Jonathan White

Marine Institute · Fisheries Ecosystems Advisory Services (FEAS)

The rapid advancement of digital technologies such as digital twins, AI and machine learning has opened up promising avenues for ecological actions, including conservation, research and restoration. These technologies offer improved monitoring capabilities that can enhance our understanding of ecological processes and biodiversity. The EU-funded DI...

WKBSalmon reviewed the implementation of a Life Cycle Model (LCM) for wild anadromous Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar L.) covering their natal north Atlantic range. The LCM is a time iterative, Bayesian hierarchical model incorporating salmon records of fifteen countries at 25 stock-units. It tracks salmon of two explicit sea-age streams, namely, one-...

Microplastics are a major global concern in the marine environment. The use of marine biota to monitor MP pollution has been previously highlighted as a method of providing data. This review focuses on the current data available on the presence of microplastics in Nephrops norvegicus, a commercially important seafood species, highlighting the advan...

WGNAS met to consider the status of and threats to Atlantic salmon in the North Atlantic Salmon Conservation Organisation (NASCO) commission areas: West Greenland (WGC), North American (NAC), and Northeast Atlantic (NEAC). Many updates are provided for 2021 and 2022 as WGNAS was not able to address all terms of reference (ToRs) in 2022. Information...

Empirical harvest control rules set catch advice based on observed indicators and are increasingly being used worldwide to manage fish stocks that lack formal assessments of stock and exploitation status. Within the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, trend-based rules that adjust advice according to recent survey observations hav...

International wild Atlantic salmon management priorities have moved from exploitation to conservation since the 1990s, recognizing the need to protect diversity and abundance at individual river levels amid widespread declines. Here we review international salmon-stock assessments and describe a simple, transferable catch-advice framework, establis...

The Workshop on stock identification of West of Scotland cod (WK6aCodID) convened to recommend the most plausible scenario of population structure for stock assessment and fishery management advice. The review considered geographic variation and movements of cod lifestages inferred from genetic analyses, scientific surveys, fishery data, tagging, a...

Microplastics (MPs) are an extensive global contaminant in the marine environment, known to be ingested by marine organisms. The presence of MPs in the commercially important marine decapod crustacean Nephrops norvegicus (Dublin Bay Prawn) has been documented for the North-East Atlantic and the Mediterranean, however, uncertainties remain about ret...

The presence of microplastics (MPs), a contaminant of emerging concern, has attracted increasing attention in commercially important seafood species such as Nephrops norvegicus. This species lend themselves well as bioindicators of environmental contamination owing to their availability, spatial and depth distribution, interactions with seafloor se...

The Sixth Workshop on an Ecosystem Based Approach to Fishery Management for the Irish Sea (WKIRISH6), set out to operationalise the WKIrish regional benchmark process. WKIrish aimed to incorporate ecosystem information into the ICES single-species stock assessment process for the Irish Sea. Three independent ecosystems models have been in developme...

The number of wild Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar L.) has periodically declined throughout their native range (Chaput, 2012; ICES, 2015). Most countries bordering the North Atlantic have had extensive tagging programmes for salmon at different life stages over the past 50 years, with large numbers of tagged salmon recaptured in oceanic fisheries th...

Multiple processes act at different stages and different intensities within the timeline between spawning and the age designated as “recruitment”. However, common practice is to model only a single step between spawning stock and recruits. Reasons for this practice include lack of data on the intermediate stages, lack of understanding of the mechan...

Premature migration is a key component of the biocomplexity of anadromous fishes, yet remains poorly understood. Many Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) populations leave the ocean in spring, months prior to spawning, though this curtails feeding in productive marine environments. We hypothesized that habitat features encourage the evolution of this tra...

Workshop to address the NASCO request for advice on possible effects of salmonid aquaculture on wild Atlantic salmon populations in the North Atlantic [WKCULEF], Copenhagen, Denmark, 1–3 March 2016. Chairs: Ian Russell (UK) and Ole Torrissen (Norway). Number of meeting participants: 25 representing six countries: Norway (ten), Ireland (four), UK (S...

Following advice from the International Council for the Exploration of the Seas and North Atlantic Salmon Conservation Organization, Irish salmon stocks have been managed on a river-by-river basis since 2007 with biological reference points (BRPs) based on maximum sustainable yield (MSY). A method for estimating BRPs at the river scale and the asso...

Providing generic and cost effective modelling approaches to reconstruct and forecast freshwater temperature using predictors as air temperature and water discharge is a prerequisite to understanding ecological processes underlying the impact of water temperature and of global warming on continental aquatic ecosystems. Using air temperature as a si...

Integrated life cycle models are key tools for an ecosystem approach to fish population dynamics and stock assessment. They allow analysing ecological processes underlying the spatio-temporal variability of different life stages, together with the integration of multiple interacting sources of environmental and anthropogenic stressors along the lif...

We developed a hierarchical Bayesian integrated life cycle model for Atlantic salmon that improves on the stock assessment approach currently used by ICES and provides some interesting insights about the population dynamics of a stock assemblage. The model is applied to the salmon stocks in eastern Scotland. It assimilates a 40-year (1971–2010) tim...

