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Habitat & Ecological Processes (HEPR)

AFSC Quarterly
Research Reports
Apr-May-June 2011

Essential Fish Habitat Funding Received

Proposals for FY 2011 essential fish habitat (EFH) recently were funded. Project selection for EFH research is based on research priorities from the EFH Research Implementation Plan for Alaska. Approximately $500,000 is spent on about ten EFH research projects each year. Research priorities are

Coastal areas facing development
Characterization of habitat utilization and productivity
Sensitivity, impact, and recovery of disturbed benthic habitat
Validation and improvement of habitat impacts model
Seafloor mapping

The Habitat and Ecological Processes Research (HEPR) team completed a scientific rating of the 2011 proposals in fall 2010. NMFS Alaska Regional Office Acting Deputy Regional Administrator Jon Kurland and HEPR Program Leader Mike Sigler agreed on rankings based on the scientific review and management priorities. Similar to last year, habitat recovery rate proposals were given higher management priority. The management prioritization generally followed the science ranking but a few changes were made to reflect the relevance of the proposals for fishery management decisions.

Principal Investigators	Titles	Funding
Ryer, Spencer, Iseri, Ottmar, Copeman	Determinants of juvenile tanner crab growth from different nursery embayments	$ 83,000
Malecha, Shotwell, Amman	Recruitment and response to damage of an Alaskan gorgonian coral	$ 16,700
Laurel, Stoner	The role of benthic habitat in larval rock sole settlement dynamics	$ 42,740
Yeung, Yang	Quantifying flatfish habitat quality in the eastern Bering Sea by infauna prey density	$ 124,000
Rose, McEntire	Collection of seafloor imagery during AFSC bottom trawl surveys	$ 11,900
Johnson, Thedinga, Lindeberg	Coastal fishes of Alaska: a synthesis of over a decade of nearshore marine surveys	$ 39,000
Wilson, Rooper	Low-cost multibeam mapping to support habitat based groundfish assessment and deepwater coral research in the Gulf of Alaska	$ 67,400
Total		$ 384,740

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