Current Status of Accomplishment or Milestone: Completed. The award was presented to Fishery Biologist Mary Yaklovich
by NOAA Administrator Baker at a ceremony in Silver Spring in December, 1998.
Background: Research at PFEL was initiated to examine the relationship between deep water rockfish and their habitats. Mary Yoklavich developed a scientific approach that included innovative technologies to extend this knowledge to the spatial scales pertinent to fisheries management.
Purpose of Activity/Goal of Project: NOAA has a legislative mandate under the Sustainable Fisheries Act to describe essential fish habitat. Doing so in deeper water fisheries has been problematic. The scientific work for which the award was received addresses this issue and extends it to scales pertinent to practical problems in fisheries management.
Description of Accomplishment and Significant Results: A long-standing problem faced by NOAA and the NMFS has been the ability to address how fisheries in deeper waters impact marine ecosystems. The Sustainable Fisheries Act requires NMFS to describe essential fish habitat for all fisheries managed by NOAA. YoklavichÕs research has been instrumental in developing the techniques needed to address these issues and in extending them to spatial scales pertinent to fisheries management. Submersibles and deep-sea cameras were used to evaluate the relationship between rockfishes and their physical habitats. The next step was to apply this to the broad geographic scales which characterize groundfish fisheries on the west coast. Working with several other scientists, she next applied geophysical remote sensing approaches to the analysis of habitat on broad scales.
Significance of Accomplishment (e.g., to the Center, to Management, and to NMFS Strategic plan Goals): This demonstrates how applied SWC research can address a practical problem faced by the National Marine Fisheries Service, namely to describe essential fish habitat under the SFA. There are also major implications of this work to fisheries management through harvest refugia. That the research merited a NOAA level award reflects well on the SWC.
Problems: None
Key Contact: Mary Yoklavich (831-648-9036)