Homologue and congener profiles of PCDD/Fs in eels, passive sampler and sediment extracts from the Burrishoole, a rural upland catchment on the western Irish seaboard were compared with potential PCDD sources. SPCDD/F levels in eels ranged from 2.9 to 25.9 pg g�1 wet weight, which are elevated compared to other Irish locations. The OCDD congener do...

Length–weight regressions for seven grenadier species: Coryphaenoides rupestris Gunnerus, 1765, Trachyrincus murrayi Günther, 1887, Coelorinchus caelorhincus (Risso, 1810), Nezumia aequalis (Günther, 1878), Coryphaenoides mediterraneus (Giglioli, 1893), Coelorinchus labiatus (Köhler, 1896), and Coryphaenoides guentheri (Vaillant, 1888) are calculat...

Homologue and congener profiles of PCDD/Fs in eels, passive sampler and sediment extracts from the Burrishoole, a rural upland catchment on the western Irish seaboard were compared with potential PCDD sources. ΣPCDD/F levels in eels ranged from 2.9 to 25.9 pg g(-1) wet weight, which are elevated compared to other Irish locations. The OCDD congener...

Reddin, D. G., Hansen, L. P., Bakkestuen, V., Russell, I., White, J., Potter, E. C. E., Dempson, J. B., Sheehan, T. F., Ó Maoiléidigh, N., Smith, G. W., Isaksson, A., Jacobsen, J. A., Fowler, M., Mork, K. A., and Amiro, P. 2013. Distribution and biological characteristics of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) at Greenland based on the analysis of histor...

Jacobsen, J. A., Hansen, L. P., Bakkestuen, V., Halvorsen, R., Reddin, D. G., White, J., Ó Maoiléidigh, N., Russell, I.C., Potter, E. C. E., Fowler, M., Smith, G. W., Mork, K. A., Isaksson, A., Oskarsson, S., Karlsson, L., and Pedersen, S. 2012. Distribution by origin and sea age of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) in the sea around the Faroe Islands...

Bayesian modelling of the dynamics of complex of salmon populations in the North Atlantic

Pollution by metals has been of increasing concern for a number of decades but at present, the mechanism of metal accumulation in sentinel species is not fully understood and further studies are required for environmental risk assessment of metals in aquatic environments. The use of caging techniques has proven to be useful for assessment of water...

The potential impact of sea lice infestation on outwardly migrating Atlantic salmon smolts has been investigated by treating populations of ranched salmon, prior to release, with a prophylactic sea lice treatment conferring protection from sea lice infestation, for up to 9 weeks. Established populations of ranched Atlantic salmon with well describe...

Catches are examined on a routine basis from fish dealers premises, commercial and recreational landings in Ireland. Up to 2006, the catch examined comprised principally of drift net catches from the major salmon fishing areas of Donegal, Mayo, Galway and Limerick and the South West (Cork and Kerry). With the closure of the mixed stock fisheries at...

Restocking is a widely used tool in Ireland to mitigate against the loss of salmon populations caused by creation of hydropower dams, river drainage and pollution. Strategies have included restocking with all stages in-river supplemented with substantial releases of hatchery-reared smolts. The efficacy of restocking with regard to establishing self...

Recommended operating guidelines for underwater video and photographic imaging techniques

The MESH Guide to habitat mapping aims to provide a methodological framework for marine habitat mapping so that future mapping studies will produce high quality data and maps which are inter-compatible and their outputs can be assimilated into common, harmonised maps. It will help to make habitat maps more compatible by illustrating tried and teste...

MESH Action 4 aims to model the occurrence of seabed habitats, related to both soft substrata and rocky habitats. In general biological data are scarce or not available; as such the prediction of the occurrence of seabed habitats heavily relies on the correlation between environmental variables and biological data. MESH Action 4 consists of differe...

The Geological Survey of Ireland began surveying the Irish EEZ in 1999. Since then, in strategic partnership with the Marine Institute, as the Irish National Seabed Survey (INSS), 413 760 km2 of Irish waters between the 200 m and 4500 m contours have been surveyed. Prior to collection of these data, much of the Irish coastal area was last surveyed...

Historically, ecological assessment of lakes has depended on open‐water chemical and phytoplankton analysis, with trophic status determined by chlorophyll a and total phosphorus following the general protocol of the OECD lake classification scheme. This has been accompanied by a prevailing opinion that the littoral zone of lakes is too heterogeneou...

This report summarises the coverage and availability of national and international oceanographic data sets for Irish waters, investigated as part of a Marine Institute - National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) retrospective study analysis of the Northeast Atlantic.

There is limited information about the role of floodplain forests in maintaining aquatic biodiversity. Preliminary data from two European floodplain forests are presented: the Gearagh in southern Ireland and the Litovelske Pomoravi in the Czech Republic. The Litovelske Pomoravi contains a community constrained by moderate water quality but includin...

This document reports the analysis of multibeam bathymetric and backscatter data, grab sample and video data and fisheries catch data over an area known as the Greencastle Codling Bank off the north coast of Ireland for the purpose of habitat mapping.

The application of a statistical procedure to the objective stratification of ground-truthing is presented and tested. Optimal allocation analysis (OAA) may be used in a two- stage approach to habitat mapping whereby remotely- sensed data is collected first followed by a ground- truthing campaign. OAA uses areas of ground-types, as assessed from re...