Strategies for Reducing Costs of Fishery-Independent Surveys
This project aims to find ways to cut costs for Alaska's fishery surveys while maintaining accurate data for managing North Pacific fish populations.
This grant is no longer accepting proposals
NRC Research Associateship Programs has archived this opportunity.
Funder: NRC Research Associateship Programs
Due Dates: May 1, 2025
Funding Amounts: Base stipend approximately $58,000/year plus $3,000 travel allowance; supplements based on experience; typical fellowship duration 2-3 years.
Summary: Postdoctoral fellowship to develop cost-reduction strategies for fishery-independent surveys at NOAA's Alaska Fisheries Science Center, maintaining data quality for North Pacific fish stock assessments.
Key Information: Open to U.S. citizens, permanent residents, and non-U.S. citizens; applicants must have a doctoral degree; relocation and health insurance benefits included.
Description
This postdoctoral research opportunity at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Alaska Fisheries Science Center (AFSC) seeks a fellow to collaborate with survey and stock assessment scientists to devise and evaluate strategies for reducing the costs of fishery-independent surveys. These surveys are critical for assessing fish and crab populations in Alaska's Large Marine Ecosystems (LMEs) and require significant resources including staff, vessels, and funding.
The project aims to develop robust cost-saving methods that accommodate different survey designs used by the Center and consider the impacts on design-based and model-based abundance and variance estimates, which are essential inputs for stock assessment models under the North Pacific Fishery Management Plan (FMP).
Key challenges include maintaining the integrity of long-term data series while exploring potential changes such as survey frequency, spatial coverage, number of sampling stations, and vessel usage. The research will proceed in two stages: (1) optimizing sample allocation and stratification for single-species surveys, and (2) allocating effort across multi-species surveys based on species management priorities.
This fellowship offers an opportunity to contribute to sustainable fisheries management by balancing cost efficiency with scientific rigor.
