According to the 2009 Ecosystem Status Report there is an urgent need to manage the waters off the northeastern coast of the United States as a whole rather than as a series of separate and unrelated components. It is known as the Northeast U.S. Continental Shelf Large Marine Ecosystem (NES LME), the ecosystem spans approximately 100,000 square miles and supports some of the highest revenue-generating fisheries in the nation.
Michael Fogarty, who heads the Ecosystem Assessment Program at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) of NOAA’s Fisheries Service in Woods Hole, Mass., says his team’s report highlights the need to understand natural and human-related changes in this region and to develop effective management and mitigation strategies.
Fogarty also said that there are many pressures on the ecosystem including fishing, pollution, habitat loss from coastal development, and impacts on marine life from shipping and other uses of the ocean. The report is the first in a planned series of ecosystem status reports by Fogarty and his colleagues in the NEFSC’s Ecosystem Assessment Program to document changes in the NES LME, one of 64 regions in the world’s ocean designated as a large marine ecosystem.
According to Fogarty sustained long-term monitoring by many agencies and institutions in the Northeast region has enabled scientists and others to trace changes in the ecosystem.
