334 
Fishery Bulletin 116(3-4) 
Details, such as described here, will help form predic¬ 
tions about the ways in which population abundance 
and geographic distribution may change (Cheung et ah, 
2016). In this regard, black sea bass is an informative 
stock to watch in the future. 
Looking farther north, there is scant but growing 
evidence of black sea bass reaching the northern Gulf 
of Maine. Bigelow and Schroeder (1953) regarded black 
sea bass as ‘a rare stray from the south,’ mostly cap¬ 
tured in offshore waters off Massachusetts, and not 
known north of Maine’s Matinicus Island (43°51'N). 
Even today, evidence that black sea bass are moving 
seasonally into the northern Gulf of Maine is the result 
more of anecdotal accounts than survey records. Recent 
state records have been reported in New Hampshire 
(Xu 6 ), there have been accounts of increased bycatch 
of black sea bass in lobster pots (Rudalevige, 2015), 
and rare catches (3 fish from 2012 to 2016) have been 
reported in an inshore trawl survey along coastal New 
Hampshire and Maine (Sherman et al. 7 ). During the 
NMFS-NEFSC trawl survey, few black sea bass were 
captured in offshore waters of Maine, either in the 
spring (Suppl. Material) or in the autumn (data not 
depicted but only 2 adults north of 43°N). Still, the 
northward expansion of this species led to the imple¬ 
mentation of fishing regulations in 2014. 8 
Will this expansion of spawning and nursery grounds 
contribute to greater population productivity or resil¬ 
iency? Maybe, but another phase of the first year needs 
to be recognized. Miller et al. (2016) report that cohort 
strength is limited by overwintering survival, a juve¬ 
nile phase later than that examined here. Therefore 
warming near the shelf break may be more important 
to recruitment variability than warming in the Gulf of 
Maine. However, these relationships often break down 
when new data are added. If expansion of spawning 
and nursery grounds continues northward, then the 
corresponding effect on increasing local productivity 
could interact, perhaps nonlinearly, with Miller et al.’s 
(2016) predictive model of year-class strength. The in¬ 
formation reported in this study provides additional 
context regarding the dynamics of the early life history 
of black sea bass, because year class strength may be 
set at multiple stages of ontogeny. 
Acknowledgments 
This research was in partial fulfillment of a M.S. the¬ 
sis (M. Tweedie) from the University of Massachusetts 
6 Xu, D. 2015. New Hampshire angler catches potential re¬ 
cord black sea bass. Outdoorhub [Available from website, 
accessed May 2018.] 
7 Sherman, S. A., K. L. Stepanek, F. Pierce, R. Tetrault, and 
R. Eckert. 2014. Annual report on the Maine-New Hamp¬ 
shire Inshore Trawl Survey, January 1, 2013-December 31, 
2013, Contract #NA07NMF4720357, 9 p. Submitted to the 
NOAA Fisheries Northeast Region Cooperative Research 
Partners Program. [Available from website.] 
department of Marine Resources, 13-188, C.M.R. chap. 
51 [Available from website.] 
Dartmouth. Many, many hands supported the ground- 
fish surveys, in particular, from the MA-DMF, J. King, 
V. Manfredi. J. Dayton (NEFSC), and S. Elzey (MA- 
DMF) aged, in years, black sea bass. R. Jakuba, J. 
Kocik, C. Lipsky, K. Mills, H. Walsh provided data or 
information used herein or in the supplemental mate¬ 
rials, and D. Bernal, A. Miller, and G. Shepherd, pro¬ 
vided constructive comments on earlier drafts. 
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