440 
Fishery Bulletin 11 5(4) 
Table 1 
Percent frequency of occurrence (PFO) and percent contribution of average proportions and average individual weights per 
station to the first 2 dimensions of correspondence analysis (CA1 and CA2) for fish and macroinvertebrate taxa that had at 
least a 10% frequency of occurrence in beam trawl and bottom trawl samples collected in the vicinity of wind energy areas 
on the northeast U.S. continental shelf in the spring of 2014. The t-statistics, P-values, and degrees of freedom (df) are 
reported for Student’s t-tests conducted for 11 taxa that had at least 5% frequency of occurrence in collections made with 
both gear types. Sizes of individuals sampled were significantly different for the collections made with the 2 gear types ( P - 
values<0.0045). For the ordination plot of the analysis, see Figure 3. 
Classification 
Taxon 
PFO 
Percent contribution 
of CA1 and CA2 
Average Average 
proportion individual 
of taxon weight 
per station per station 
Student’s t-test 
P-value t-statistic 
df 
Mollusca 
Placopecten magellanicus 
23.5 
1.2 
0.3 
0.2025 
-1.28 
83 
Decapodiformes 
27.1 
0.1 
0.1 
Crustacea 
Unclassified shrimp 
20.0 
83.4 
0.0 
0.1502 
-1.45 
83 
Homarus americanus 
15.3 
0.7 
0.4 
Brachyura 
47.1 
1.1 
4.2 
0.0404 
-2.08 
83 
Pelagic fish 
Alosa spp. 
30.6 
1.1 
0.6 
Clupea harengus 
43.5 
0.5 
0.3 
Merluccius bilinearis 
56.5 
1.7 
0.2 
0.0003 
-3.74 
83 
Demersal fish 
Squalus acanthias 
61.2 
9.1 
56.8 
Leucoraja spp. 
70.6 
6.2 
2.1 
<0.0001 
-6.74 
83 
Melanogrammus aeglefinus 
14.1 
0.7 
0.5 
Urophycis chuss 
47.1 
2.2 
1.2 
0.0001 
-4.02 
83 
Urophycis regia 
23.5 
0.5 
0.8 
0.0468 
-2.02 
83 
Prionotus spp. 
27.1 
0.0 
1.6 
Myoxocephalus octodecemspinosus 
25.9 
0.7 
3.7 
<0.0001 
-5.79 
83 
Centropristis striata 
14.1 
0.6 
2.0 
Zoarces americanus 
21.2 
0.5 
4.8 
0.0001 
-4.14 
83 
Ammodytes spp. 
10.6 
0.6 
0.2 
Scophthalmus aquosus 
45.9 
0.4 
0.6 
<0.0001 
-7.46 
83 
Etropus spp. 
38.8 
2.2 
0.0 
0.2847 
-1.08 
83 
Paralichthys oblongus 
11.8 
0.1 
0.5 
Paralichthys dentatus 
24.7 
0.1 
1.3 
Limanda ferruginea 
12.9 
0.2 
1.7 
Pseudopleuronectes americanus 
34.1 
0.5 
1.9 
combined beam and bottom trawl analyses (Table 1). 
When the collections made with each gear type were 
analyzed separately, the percent frequency of occur¬ 
rence was calculated on the basis of stations sampled 
with an individual gear (Tables 2 and 3). Therefore, the 
total number and composition of the taxa used differed 
in the 3 analyses: comparison by gear type (n= 24; Ta¬ 
ble 1); comparison by WEA of collections made with the 
beam trawl (n= 28; Table 2); and comparison by WEA of 
collections made with a bottom trawl (n= 28; Table 3). 
Taxa that contributed significantly to the beam trawl 
(>1%) and bottom trawl (>3%) ordinations were used to 
describe the different communities that were collected, 
and the percentage contribution of these taxa to the 
ordination, which varied by analysis, allowed a clear 
graphic representation of their relationships. 
The R package “vegan” (Oksanen et al., 2015) was 
used to perform CCA on average proportion of taxa per 
station, estimated average individual weights for each 
taxon per station, and 6 explanatory variables for the 
2 types of WEA sampling: beam trawl only and bottom 
trawl only. Both categorical variables (sediment [1 to 7], 
light [day or night]), and continuous (latitude, longitude, 
depth, bottom water temperature and salinity) explana¬ 
tory variables were used, and they differed for each anal¬ 
ysis. Continuous variables were standardized to a mean 
of zero and a standard deviation of one. For the beam 
trawl analysis, latitude, longitude, depth, sediment, bot¬ 
tom water temperature, and salinity were the categori¬ 
cal variables used. Light was not examined for beam 
trawl catches because all sampling was done during 
hours of darkness. For the bottom trawl analysis, lati¬ 
tude, longitude, depth, light, bottom water temperature, 
and salinity were used. Day-of-year was used in both 
analyses as a covariable to compensate for seasonality 
in sample collections. Program (NEFSC or NEAMAP), 
