Putting it to Work: New Publication on Method to Create Species Maps for Fisheries Management

We are excited to share the latest scientific paper to include REEF data, published this month in the journal ICES Journal of Marine Science. In this paper, authors use information on where REEF divers did or did not encounter three species of fisheries importance: red snapper, red grouper, and gag grouper. They then combined these data with 36 other data sets, each sampling different areas of the Gulf of Mexico, and created distribution maps for use in ecosystem models of the Gulf of Mexico. These distribution maps picked up fish hotspots that are not identifiable by any individual data set, highlighting the complementary nature of the REEF data.

The full citation of the paper is: Gruss, A., Thorson, J.T., Babcock, E.A., and Tarnecki, J.H. 2017. Producing distribution maps for informing ecosystem-based fisheries management using a comprehensive survey database and spatio-temporal models. ICES Journal of Marine Science, doi:10.1093/icesjms/fsx120.

Visit www.REEF.org/db/publications for an entire list of publications that include REEF data and programs.