Fisheries Statistician Needed in Woods Hole, MA

To apply: Send resume, two references and salary requirements to HR@integratedstatistics.com

Background

The NOAA Fisheries Northeast Fisheries Science Center is working closely with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute to implement underwater high resolution photographic system called “HabCam” to survey sea scallops, other benthic organisms and benthic habitat. HabCam is a seafloor imaging camera system mounted in a ten foot steel frame, and towed at about five knots 1 to 3 m off the ocean floor. HabCam is normally towed behind research and commercial fishery vessels and can operate over the range of the continental shelf, 20 to 250 m depth. The initial goal of the HabCam project was to help improve sea scallop stock assessments by increasing the accuracy of scallop biomass estimates. Additional funding from the NOAA Integrated Ocean Observing Systems (IOOS) Program to support the Northeast Bentho-pelagic Observatory (NEBO) has greatly expanded the range of uses of the HabCam instrument. For example, six sentinel sites have been revisited several times each year for three years providing the baseline of an ecological time series.

Attributes of the HabCam system include: 1) acquisition of optical and acoustic imagery which can be viewed in “real time”, 2) the ability to count and measure scallops and ground fish (i.e. cod, haddock, flounders), 3) measurement of biodiversity and community structure, 4) the means to “map” where there are lost fishing gears (e.g. trawl and gillnets, lobster pots, and other miscellaneous fishing gear and parts), 5) characterization of substrate 6) measurement of oceanic properties (salinity, temperature, nutrients) 7) availability of data and data products online, and 8) relatively inexpensive operating costs. The HabCam system also has the ability to observe animal behaviors including inter- and intraspecies interactions as well as assess and monitor invasive species such as Didemnum vexillum and other epibenthic megafauna, and benthic infaunal species.

The Northeast Fisheries Science Center has responsibility for surveying the Atlantic sea scallop resource along the continental shelf from Virginia to Georges Bank. The Center intends to replace a traditional dredge survey that utilizes an 8-foot New Bedford style dredge to capture sea scallops with a photographic survey utilizing the HabCam system that quantifies the abundance, size distribution and geographic distribution of the Atlantic sea scallop resource on an annual basis. To achieve this objective, the Center must an employ a statistically robust and efficient sampling design for sampling the sea floor utilizing the HabCam system. The primary objective of this contract is to complete traditional and geospatial statistical analyses required to design a statistical sampling design for this type of survey.

Scope

Integrated Statistics is looking for someone to work with Fisheries to complete statistical analyses related to a new benthic fauna survey using towed cameras and other gear for the Ecosystem Surveys and Population Dynamics branches at the Woods Hole Laboratory of the Northeast Fisheries Science Center.

Location

Ecosystem Surveys and Population Dynamics

Woods Hole Laboratory

166 Water Street

Woods Hole, MA 02543

Requirements

Integrated Statistics is looking for someone to work with the Ecosystems Survey Branch to provide the following over the next year:

(a) Final report defining the development of an efficient statistical design for the benthic survey for each of its sampling components: a towed camera system that gives overlapping images of the sea floor, sampling with a modified sea scallop dredge, and data from acoustic sensors. The design should allow for effective estimation of sea scallops and other specified target organisms.

(b) Final report defining effective methods (1) for combining manual and automatic processing of images in order to obtain desired accuracy with a minimal amount of manual processing.

(c) Final report defining methods (2) for estimating the abundance and biomass of sea scallops and other target organisms, together with their variance, from the data in the benthic survey, using geostatistical and/or other appropriate methods.

To apply: Send resume, two references and salary requirements to HR@integratedstatistics.com