PhD Postgraduate Research Opportunity – Development of Distributional Indicators to Support MFSD

Funding Agency: Marine Institute

Description:

An exciting opportunity has arisen for a suitably qualified and strongly motivated graduate
to undertake a PhD as part of a collaboration between GMIT and the Marine Institute.
Under the European Union (EU) Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) EU member states are
committed to achieving “good environmental status” (GES) by 2020. Implementation of the MSFD
involves the development of appropriate indicators to assess state and monitor progress in relation to GES.
MSFD monitoring requirements overlap with those prescribed under other EU legislation including the
Common Fisheries Policy. Fish trawl surveys provide decades of spatially resolved abundance at length
data and provide a valuable resource from which to derive distributional indices and other species level
metrics.
This project uses data from the International Bottom Trawl Survey (IBTS) to develop distributional
indicators to support MSFD for the Celtic Seas Ecoregion. Geostatistical analysis of trawl survey data
will be used to assess size-dependant habitat associations for a selection of demersal fish species.
Temporal changes in fish distribution will be modelled and the underlying environmental and
anthropogenic drivers investigated. Distributional indices that provide unbiased measures of fish
distribution from trawl survey data will be developed and the potential to use such indices to support the
implementation of the MFSD will be evaluated.

Further information on this opportunity and the application process can be found at the following link.
http://www.marine.ie/…/Cullen%20Fellowship%20-%20Developmen…

For further information on the project please contact:
Dr Deirdre Brophy, Marine and Freshwater research Centre, GMIT deirdre.brophy@gmit.ie
Dr Cormac Nolan, Fisheries Ecosystems Advisory Services, Marine Institute cormac.nolan@marine.ie

Closing Date:
Monday, 26 September, 2016