NSU has received over $4 million from two grants from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). These grants are designated to help further the Halmos College of Natural Sciences and Oceanography’s research in “Deep-Pelagic Fauna” and “Highly Migratory Species Research in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico.”
A $2.7 million, five-year grant will help support the research of deep-pelagic fauna in the Gulf of Mexico, led by Tracey Sutton, professor in the Halmos College of Natural Sciences and Oceanography, along with other scientists from NSU, NOAA, Florida Atlantic University, the University of South Florida and Florida International University. The grant is funded by a program called RESTORE (Resources and Ecosystems Sustainability, Tourist Opportunities, and Revived Economies), which, according to their website, gave approximately $15.6 million to four teams announced in early October.
“We’re trying to solve a problem — and the main problem is that the vast majority of the Gulf of Mexico is deep. We tend to think of it as kind of shallow, because that’s what we’re used to, but about 92% of the Gulf of Mexico has water deeper than 200 meters. The problem is that, before the oil spill, we didn’t know what was down that deep. When the spill happened, we didn’t have any baseline information for what might have been affected,” explained Sutton.
Sutton is the director for a consortium called DEEPEND, which stands for Deep Pelagic Nekton Dynamics. One of the benefits of having a large research group for the project is having experts in various fields of study, such as fishes, pelagic shrimp, squids and their relatives, jellyfish and other unique organisms. The consortium began its research after an oil spill in 2010, and is trying to determine the long term patterns of deep water life in the Gulf and whether or not it is still being impacted by the spill. The spill made evident how little data was available for deep water ecosystems, according to Sutton.
“The oil industry itself is going deeper and deeper, so spills like the Deep Water Horizon are actually more likely to happen in the future than less likely. [We need] a baseline of what’s there in case we have another oil spill,” said Sutton.
The Highly Migratory Species (HMS) research project, which received $1.6 million from NOAA’s Sea Grant, will focus on the life history data of these species in hopes of better managing sustainable fishing. The research will take place in regions in the northwest Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico and will be conducted by researchers from NSU, the University of Maine, Mote Marine Laboratory and Auburn University as a part of Pelagic Ecosystem Research Consortium (PERC).
Three of the four researchers for the project serve on the HMS advisory panel, which is a NOAA appointed group of fishermen, anglers, academics and conservation group representatives that provide guidance for the management of these species in the Atlantic. David Kerstetter, an associate professor in the Halmos College of Natural Sciences and Oceanography, explained that, over the years, these species were not getting enough funding to provide data on reproduction, survival data for bycatch reduction purposes and more. By producing this data, PERC is hoping to improve U.S. and international management of species such as tuna, yellowfin, marlin, sailfish and swordfish, among others.
“This is a huge economic driver for a lot of coastal communities,” said Kerstetter. “All the charter boats you see coming out of Fort Lauderdale and the Florida Keys are often times targeting these tunas and billfishes, so that’s the recreational side. Every time you go get a sushi roll at Publix, you’re eating tuna that were caught by the HMS commercial fisheries. Even though you might not think about HMS fishes, you probably see evidence of their economic impact on a daily basis.”
Further information about DEEPEND Consortium’s projects and research can be found at deependconsortium.org. For more information about the Halmos College of Natural Sciences and Oceanography, visit cnso.nova.edu/index.html.
Photo: NOAA
