Heceta Bank Project

Scientists W. Waldo Wakefield, NOAA NMFS, Northwest Fisheries Science Center, Fishery Resource Analysis and Monitoring Division; Robert W. Embley, NOAA PMEL, Ocean Environment Research Division; Brian N. Tissot, Environmental Science & Regional Planning, Washington State University, Vancouver; and Mary M. Yoklavich, NOAA, National Marine Fisheries Service, Southwest Fisheries Science Center, are the principal investigators of a  NOAA National Undersea Research Program study of Hecata Bank, a 50 km-long rocky shoal on the outer shelf of central Oregon, and a major fishing ground.

The project combines historical data, high resolution seafloor imagery, and new survey and analysis techniques to provide fishery scientists with a model approach for characterizing and quantifying habitat associations of benthic animals on a scale meaningful to the stock assessment of commercial species and conservation of benthic communities. State-of-the-art survey strategies, instrumentation, and data analysis techniques will be used to:

• Determine quantifiable relationships between groundfish population and seafloor morphology/texture and the controlling factors these such relationships.
• Changes that have occurred in the fish and megafaunal invertebrate populations after a decade of intense commercial trawl fishing.
• Characteristics, and the extent of natural refugia in the site.

last modified 12/30/2005