Protection & Restoration of Ecosystem Services

Overview and Objectives

Southern New England-Atlantic (SNEMA) yellowtail flounder comprised one of the most important groundfish fisheries in the northeast United States. High fishing pressure, particularly during the 1960s through the 1970s, reduced the abundance of SNEMA yellowtail flounder significantly. Since 1992, strict regulations have been put in place along with closed areas, but the stock has not recovered in twenty years and recruitment has remained low in recent years. The low recruitment trend over the last twenty years is a major source of uncertainty in the most recent benchmark assessment of SNEMA yellowtail flounder that occurred in 2012. Therefore our objectives were to:

1. Investigate the physical linkage between changes in atmospheric indices, temperature regime, and yellowtail flounder recruitment and productivity for several years after a fluctuation in the Azores High pressure.
2. Develop predictive relationships between environmental indices and recruitment and spawning stock biomass (SSB), and assess the skill of such a prediction scheme.
3. Incorporate the environmental indicator into the stock assessment in one of three ways.