We map the regional physiography and surficial lithology (Surficial Geologic Habitat or
SGH) over the continental margin of Oregon. This thesis develops, describes, and
implements an iterative interpretive method to map seafloor habitat types from disparate
geological and geophysical datasets including: bathymetric images, sidescan sonar
images, seismic reflection profiles, sediment...
The commercial groundfish fishing industry and groundfish research have a long concurrent history of activity on the Oregon continental margin. Within the non-whiting groundfish fishery, the target species are primarily flatfishes, sablefish, lingcod, and rockfishes, though landings of each have fluctuated over time. Recent work shows that over the past...
Oregon’s Coastal nearshore ecosystems are a nexus between living marine resources and coincident human recreational, industrial and socio-economic development. These nearshore regions also provide habitats vital to early life history stages of commercial non-whiting groundfish species, which supplied 21% of the Oregon fishing economy in 2018. The very shallow portions...
Seafloor lithologic maps have been widely used to identify conservation sites. In this study, a lithologic interpretation of Oregon's territorial seafloor was created as an interim product in response to the need for a comprehensive lithologic map that will be used in the identification, evaluation and design of marine reserves...
Multibeam sonar data was collected on Nehalem Bank, off of the Oregon Coast with the purpose of increasing the spatial resolution of our knowledge of the area and delineating seafloor habitats. The system used was the Kongsberg Simrad EM-300 operating at 30 kHz. The data set collected includes both topographic...
Nearshore hypoxia within the Northern California Current (NCC) system is a seasonal phenomenon caused by coastal upwelling and occurs mainly during late-summer and early fall. The effects of low oxygen levels on fish and invertebrate communities, particularly during early-life history stages, however, are poorly known for this area. I investigated...
If fisheries managers are to effectively manage commercially exploited fish populations, a basic understanding of the factors that influence fish distribution and abundance is required. In 2005, efforts to identify Essential Fish Habitat (EFH) for the 82 groundfish species managed by the Pacific Fishery Management Council along the West Coast...
The functioning of marine habitats needs to be understood in the context of the ecological relationships and associations between organisms and the physical and biogenic environment they inhabit. Thus, it becomes important to explore and define habitat features which contribute to these relationships and which are important in the life...
To date, the use of oceanographic data in fisheries management has been limited by the scarcity and the difficulty of accessing complete oceanographic datasets. Consequently, fish stocks are managed with limited knowledge about the habitat where fish live and incomplete understanding of what oceanographic conditions affect their populations. With the...
The Pacific coast groundfish fishery is a diverse, important and lucrative commercial and recreational fishery. Part of this fishery’s monitoring process includes regular fishery-independent surveys for stock assessment. Although these fishery-independent surveys are cost-effective, they are susceptible to scientific uncertainty, and they do not currently sample in nearshore (water depth...