Footnote 1. Sources for these documents include the New England Fishery Management Council (http://www.nefmc.org) and the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council (http://www.mafmc.org).

Footnote 2. Rountree (1997) summarized vessel level data for the otter trawl fishery for 1982-1992, prior to the availability of VTR data. Thus, her results are based on a combination of the commercial fisheries data and port agent reports. In 1992, a total of 1,012 vessels used otter trawl gear.

Footnote 3. Stevenson et al. (2004) used VTRs to map total days at sea (days absent) from 1995-2001 by 10-minute square. For the bottom otter trawl (fish) gear type, activity was concentrated in the western part of the Gulf of Maine, along the northwest edge of Georges Bank, east of Long Island, and along the shelf edge south of Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

Footnote 4. Target species is defined by the vessel captain prior to a fishing trip and is recorded in NMFS observer records. This differs from “main species” which is based on some measure of actual landings (e.g., greatest landed weight).

Footnote 5. The bottom trawl analysis focused on those variables that were in both the observer and VTR or permit records or could be determined from data within those records (Rossman [in prep])

Footnote 6. Variables with an asterisk (*) are available in the VTR or permit databases or can be derived from information within those databases (e.g. SST is derived using date, latitude and longitude from VTR records).

Footnote 7. For example, regulated minimum mesh sizes may create a truncated distribution when examined by species, and increases (decreases) in minimum mesh size may shift the mean value up (down).

Footnote 8. If a vessel was using both a monkfish DAS and a multispecies DAS the mesh size must conform to the multispecies minimum mesh size.

Footnote 9. The lobster fishery is an exception.

Footnote 10. FMP group was determined by summing landings for all species within a FMP (Appendix A). If landings for a FMP group of species was greater than or equal to 50% of landings, the trips was assigned to that FMP.

Footnote 11. From an economic perspective, it would be more reasonable to assume that the main species was that with the largest contribution to trip revenues. Historically, however, the bycatch analysis does not incorporate economic values, focusing instead on physical features such as weight. For consistency the same method was used in this study. This differs from target species, which is recorded in the observer data based on a vessel captain’s intentions at the beginning of the trip, but is not available for VTR records.

Footnote 12. Additional information on the climatology data source can be found at: http://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/products/product111.html

Footnote 13. Additional information on the satellite data sources can be found at the following links: AVHRR: http://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/products/product216.html. MODIS Terra and Aqua, see products 162 and 184 (http://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/products/product162.html and http://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/products/product184.html); GOES, see product 190 (http://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/products/product190.html).

Footnote 14. Bathymetry data was acquired from ETOPO Global 2’ Elevations CD, available from the National Geophysical Data Center.

Footnote 15. There are also concerns about possible errors in the VTR depth data with regard to units.

Footnote 16. Source: http://www.econstats.com; accessed September 1, 2005. This is the same deflator used in the annual Fisheries of the United States publication by NMFS.

Footnote 17. Information on the distribution of the individual species may be found in the Essential Fish Habitat Source Documents, which are part of the NOAA Technical Memorandum NMFS NE series. These documents are available through the NEFSC’s “EFH Source Documents: Life History and Habitat Characteristics” web page (http://www.nefsc.noaa.gov/nefsc/habitat/efh/; accessed July 20, 2007).

Footnote 18. Footrope length is also referred to as “sweep length” and is an indication of the width of the trawl opening.