MAY 2023 NEWS

ROSA is Pleased to Announce the Hiring of its New Executive Director

The Responsible Offshore Science Alliance (ROSA) is pleased to announce that Reneé Reilly, PhD, has been appointed by ROSA’s Board of Directors as its new executive director. Reneé officially assumed the role of executive director on May 8.

Reneé comes to ROSA with a strong background in fisheries management science and offshore wind development. Her experience includes close work with state, federal, and regional regulatory agencies; fishing industry representatives; and offshore wind developers to identify research priorities and science-based approaches to understanding effects of development. Reneé will strengthen these relationships while advancing ROSA as a research forum and funder, examining regional impacts of development and co-existence between fisheries and offshore wind development.

“We are very enthusiastic for Reneé’s leadership of ROSA and look forward to continuing our collaborative work with the fishing industry, offshore wind developers, and federal and state agency partners,” said Peter Hughes, co-chair of ROSA’s Board of Directors.

“Reneé brings valuable experience to her new role that will help ROSA continue our work on regional research to better understand interactions between wind and ocean ecosystems,” said Ruth Perry, PhD, co-chair of ROSA’s Board of Directors. “We are thrilled to be moving forward on ROSA’s important mission of science, collaboration, and communication.”

“ROSA will continue to develop the strong foundation our partners have established. The success of ocean co-use depends on active collaboration between the fisheries and offshore wind development industries; ROSA provides the forum for that collaboration and will facilitate increased coordination of research and solutions across the quickly-evolving landscape of offshore wind development,” said Reneé. “I am passionate about ROSA’s mission and proud to be leading the organization into its next phase of evolution, and I look forward to partnering with everyone in the ROSA community.”

Mike Pol, ROSA’s research director added: “Reneé has demonstrated the skills and experience necessary to effectively lead and direct ROSA as we progress and develop. I’m looking forward to working closely with her.”

Save the Date for the Next Advisory Council Meeting - June 12

The next Advisory Council meeting, which is open to the public, will take place on June 12 from 1-3:30 pm EST. ROSA’s new Executive Director Reneé Reilly will be introduced at the meeting, and the ROSA community will discuss important developments and updates. Please visit the ROSA website in coming weeks to review the agenda and register for the meeting.

ROSA Integrates Key Findings from Synthesis of Science Report into its Research Database

ROSA has incorporated the recommendations from the recently published National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) technical memorandum Fisheries and Offshore Wind Interactions: Synthesis of Science into its regional research database and data gap analysis, Fish FORWRD, to help optimize future research in the region. “This report represents an important endeavor by stakeholders in the region to synthesize relevant current and past research on the interactions among offshore wind development, fisheries, and the marine environment,” said Mike Pol, ROSA’s research director. “ROSA is proud to have played a role by handling peer review of the report and congratulates the collaborative team of report authors and contributors.” Synthesis of the Science (SoS) was a joint effort among NOAA Fisheries, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), and the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA).

SoS focused on five topics that project partners determined to be critical for consideration related to offshore wind: ecosystem effects, fisheries socioeconomics, fisheries management and data collection, methods and approaches, and regional science planning. The project consisted of a virtual workshop and the published report, which have the purpose of enhancing regional and national understanding of existing science and data gaps related to the interactions between offshore wind and fish and fisheries.

ROSA Intern Presents his ROSA Project at AFS Meetings

Will Shoup, who served as ROSA’s first intern last summer, recently presented his ROSA project at the Southern Division meeting of the American Fisheries Society (AFS) as well as presented a poster on the project at a meeting of the Tidewater Chapter of the AFS. While at ROSA last summer, Will undertook research on standards for fishery data being collected to measure the potential impact of offshore wind development. Will requested data from numerous fishery research programs along the East Coast and discovered that data fields are collected inconsistently: no two entities are gathering even essential data such as date and time in the same manner.

“Understanding the status of data collection is helpful to ROSA, as it works to encourage standards uniformity to enable data comparison across studies,” said Mike Pol, ROSA’s research director. “Will was instrumental in advancing our work on data standards, and we appreciate his spreading the word about his findings at these AFS meetings.”