Fig 1.
The U.S. northeast continental shelf (U.S. NES) marine ecosystem comprises the mid-Atlantic Bight, Georges Bank, and the Gulf of Maine.
It is at the interface of two major currents: the warmer, saltier Gulf Stream deriving from the south, and the colder, fresher Labrador Current deriving from the north. These two currents form a recirculation gyre in the shelf slope and enter the U.S. NES via the northeast channel in the Gulf of Maine. Gulf Stream water can also enter the U.S. NES via anticyclonic warm core rings. The mid-Atlantic Bight cold pool is formed seasonally after each winter when wind forcing is reduced and the water column becomes stratified in the summer and early fall. The cold pool is critical habitat for many key commercial species such as yellowtail flounder and ocean quahog. Rivers and estuaries are also critical habitat for many diadromous species such as Atlantic salmon, river herring, and striped bass. Base map file source = https://www.shadedrelief.com/atlantic/.
Fig 2.
Decadal temperature anomaly in the ocean surface (top panel) and ocean bottom (bottom panel) throughout North America. Anomaly is based on the average temperature from 2010–2019 relative to the historical climatology from 1993–2019. Ocean surface data is from NOAA’s OISST (25-km) product; ocean bottom data is from the GLORYS12v1 (1/12°) global ocean reanalysis. Shape file source = https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/tiger-line-shapefile-2019-2010-nation-u-s-2010-census-5-digit-zip-code-tabulation-area-zcta5-na.
Fig 3.
Process of informing living marine resource management with climate information in the northeast U.S.
This begins with ocean observations, ocean models, and focused research on causal relationships between ocean change and the response of living marine resources. The second phase is Research Track that includes new analyses and review of climate influences on key biological variables (recruitment, mortality, etc.) with research results used in climate-informed stock assessment models. This includes the consideration of qualitative and quantitative ecosystem and socio-economic information. The final phase is to inform management and stakeholders with the best available science regarding climate impacts on living marine resources. This can take many forms and includes management strategy evaluations of climate-informed stock assessment models, ecosystem and socio-economic profiles, ecosystem status reports, scenario planning, and vulnerability assessments. These three phases feedback on each other such that management and stakeholders can request additional data, research, and analyses in phases 1 and 2. A more detailed version of this figure is available in the supplementary material (S1 Fig).
Table 1.
U.S. NES commercial species that have existing and upcoming research track assessments.
Research track assessments consider changes to existing stock assessment models based on new information and research. Most of these species have life history variables that are associated with environmental variables. These associations should be considered in the research track assessment and should also influence new research on climate-enhanced stock assessments.
Fig 4.
Number of bottom temperature observations per year for each type of oceanic probe extracted from the Northeast Fisheries Science Center oceanographic database (NEFSC_DB) and completed with the NOAA NCEI’s World Ocean Database (WOD) (left panel) to include observations not present in the NEFSC_DB.
The observations were collected on the northeast U.S. continental shelf on an area which covers the four Ecological Production Units (EPUs) defined by NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center (https://noaa-edab.github.io/tech-doc/epu.html) The right panel indicates the type of probe used to collect the measurements; conductivity, temperature, and depth instruments (CTD), Ocean Station Data (OSD), Expendable Bathythermograph (XBT) and Mechanical Bathythermograph (MBT).
Fig 5.
Directional effect of climate change on marine fauna in the U.S. NES (from Hare et al. 2016b).
Colors represent expected negative (red), neutral (tan), and positive (green) effects. Certainty in score is denoted by text color and font: very high certainty (>95%, black, bold font), high certainty (90–95%, black, italic font), moderate certainty (66–90%, white or gray, bold font), low certainty (<66%, white or gray, italic font).
Table 2.
NOAA Northeast Fisheries Science Center seasonal and annual surveys of the U.S. NES marine ecosystem.