2024 Northeast Spring Bottom Trawl Survey Summary
Annual spring fisheries survey completes nearly 100 percent of stations.
The 2024 Spring Bottom Trawl Survey began on March 6 and completed operations on May 13 aboard the NOAA Ship Henry B. Bigelow.
The survey operates on the Northwest Atlantic continental shelf, sampling at stations from Cape Lookout, North Carolina to Canada’s Scotian Shelf.
We planned 377 trawl survey stations and completed 367, for a high completion rate of 97 percent. We sampled plankton at a subset of stations. We took 111 bongo samples of 116 planned, or 96 percent.
The Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s bottom trawl surveys are the longest running of their kind in the world. They provide more than 60 years of standardized data collected during a time of significant change in the ocean around us.
Data collected include fish age, length, weight, sex, maturity and food habits. All are critical data used in regional fish stock assessments. These assessments help inform fishery management decisions by the New England and Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Councils, as well as the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.
Planned Bottom Trawl Survey Stations in the Mid-Atlantic
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Planned Bottom Trawl Stations in the Gulf of Maine and on Georges Bank
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Percentage of Completed 2024 Spring Bottom Trawl Stations
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Percentage of Completed 2024 Spring Plankton Stations
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