This project will integrate information on ecosystem stressors and predator-prey interactions into the fisheries assessment and management process in the Gulf of Mexico.

This data set contains trawl information from collections near the West Pointe a la Hache siphon in south Louisiana. Species composition (fishes and macroinvertebrates), abundance, biomass and lengths are reported, along with salinity, temperature and dissolved oxygen data. Data are in spreadsheet format.

This project will investigate the link between nutrients, food availability, and the survival of Atlantic bluefin tuna larvae which can be used to improve stock assessments for this commercially and recreationally important species.

This project explores how oyster, blue crab, and spotted seatrout populations respond to human and environmental changes with the goal of improving the management of these economically and culturally important species.

This dataset is a collection of files containing the necessary inputs to, and relevant outputs from, the U.S. Gulf-wide ecosystem model, developed using the Ecopath with Ecosim (EwE) modeling software package. The spatial extent of the model is 25°-30.5° N and -81° to -97.3° W and hindcast simulations were run in Ecosim from 1980 (the Ecopath snapshot year) to 2016 at a monthly timestep. Input parameters for Ecopath include biomass, consumption, mortality, diet, landings, and discards for 78 functional groups included in the model. Each input or output parameter type is included as its own csv file with informative names.

Essential fish habitat (EFH) for Gulf of Mexico waters and/or substrate areas in the Gulf of Mexico, which may include estuaries and open water from the US/Mexico border to the boundary between the areas covered by the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council (GMFMC) and the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council (SAFMC) from estuarine waters out to depths of 100 fathoms. Essential fish habitat (EFH) consists of areas of higher species density, based on the NOAA Atlas (NOAA 1985) and the functional relationships analysis in the EIS (GMFMC 2004).

Estuaries are important in supporting much of the fishery production in the Gulf of Mexico, but this support appears to vary widely among different estuarine systems. The main objective of this project was to assess variability among estuaries in supporting fishery species and other abundant nekton. The project is part of a larger effort of the National Marine Fisheries Service Galveston Laboratory to develop a Comparative Assessment of Gulf Estuarine Systems (CAGES). The nekton abundance data summarized in this report are available at http://data.gcoos.org. This cooperative study with state natural resources agencies was designed to use fishery independent monitoring data and compare historical catches from 4.9-m and 6.1-m trawl surveys. This report provides an assessment of the abundance, length frequencies, and biomass of 14 species of fish and four species of decapod crustaceans that were either abundant in the samples or economically important. The most abundant species in the analysis include bay anchovy, Atlantic croaker, spot, and brown shrimp. Other fishery species of particular interest include Gulf menhaden, white shrimp, pink shrimp, blue crab, spotted seatrout, southern flounder, and red drum. While the years analyzed varied among states, samples from most estuaries were available and analyzed for the years 1986 to 2005. The 24 estuaries analyzed were identified using the Estuarine and Coastal Drainage Areas delineated by the U. S.Geological Survey and listed in NOAA's Coastal Assessment Framework

Comprehensive planning and monitoring of abiotic (hydrology, land forms, energy and nutrients, and chemistry) and biotic (plants, fish, invertebrates, birds, mammals) attributes pre- and post-breach at a 150 hectare site in the Snohomish estuary. Species composition of plants, fallout insects, benthic invertebrates, birds, and fishes at Qwuloolt and adjacent reference sites.

This dataset includes outputs from an ecosystem model, which is a tool for regional science managers to explore marine spatial planning scenarios in the context of static and dynamic environmental covariates. The dataset includes predicted fish biomass from the Ecopath with Ecosim and Ecospace model set up over the Florida Reef Tract, during eight scenarios and across 36 trophic groups during the time period between 1994 and 2012. Simulations considered all pairwise combinations of changing the size of Marine Protected Areas (‘existing MPAs’, ‘large MPAs’), varying rates of movement via modeled diffusion (‘low diffusion’, ‘high diffusion’), and increasing fishing effort (total effect multiplier; ‘low TEM’, ‘high TEM’).