16 April 2026. We are excited to share that Marine Ecology Progress Series today published our synthesis paper on Black Sea Bass in Long Island Sound!

The publication combines laboratory research on juvenile and adult black sea bass with ocean and climate modeling to make the case that these fish are already or at some point soon likely to change their habit of moving offshore in winter. This is because inshore waters are warming, so the fish can stay longer in fall and return earlier in spring, but also because the whole Northwest Atlantic shelf is warming, which reduces the distance the fish need to swim to reach overwinter habitat.

In the laboratory, PhD student Max Zavell with the help of his dedicated undergraduate assistants Matt Mouland and David Barnum conducted 2 overwinter experiments on juveniles to simulate their thermal experience of migrating offshore or remaining within Long Island Sound (LIS). Surprisingly, this showed that overwintering inshore caused only minor reductions in survival (100→84%), led to no loss in lipid reserves, but incurred a growth cost in both length and weight.

Thanks to the involvement of two inhouse physical oceanography groups (James O'Donnell, Samantha Siedlecki), we were able to project how mean LIS winter temperatures will increase from 3.2°C to 4.8°C by mid-century, which reduces the average time black sea bass cannot live in LIS by 30%, from 95 to 68d per year. A separate shelf model projected the rapid northward movement of the 10°C isotherm in February bottom temperatures on the Northwest Atlantic shelf - this reduces the overwinter migration distance from  ~600 to ~120 km by mid-century!

Inshore overwintering will become increasingly feasible for black sea bass, perhaps lead to partial migration that furthers the poleward range expansion of this species.

The publication results from a particularly strong interdisciplinary collaboration of no less than 5 research labs: The Baumann and Schultz lab dedicated to fisheries and evolutionary fish ecology, the Matassa Lab with expertise in benthic ecology, the O'Donnell and Siedlecki groups dealing with modeling projections for nearshore and offshore waters in the North-Atlantic. The publication is an example of inclusiveness, given that the list of authors not only includes the graduate student as the lead, but also two particularly engaged undergraduate students, in addition to two post-doctoral researchers and the 5 more senior faculty. 

• Zavell, M.D., Mouland, M.E.P., Barnum, D.F., Chen, Z., Siedlecki, S., O’Donnell, J., De Vos, M., Matassa, C.M., Schultz, E.T., and Baumann, H. (2025)
  Experiments and ocean models predict diminishing benefits of offshore overwinter migration in northern stock black sea bass
  Marine Ecology Progress Series 783:meps15114 (Open Access, 16 April 2026)