Research projects
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You can use the Project Search Tool below to browse over the staff’s research projects, including their brief summaries, that are currently under way, or planned for the near future and funded under the 5-year Strategic Science Plan (2019-2023). The summaries include, for each project, background information, a work plan, and a progress report, as well as details of its relevance and purpose, external collaborators, duration, and deliverables; also, for existing projects, an update on activities since the previous year’s report.
This information can also be found on the IATTC-98b-Staff activities and research plan. -
01 May 2021 - 31 May 2023FundedObjectives:
- Evaluate the extent of stranded, abandoned or lost FADs (SAL-FADs) in the EPO.
- Evaluate the impact of SAL-FADs on coastal areas and islands of the EPO, with special emphasis on identification of deploying locations.
- Identify or develop oceanographic models to forecast strandings of FADs.
- Based on findings, develop mitigation and management measures and strategies to minimize SAL-FADs. Promote recovery of SAL-FADs and evaluate its effectiveness.
01 Dec 2020 - 31 Dec 2022FundedObjectives:
Minimize the impacts caused by lost and abandoned FADs on sea turtles, while also defining future guidelines to reduce the impact of FAD structures on sea turtles´ habitats01 Jun 2024 - 01 Jul 2025Objectives:
A controlled experiment in tropical waters to assess the degradation of new BioFAD surface components that reduce ocean debris and pollution contributions by commercial tuna fishing.01 Jan 2018 - 31 Dec 2018FundedObjectives:
To better understand environmental drivers that might be responsible for increasing the vulnerability of non-target species to being caught in EPO fisheries, and devise management measures that may reduce their vulnerability to capture (e.g. space-time closures).01 Jun 2018 - 31 Dec 2021FundedObjectives:
Estimate the optimal microturbulence and wind speed for the survival of yellowfin larvae and examine any association between yellowfin recruitment and historical wind speeds in the EPO01 Mar 2021 - 31 Aug 2022FundedObjectives:
Contribute to the development of high-resolution dynamic habitat models for key non-target species and ecological functional groups impacted by tuna fisheries to better understand the dynamics of target-bycatch-environment co-occurrence and assess the vulnerability of the species under existing and projected effort and environmental regimes using EASI-Fish.Objectives:
Evaluate whether changes in the environment may have contributed to the increases in YFT catches by the purse seine fleet. Specifically, investigate the occurrence of trends/shifts in YFT suitable habitat and corresponding effects in catch rates and length composition, that may explain recent increases in catch.N.2.a - Develop models of the effects of climate change on pre-recruit life stages of tropical tunas01 Jan 2018 - 31 Dec 2022FundedObjectives:
Investigate experimentally the effects of important climate change factors on early life stages of tropical tunas, and incorporate those results into models that can predict climate change effects on the distribution and abundance of tropical tunas01 Jul 2021 - 01 Jul 2023FundedObjectives:
- Produce forecasted dynamic species and vessel distributions under different anomaly and climate change scenarios in the near, mid and long-term based on changing environmental drivers.
- Quantify shifts in overlap among species and vessels given shifting habitat for both.
- Understand the impact of climate anomalies, changing oceanographic conditions and future scenarios on forecasted dynamic species and vessel distributions with a specific focus on forecast skill and accounting for uncertainty.
01 Jul 2019 - 31 Dec 2020FundedObjectives:
- Broadly describe the trophic ecology of skipjack tuna in the EPO using classical stomach-contents analysis
- Quantitatively disentangle spatial, temporal, and ontogenetic differences in diet to identify important habitats of skipjack and their forage