Laurel Smith
Laurel Smith
Laurel Smith has been a Research Fisheries Biologist with the Ecosystem Dynamics and Assessment Branch at the NOAA NMFS Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, MA since 2009. Prior to this, she was a biologist and stock assessment lead in the Population Dynamics and Assessment Branch at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center from 2002-2009. Laurel leads the Offshore Working Group for the Northeast Regional Habitat Assessment, documenting species distribution shifts and developing models to predict future shifts due to environmental drivers and climate change. She is a NOAA representative for the Eastern Maine Coastal Current Collaborative, working with a variety of stakeholders to develop regional Ecosystem Based Fisheries Management, and she leads the habitat risk subsections of the New England and Mid-Atlantic State of the Ecosystem reports. Her current research includes determining the main environmental drivers for changes in fish condition or health over time, and studying the role of predation by marine mammals in ecosystems. Laurel participates in stock assessment working groups, the ICES Working Group on the Northwest Atlantic Regional Sea and the ICES Working Group on Multispecies Assessment Methods. Laurel earned her M.S. from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, School for Marine Science and Technology in 2012 and her B.A. in Biology from Bates College in 2002.