Mary Elizabeth Matta

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration | NOAA · Alaska Fisheries Science Center

The Pacific sleeper shark Somniosus pacificus is a large-bodied and broad-ranging squaliform shark that occupies diverse habitats throughout the Pacific Ocean. Despite its large size and occurrence as bycatch in various commercial fisheries, little is known about even the most basic aspects of its biology and ecology. Observed declines in certain p...

There is a paucity of age data for chondrichthyan fishes owing, in large part, to limitations in traditional age estimation methods. Fourier transform near-infrared (FT-NIR) spectroscopy has shown promise as an alternative, more efficient method for acquiring age data from chondrichthyans. However, studies are limited to sharks in the southern hemi...

Identifying changes in fish growth is important for accurate scientific advice used for fisheries management, because environmental change is affecting fish growth and size-at-age is a critical component of contemporary stock assessment methods. Growth-increment biochronologies are time series of growth-increments derived from hard parts of marine...

The Bering Sea spans a wide latitudinal range, connecting with the temperate North Pacific Ocean to the south and the arctic Chukchi Sea to the north. Climate change has rapidly and significantly altered Bering Sea ecosystem dynamics. The biomass of predominantly boreal marine species have increased in the subarctic northern Bering Sea following re...

Fish otolith increment biochronologies can reveal factors contributing to growth. These annually resolved, multi-decadal biochronologies have been used to identify temporal and spatial patterns in growth variability. Here, we used a linear mixed modeling approach to determine the relative importance of intrinsic factors (e.g., sex, age) and extrins...

The Pacific Sand Lance (Ammodytes personatus) is a major component of the forage base for many species of marine birds, mammals, and fishes. Despite its ecological importance, relatively little is known regarding basic biology or life-history parameters for this species. Information on age and growth is particularly lacking for Pacific Sand Lance i...

The Aleutian Islands ecosystem is a highly dynamic marine environment that supports commercially important fish species, such as Atka Mackerel Pleurogrammus monopterygius and Northern Rockfish Sebastes polyspinis, and several large marine mammals, including the Steller sea lion (SSL) Eumetopias jubatus. To protect SSL foraging behavior and prey, tr...

Sand lance and sand eels (Ammodytes spp.) are a critical component in all northern latitude pelagic ecosystems. They are primary forage species for marine birds and mammals, target stocks for commercial fisheries in Europe and Asia, and prey to nearly all commercial fishes in the North Atlantic and North Pacific oceans. Throughout their range, ther...

Otolith growth-increment chronologies provide an approach for evaluating the impacts of both high-frequency (e.g., interannual) and low-frequency (e.g., interdecadal) climate variability on fish growth. A growth-increment biochronology spanning six decades, spanning several warm and cold climate regime periods, was developed for a commercially impo...

Historically, Pacific spiny dogfish (Squalus suckleyi) have been aged using dorsal fin spines, a method that was validated through bomb radiocarbon analysis and oxytetracycline tagging. However, ages generated using this method generally have poor precision and require estimation of missing growth bands in eroded spines, prompting a search for impr...

In addition to being an academic endeavour, the practical purpose of conducting age and growth studies on fishes is to provide biological data to stock assessment scientists and fisheries managers so they may better understand population demographics and manage exploitation rates. Age and size data are used to build growth models, which are a criti...

Shallow coastal waters of the Gulf of Alaska (GOA) serve as nursery habitats for young-of-year Pacific cod (Gadus macrocephalus). However, little is known regarding the relative contribution of these areas to the adult offshore stock. Trace elements incorporated into the otolith matrix can reflect the environmental conditions to which a fish has be...

The Pacific cod (Gadus macrocephalus) fishery in Alaska is large and economically important; in 2014 its ex-vessel value was $203.8 million. Management relies on integrated assessments that employ survey abundance trends and fishery catches as well as age compositions from assessment surveys. However, Pacific cod age determination based on otolith...

For many marine ecosystems, uncertainty about nursery locations and the spatial dynamics of juvenile fish impedes our understanding of fish production. Walleye pollock Gadus chalcogrammus occur throughout the coastal North Pacific Ocean and support some of the world's largest fisheries. We used otolith microchemistry to answer questions about wheth...

Annual growth patterns in the hard parts of marine organisms are often related to factors in the physical environment; investigators are increasingly borrowing methods from the field of dendrochronology (tree-ring science) to explore these relationships. When applied to otoliths of yellowfin sole Limanda aspera, an abundant and commercially importa...

The productivity and functioning of Bering Sea marine ecosystems are tightly coupled to decadal-scale environmental variability, as exemplified by the profound changes in community composition that followed the 1976-1977 shift from a cool to a warm climate regime. Longer-term ecosystem dynamics, including the extent to which this regime shift was e...

The Pacific spiny dogfish, Squalus suckleyi, is a small shark species commonly found in the North Pacific Ocean. Age determination for this species has historically been conducted by examination of the dorsal fin spine with little change in methodology since the 1930’s. Despite extensive use, there are two major caveats associated with fin spines a...

A total of 1357 specimens of Alaska skate Bathyraja parmifera were collected in the eastern Bering Sea by fisheries observers and during scientific groundfish surveys from 2003 to 2005. Male and female gonads were examined for maturity stage and seasonal reproductive timing. Based on seasonal reproductive data, including the occurrence of egg cases...

Dendrochronology (tree‐ring analysis) techniques have been increasingly applied to generate biochronologies from the otolith growth‐increment widths of marine and freshwater fish species. These time series strongly relate to instrumental climate records and are presumed to reflect interannual variability in mean fish condition or size. However, the...

The oxygen isotope ratio (δ(18) O value) of aragonite fish otoliths is dependent on the temperature and the δ(18) O value of the ambient water and can thus reflect the environmental history of a fish. Secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) offers a spatial-resolution advantage over conventional acid-digestion techniques for stable isotope analysis...

The Age and Growth Program at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center is tasked with providing age data in order to improve the basic understanding of the ecology and fisheries dynamics of Alaskan fish species. The primary focus of the Age and Growth Program is to estimate ages from otoliths and other calcified structures for age-structured modeling of...

Recent applications of dendrochronology (tree-ring techniques) have been used to develop biochronologies from the otolith growth increments of northern rock sole (Lepidopsetta polyxystra), yellowfin sole (Limanda aspera), and Alaska plaice (Pleuronectes quadrituberculatus) in the eastern Bering Sea. These techniques ensure that all growth increment...

Increasing studies have explored linkages between climate variability and fish growth, productivity, and survival throughout the North Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea. Recently, dendrochronology (tree-ring) techniques were applied to develop growth-increment chronologies from the otoliths of Bering Sea flatfish. In the current study, we extended a...

Dendrochronology (tree-ring science) techniques were applied to otolith growth increments in 3 flatfish species collected from the eastern Bering Sea: northern rock sole Lepidopsetta polyxystra, yellowfin sole Limanda aspera, and Alaska plaice Pleuronectes quadrituberculatus. Within each species, otoliths were visually crossdated to ensure that the...

The Alaska skate, Bathyraja parmifera, is the most abundant species of skate on the eastern Bering Sea shelf, accounting for over 90% of total skate biomass. However, little is known regarding the life history of this species despite its common occurrence as bycatch in several Bering Sea fisheries. This is the first study to focus on the age and gr...