NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service
NMFS research programs at the Beaufort Laboratory are aimed at conservation and management of marine living resources. Within three research Branches (Sustainable Fisheries, Fisheries Ecosystems, and Protected Resources), the lab collects and analyzes data describing the individual biology and population biology of estuarine, coastal and deepwater marine animals, with emphasis on exploited fish species, their ecology and ecosystems, and protected resources. They take leading roles in regional assessments of exploited fish populations, improving theory and methodology and helping generate status and trends information useful for limiting exploitation of coastal fish stocks. The Beaufort Laboratory's location near the narrow continental shelf and the proximity of the Gulf Stream situate them near important habitats of fish, marine mammals, and sea turtles, and are well situated for field research on those species and their ecosystems. Much of the work is used to further the Nation's conservation objectives under the Sustainable Fisheries Act, Marine Mammal Protection Act, and Endangered Species Act.
Sustainable Fisheries Branch
The Sustainable Fisheries Branch primarily conducts field sampling, stock assessments and simulation modeling to improve tracking and prediction of fish population abundance and understand causes of population fluctuations. The research often uses advanced analytical, mathematical, statistical, and computational techniques. The Sustainable Fisheries Branch is divided into investigation lines covering work on fish population dynamics, menhaden fishery sampling and monitoring, and a regional headboat survey.
The population dynamics work focuses on stock assessments on the snapper-grouper and coastal pelagic species and both Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico menhaden. Population dynamic research focuses on population modeling methods, simulation analyses, and statistical techniques.
The menhaden work focuses on monitoring and sampling the commercial fisheries for Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico menhaden. Biological samples are collected for information on fish length, age, and weight. The Beaufort, NC facility also monitors the commercial catches of menhaden in Chesapeake Bay, which is currently operating under a quota or cap.
The Southeast Region Headboat Survey work focuses on monitoring and sampling the recreational headboat fisheries in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico. Headboats are vessels which charge passengers "by the head" to fish, with a capacity for carrying 10 or more passengers. Data collection includes catch records from every trip and biological samples from dockside intercepts by port samplers. The biological samples are collected for information on fish length, age, weight, and sex.
Fisheries Ecosystem Branch
The Fisheries Ecosystem Branch (FEB) performs estuarine, nearshore and offshore marine research in support of fisheries and ecosystem management in United States waters. FEB researchers cooperate with federal, state, academic and non-government organization partners to conduct life-history research on managed species, and fisheries ecology research within an ecosystems context.
Life-history research within the FEB focuses on species with direct management relevance, predominantly within the snapper-grouper complex and coastal pelagic species. The lab holds age samples of many reef fish species collected since the 1970s, and currently receives ~20,000 age samples per year from recreational and commercial fisheries. These data are used directly in stock assessments and study environmental and anthropogenic stressors on fish populations. Many FEB life-history data sets are combined with data sets from other fish ageing labs for use in assessment models, which allows for more comprehensive analysis of our fish stocks. Current efforts are focused on red grouper, snowy grouper, and golden tilefish. Additional life-history research in the FEB focuses on age-validation studies.
Fisheries ecology research focuses on topics including but not limited to fish habitat utilization patterns, spatiotemporal variability in multi-species densities and distributions, species interactions (e.g., predator-prey and competitive dynamics), population genetic structure, invasive species impacts, habitat restoration ecology, application of remotely-sensed data, species-specific and community responses to natural and anthropogenic stressors, and development of methodologies to improve fishery and ecosystem management capabilities.
Current projects in the Fisheries Ecosystem Branch include:
- Fisheries and Community Ecology
- Reef fish spawning aggregation research - Florida Keys / Puerto Rico
- Coral reef fish-habitat modeling to support ecosystem-based management
- Reef fish reproductive ecology - South Atlantic Bight
- Hogfish reproduction and habitat utilization - Florida Keys
- Hardbottom community characterization - North Carolina
- Prey community effects of the invasive red lionfish - North Carolina
- Genetics
- Black seabass population connectivity along the eastern US coast
- Genetic diversity within South Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico snowy grouper
- Habitat restoration
- Poplar Island environmental restoration project - Maryland
Protected Resources Branch
Research focuses on how cetaceans and sea turtles use the coastal ecosystems and the effects of human activities on these animals. Projects range from using novel techniques to elucidate the stock structure of bottlenose dolphins to long-term assessment of sea turtle populations using local waters as an index site for in-water demographic and health assessment studies. This research spans across an active field program, advancement of laboratory techniques, and development of spatial and explanatory models. Although the primary geographic focus is in the waters along the mid-Atlantic coast of the United States, we are involved in national and international projects and the program involves numerous federal, state, and academic partners.
The monitoring of sea turtle populations focuses on immature turtles inhabiting estuarine, inshore, and nearshore waters. Since 1988, researchers have been conducting a long-term, in-water sampling project to assess sea turtle populations in North Carolina. In recent years, the in-water work has also sought to assess loggerhead population health and foraging ecology, and has expanded spatially to begin characterizing an unusual seasonal aggregation of sea turtles near Cape Lookout. In addition to the in-water work, the Beaufort NMFS National Sea Turtle Aging Laboratory is developing methods to estimate growth rates, stage durations, and ages by analyzing growth marks in sea turtle bones.
Cetacean research at Beaufort focuses primarily on bottlenose dolphins, the most common marine mammal in the nearshore waters of NC. Although bottlenose dolphin populations are continuously distributed along the Atlantic coast with no physical barriers to movement, researchers have recently identified numerous stocks through an integrative approach combining genetics, photo-identification, stable isotope ratios, and telemetry. These results then allow us to estimate abundance of stocks and to estimate mortality from interaction with fisheries for each stock. To assess population trends, age, growth, and reproductive data are collected from live animals during capture-release projects, as well as from stranded animals, and then incorporated into population growth models. Our Alternative Platform Observer Program has recently been initiated to investigate the level of mortality experienced by bottlenose dolphins in coastal fisheries.
Contact the National Marine Fisheries Service at nccos.webmaster@noaa.gov to learn more.