In addition to these marine fish, the Sea Grant program also 

 supports projects to develop commercial-scale cultivation and 

 harvest techniques for seaweed and marine algae. 



Sea Grant also supports biological studies of species relevant to 

 the commercial fishing industry. Current studies include the popula- 

 tion dynamics of the Atlantic menhaden, the distribution and migra- 

 tion of large pelagic fishes such as the Atlantic tunas and billfishes, 

 age and growth studies of coho and chinook salmon taken in Califor- 

 nia troll fishing, and the distribution and related abundance of the 

 spiny lobster Panulirus gutiatus in southeastern Florida. Emphasis 

 is also being placed on the development of new techniques of 

 resource assessment. Acoustic assessment techniques are being 

 evaluated, with particular attention to stocks exhibiting extremely 

 heterogeneous spatial distributions. 



Fishery oceanography has two principal roles in the National 

 Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS): to provide environmental support 

 for resource assessment investigations and to conduct research on 

 processes involved in marine organic production. Support of 

 resource assessment generally involves processing, analysis, and 

 synthesis of environmental data leading to understanding of the role 

 played by environmental variations in affecting the distribution and 

 abundance of resource species. Studies of marine organic produc- 

 tion, on the other hand, seek understanding of the physical, chemical, 

 and biological processes interacting in all stages of marine produc- 

 tion, from air-sea interaction and insolation through ocean dynamics 

 to factors controlling the abundance of harvestable adults of the 

 resource species. 



Three interrelated NMFS studies are being conducted to 

 understand the energy flow process that start with phytoplankton 

 production, pass through the benthic herbivores and carnivores, and 

 lead ultimately to the harvestable surplus of fish and shellfish. The 

 purpose of the first is to identify and enumerate the benthic 

 organisms, define their interrelationships with one another, and 

 establish their environmental requirements. The second attempts to 

 determine which fish eat which forage species, in what amounts, and 

 to what result. The third is directed to estimating the numbers and 

 the harvestable surplus of those species that can support a fishery. 



Marine life is not only a food for the world, but a source of 

 problems for ships and engineering structures. For example, 

 shipworms are the oceanic equivalent of termites on land: they eat 

 their way into wood found in the sea, destroying it in the process. 

 Studies of the digestion of wood by the shipworm are being actively 

 pursued by Navy scientists in an attempt to isolate those features of 

 the digestive process that may lead to successful control of this 

 destructive boring. 



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