Determining management units for natural populations is critical for effective conservation and management. However, collecting the requisite tissue samples for population genetic analyses remains the primary limiting factor for a number of marine species. The harbour porpoise (Phocoena phocoena), one of the smallest cetaceans in the Northern Hemisphere, is a primary example. These elusive, highly mobile small animals confound traditional approaches of collecting tissue samples for genetic analyses, yet their nearshore habitat makes them highly vulnerable to fisheries by-catch and the effects of habitat degradation. By exploiting the naturally shed cellular material in seawater and the power of next-generation sequencing, we develop a novel approach for generating population-specific mitochondrial sequence data from environmental DNA (eDNA) using surface seawater samples. Indications of significant genetic differentiation within a currently recognized management stock highlights the need for dedicated eDNA sampling throughout the population's range in southeast Alaska. This indirect sampling tactic for characterizing stock structure of small and endangered marine mammals has the potential to revolutionize population assessment for otherwise inaccessible marine taxa.
2016 | Tellus A: Dynamic Meteorology and Oceanography, 68(1), 1-26
Description:
In this paper, two important issues are raised for multistep variational data assimilation in which broadly distributed coarse-resolution observations...
2016 | Marine and Coastal Fisheries: Dynamics, Management, and Ecosystem Science 8(1), 522–535
Description:
An understanding of temporal patterns of migration and spatial connectivity between home ranges and spawning sites is necessary for effective manageme...
2018 | Marine and Coastal Fisheries: Dynamics, Management, and Ecosystem Science 10(2), 118–131
Description:
This study evaluated how illuminating the headrope of a selective flatfish trawl can affect catches of groundfishes, including Pacific Halibut Hippogl...
2017 | Marine and Coastal Fisheries: Dynamics, Management, and Ecosystem Science 9(1), 149–160
Description:
The limited‐entry bottom trawl fishery for groundfish along the U.S. West Coast operates under a catch share program, which is implemented with the ...
Despite evidence of maternal age effects in a number of teleost species, there have been challenges to the assertion that maternal age intrinsically i...
2018 | Marine and Coastal Fisheries: Dynamics, Management, and Ecosystem Science 10(3), 347–356
Description:
Brown shrimp Farfantepenaeus aztecus support a commercially important fishery in the northern Gulf of Mexico, and the juvenile shrimp use coastal estu...
Population dynamics of long-lived vertebrates depend critically on adult survival, yet factors affecting survival and covariation between survival and...
Falsification of reports on Japanese catches of sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) is known to have occurred at both land whaling stations and in N...
Assessing the movement patterns and key habitat features of breeding humpback whales is a prerequisite for the conservation management of this philopa...
Acoustic communication is an important aspect of reproductive, foraging and social behaviours for many marine species. Northeast Pacific blue whales (...
Accurate estimation of historical abundance provides an essential baseline for judging the recovery of the great whales. This is particularly challeng...
2016 | Marine and Coastal Fisheries: Dynamics, Management, and Ecosystem Science 8(1), 244–262
Description:
This study examines the potential uncertainty in survey biomass estimates of Spiny Dogfish Squalus acanthias in the Northeast U.S. Continental Shelf L...
2017 | Marine and Coastal Fisheries: Dynamics, Management, and Ecosystem Science 9(1), 216–230,
Description:
Atlantic Sturgeon Acipenser oxyrinchus oxyrinchus were recently listed as threatened in the Gulf of Maine and endangered in the rest of their U.S. ran...
2017 | Marine and Coastal Fisheries: Dynamics, Management, and Ecosystem Science 9(1), 1–12
Description:
While Pacific salmon are known for their extensive marine migrations, some species display much more limited alternative patterns, including residence...
2017 | Marine and Coastal Fisheries: Dynamics, Management, and Ecosystem Science 9(1), 564–572
Description:
Blue Catfish Ictalurus furcatus were purposefully introduced into freshwater tributaries to Chesapeake Bay in the past, and populations have subsequen...
2018 | Marine and Coastal Fisheries: Dynamics, Management, and Ecosystem Science 10(3), 325–346
Description:
We analyzed the results of the first comprehensive, systematic, fishery‐independent survey of Gulf of Mexico (GoM) continental shelves using data co...
Oceanic fronts are key habitats for a diverse range of marine predators, yet how they influence fine-scale foraging behaviour is poorly understood. He...
2016 | Marine and Coastal Fisheries: Dynamics, Management, and Ecosystem Science 8(1), 536–552
Description:
The degree to which fine-scale habitat use by salmonid species and stocks varies within habitat types such as estuaries is not fully resolved.We sampl...
This report describes field activities of the Aerial Surveys of Arctic Marine Mammals (ASAMM) project conducted during summer and fall (1 July–31 Oc...
Under the 1994 amendments of the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and the United States Fish and Wild...
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