Amelia Whitcomb
Western WA Univ
Studied aspects of Pacific cod maturity.

This past summer, I had the opportunity to work under Sandi Neidetcher in the Fisheries Interaction Team (FIT) at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center. For the first portion of my internship I worked with Sandi on the Pacific Cod maturity distribution project. The objective of this project was to provide frequency and distribution of cod maturity stages by location and map timing and location of the spawning grounds.

A large portion of my time spent working on this project was dedicated to verifying the data from at-sea observers. Once verification of the data was completed, the data from each observer was spatially referenced so that geographical information systems (GIS) software could then be used to construct maps. Creation of a visual description for each year of cod maturity enabled an analysis of distribution.

The second half of my internship was spent out at sea. I was fortunate enough to be able to participate in the 2008 Eastern Bering Sea Upper Continental Slope Survey of Groundfish and Invertebrate Resources.

This survey was conducted by the Resource Assessment and Conservation Engineering Division (RACE) and the data collected play a vital role in producing stock assessments of bottom fish species in the region. The survey spanned the area of the eastern Bering Sea slope region from Bering Canyon north to Navarin Canyon. Throughout the survey, bottom trawls were made from 200 to 1200 meters in depth at predetermined survey sites. While onboard the Vesteraalen, a chartered fishing vessel, I identified species, determined sex, recorded lengths , and assisted in stomach extraction of selected species for food web studies.