Assessment Project (ECNASAP) started in January of 1994 as a joint project between researchers from Canada and the United States of America. The aim of the project is to compile a comprehensive database of coastal and offshore living resources which can be used to characterize and monitor the ecosystems in these areas. One of the initial emphases of the project was on the offshore, specifically on the characterization of the communities of bottom dwelling fish or groundfish. These fish support major commercial fisheries along the entire continental shelf of eastern North America. Although only a relatively small number of species are actively targeted by fishing, they live in association with approximately 400 other species of fish and an undetermined number of invertebrate and other vertebrate species which are also affected, to greater or lesser degrees, by these fisheries. The impacts on these non-target species can be manifested either directly through by-catches or indirectly through habitat modification or predator-prey relationships. How these species interact or how fishing or changes in environmental conditions, either man induced or otherwise, affect these interactions, has been and remains an active topic of research in the search for sustainable management of coastal resources.

To date ECNASAP has compiled a database of all the systematic trawl surveys conducted by both Canada and the United States of America during the period 1970-1994. This data set consists of some 55,000 trawl records each of which lists the exact location of the observation, the physical conditions (e.g. salinity, depth, surface temperature, bottom temperature, etc.), and the number of individuals of each species caught during the trawl tow. The data cover the continental shelf from depths of less than 50m to depths of greater than 1000m from Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, USA, to Cape Chidley, Labrador, Canada. They provide a unique perspective in that they cover the entire geographic range of most of the major fish and invertebrate species over a relatively long period of time. This allows us to examine the distribution of any species relative to any other species or relative to a wide range of environmental conditions. It also allows us to examine how these distributions and associations with other fish and environmental conditions change as either the environment or exploitation through fishing have changed.

These data have been analyzed to determine what fish communities or fish assemblages occur over this range of coastal zone. The results of these baseline studies have been published and are available in the following document:

Brown, S.K., R. Mahon, K.C.T. Zwanenburg, K.R. Buja, L.W. Claflin, R.N. O´Boyle, B. Atkinson, M. Sinclair, G. Howell, and M.E. Monaco. 1996. East Coast of North America Groundfish: Initial Explorations of Biogeography and Species Assemblages. NOAA, Silver Springs, MD, DFO, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. 100+ pages.

Composite distribution maps of the 100 most abundant species of groundfish encountered in the study area can be viewed here. More information about ongoing research in this and related projects, or the potential for collaborative research initiatives, can be obtained by contacting any of the following individuals.

R.N. O´Boyle, Department of Fisheries and Oceans Marine Fish Division P.O. Box 1006, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia Canada B2Y 4A2

Voice: 902-426-4890 E-mail:r_oboyle@bionet.bio.ns.ca

M. Sinclair Department of Fisheries and Oceans Marine Fish Division P.O. Box 1006, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia Canada B2Y 4A2

Voice: 902-426-4890 E-mail: m_sinclair@bionet.bio.ns.ca

K.C.T. Zwanenburg Department of Fisheries and Oceans Marine Fish Division P.O. Box 1006, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia Canada B2Y 4A2

Voice: 902-426-3310 E-mail: zwanenburg@bionet.bio.ns.ca

G. Howell Environment Canada Ecosystem Science Division 45 Alderney Drive

Voice: 902-426-4196 E-mail: howellg@ns.doe.ca