NOAA Fall Bottom Trawl Survey 2023 Northeast

On November 16, Northeast Fisheries Science Center staff finished the 2023 Fall Bottom Trawl Survey aboard the NOAA Ship Henry B. Bigelow. Those aboard conducted resource survey tows and temperature and salinity sampling at 335 of 377 planned stations (89 percent completion). They sampled for plankton at 107 of 116 planned stations (92 percent completion).

This year’s fall survey occurred in three legs, moving from south to north. The survey got underway on September 10 and concluded on November 17. The first survey in the time series left port in November 1963.

The Henry B. Bigelow supports a variety of marine research on this multispecies bottom-trawl survey. The most important of its missions is to monitor the region’s fishery resources. These are critical inputs to regional fish stock assessments helping to inform fishery management decisions by the New England and Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Councils as well as Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.

This survey monitors fishery stock abundance and distribution on the Northwest Atlantic continental shelf from Cape Lookout, North Carolina, to the Scotian Shelf. Data collected include fish age, length, weight, sex, maturity, and food habits information.

The temperature and salinity profiles we also collect during the survey help link fish distribution to physical oceanographic conditions. The ichthyoplankton (larval fish and eggs) we collect help with understanding spawning distributions and with estimating changes in fish abundance. The zooplankton (tiny animals and immature stages of some larger ones) we collect tell researchers about the ocean food web. We use these data to construct models that support ecosystem-based fisheries management.