The results suggest that monkfish movements are driven by seasonal changes in bottom temperature. Monkfish relative abundance was modeled using a generalized linear mixed model with a Tweedie distribution, and the final model, with month, depth, and bottom temperature as fixed effects, effectively explained the seasonal shifts in the location and relative abundance of monkfish observed during this study. Monkfish catch peaked in the summer and early fall when they were caught across the entire survey area, while they were caught only in deeper waters at the edges of the bank in the winter. Over the course of the survey, more than 6,000 monkfish were caught and measured, and clear seasonal changes in monkfish abundance were documented. We examined changes in the seasonal distribution and relative abundance of monkfish in the scallop access areas in Closed Area I and Closed Area II on Georges Bank using catch data from a three-year seasonal scallop dredge survey. The American monkfish is an important commercial species that is widely distributed across a range of depths and temperatures from North Carolina to southern Nova Scotia, including on Georges Bank. As the global human population increasingly occupies coastal zones, effective planning of coastal development, including bridge and other in-water construction, will be essential to support conservation and recovery efforts for manatees and other species at risk in these areas. To prevent large-scale negative effects of construction on manatees and other aquatic species, use and evaluation of mitigation strategies should be implemented pre-, during, and post-construction. Some effects of construction may be immediately difficult to quantify, but cumulative effects through time can result in major habitat and species loss. Indirect effects from construction such as habitat obstruction or degradation and increased noise from construction activities can alter behavior and intraspecies communication and reduce access to essential resources. Direct effects such as vessel interactions, entanglement or ingestion, and entrainment may result in acute physical injury or mortality. Stages of bridge construction including dredging, pile driving, and installation and assembly of bridge components each involve potential direct and indirect effects on manatees. We reviewed relevant literature and obtained exemplary case studies to synthesize potential effects of bridge construction on the West Indian manatee (Trichechus manatus), a nearshore megafauna species vulnerable to human activities. Construction of bridges as part of transportation networks introduces a series of risks to aquatic species near construction zones. Globally, increasing coastal development requires construction and maintenance of transportation infrastructure that affects terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. This change in spatiotemporal range for sea turtles in a region of high anthropogenic use may prompt adjustments to the localized protected species conservation measures. Our results suggest that loggerhead thermal habitat and seasonal duration will likely increase in northern regions of the NW Atlantic shelf. This model was then forced by a high-resolution global climate model under a doubling of atmospheric CO2 to project loggerhead probability of presence over the next 80 years. The calculated core bathythermal range consisted of SSTs between 15.0° and 28.0 ☌ and depths between 8.0 and 92.0 m, with the highest probability of presence occurred in regions with SST between 17.7° and 25.3 ☌ and at depths between 26.1 and 74.2 m. The best-fitting model indicated that the habitat envelope for tagged loggerheads consisted of SST ranging from 11.0° to 29.7 ☌ and depths between 0 and 105.0 m. Tag location data combined with depth and remotely sensed sea surface temperature (SST) were used to characterize the species' current thermal range in the MAB. Between 20, we deployed 196 satellite tags on loggerheads within the Middle Atlantic Bight (MAB) of the Northwest Atlantic continental shelf region, a seasonal foraging area. Here we used a high-resolution global climate model and a large satellite tagging dataset to project changes in the future distribution of suitable thermal habitat for loggerheads along the northeastern continental shelf of the United States. However, few studies have formally projected how their seasonal marine habitat may shift in response to warming ocean temperatures. It is well established that sea turtles are vulnerable to atmospheric and oceanographic shifts associated with climate change.
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