Description

This fellowship opportunity, hosted by the Alaska Fisheries Science Center (AFSC) under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and administered by the NRC Research Associateship Programs, supports research focused on developing ecosystem indices to inform fisheries stock assessments in Alaska. The project addresses the dramatic changes in marine ecosystems due to climate variability and warming, such as fishery disaster declarations, northward species movements, and unusual recruitment events.

The research aims to identify core ecosystem indicators and quantify their value for integration into stock assessment models using advanced statistical techniques like Bayesian adaptive sampling and boosted regression trees. By directly incorporating ecosystem indices into stock assessments, the project seeks to improve fisheries management decisions in a rapidly changing environment, advancing AFSC’s efforts toward next-generation, climate-enhanced fishery management.

Candidates will work with large datasets, including high-resolution fishery effort and satellite-derived environmental data, and may have opportunities for at-sea research. The fellowship emphasizes quantitative approaches, ecosystem-based fisheries management, and modeling focused on Alaska groundfish species.