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This newsletter brings exciting updates: ROSA is proud to report growth in our support, developing a user-friendly tool for everyone to access the Fish FORWRD database, and our next Advisory Council meeting.
Growing Support For ROSA
ROSA is grateful to all our volunteers, agency representatives, and financial supporters. Thanks to our community, we have experienced tremendous collaboration with federal and state scientists, fishing community representatives and offshore wind developers. As we move into the next phase of our maturity as an organization, we seek to further increase trust with the commercial and recreational fishing industries, as well as our partners in the offshore wind development sector. We would like to take this opportunity to specifically thank the states of Maryland and New Jersey for their 2 year ROSA operational support commitments.
Because of the support from our community, ROSA is working to convene new collaborative sessions around the development, implementation, and evolution of Offshore Wind Fisheries Monitoring Plans. These sessions will provide a forum for sharing lessons learned, and coordination within and between groups of OSW developers, fishing industry representatives, regulatory agencies, and the research community that is putting these plans into action. Stay tuned for more information on these important collaborative sessions in the coming months.
If you would like to learn how you can contribute to ROSA’s work, please contact us info@rosascience.org, Subject: ROSA Support.
Regional Research Database to Become a User-Friendly Webtool
Fish FORWRD is ROSA’s database of regional research priorities and ongoing research related to offshore wind and fish and fisheries. Fish FORWRD is currently publicly available to download as an Excel spreadsheet, along with a report/manual, on our website. In the next few months, thanks to support from the consulting firm WSP, Inc. and offshore wind developer Attentive Energy, Fish FORWRD will evolve into a webtool with a more-user friendly interface. Our goal is to make Fish FORWRD more usable for ROSA and others to identify unaddressed research priorities. We are also identifying funding sources to support a semi-annual update to Fish FORWRD – let us know if you are interested in supporting! Email ROSA’s Research Director, Mike Pol mike@rosascience.org.
Save the Date for the Next ROSA Advisory Council Meeting
The next Advisory Council meeting, which is open to the public, will be held on September 29 from 1-3:30 pm EST. The agenda for the meeting will be posted on the Advisory Council page of our website; a meeting summary from the June Advisory Council meeting can now be found on this same page. This meeting will focus on upcoming data sharing initiatives (including the new Fisheries Monitoring Plan sessions). Please check the Advisory Council page on our website in August for the meeting agenda and registration links. I hope you will join us!
Annual Meeting of the American Fisheries Society August 20th-24th
ROSA will be very active for the third consecutive year at the Annual Meeting of the American Fisheries Society. At this year’s meeting in Grand Rapids, Michigan, ROSA will be exhibiting, co-convening the session on offshore wind, and presenting in the session. This year, we are teaming up with Tetra Tech, BOEM, NOAA Fisheries, NYSERDA, RODA, NOWRDC and The Nature Conservancy to convene 11 presentations, 5 posters, and a moderated discussion during the session. We hope to see you at the session or at our booth (#408).
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