Sediment deposits in federal waters of the New York Bight (NYB) are a potential source of sand for coastal protection and beach nourishment projects. Due to overlap with essential fish habitat and fisheries activity, we synthesized available oceanographic, geological, ecological, and human use data to examine the spatial-temporal distribution of fishes, macroinvertebrates, and fishing activity relative to benthic and hydrographic features. Catch-per-unit effort of economically important species, forage species, and several sand-dependent indicator species were extracted from ten years of Northeast Fisheries Science Center bottom trawl survey samples (2010-2019, n =733 samples) within the NYB to 50-m depths. These catch data were then analyzed for latent trends and for canonical trends of depth, sediment grain size, proximity to modeled shoals, temperature, salinity, and an index of hydrographic stratification. Seasonality explained much of the latent variation, with a depth/offshore gradient also evident. After separation into seasonal data sets, canonical trends explained 11% of the total variation for both spring and fall data independently. Of this, hydrography factors, followed by depth, explained most of the trends in species overturn, but proximity to shoals and grain size were significant in explaining approximately 12% and 4% (respectively) of canonical variance in spring and 11% and 10% (respectively) for canonical variance in fall. The distribution of little skate, winter flounder, round herring, striped anchovy, and rough scad were most closely fit with target shoal features. We interpret this as indicative of highly mobile fauna using a landscape over which resources of microhabitat features are widely spread. Recreational fishing activity, especially for summer flounder and pelagic species were concentrated at shoal edges. Commercial clam harvest is important within the study area, but other value-weighted commercial fishing effort such as for atlantic scallop, monkfish, and squids, is concentrated primarily seaward of the study area. Mechanistic links of association with shoals, such as bathymetric steering of currents that concentrate prey for pelagic nekton such as forage species, need further study.

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2020-02-01 → 2021-02-28