Models that account for sex‐specific behavior and population dynamics are becoming more common in the stock assessment of sexually dimorphic fishes. However, such models can be data intensive and require some knowledge or assumptions about the sex ratio of fishery landings. A recent stock assessment review of Summer Flounder Paralichthys dentatus identified the need to account for sex‐specific fishing mortality in the assessment model; however, no data on the sex composition of the catch were available. Fishery‐independent, sex‐specific information for this species is collected annually by the National Marine Fisheries Service's Northeast Fisheries Science Center during their bottom trawl survey. Sex at age from the survey could be applied to the fishery landings if the probability of landing a given sex at a given age is equivalent for fish collected by the survey and those in the landings. To generate the first regionally comprehensive database on the sex ratio of Summer Flounder landings and to determine the efficacy of using survey sex‐at‐age keys to estimate the sex of landed fish, we recorded the sex composition of the commercial and recreational catches of Summer Flounder (n = 31,912) in 2010 and 2011. When (1) trawl survey length data were left‐truncated to simulate the minimum retention sizes in the fisheries and (2) age–length keys generated from fishery‐dependent data were applied to length frequency distributions from the survey to simulate the growth rates of landed fish, the sex‐at‐age pattern in the survey‐derived data closely resembled the patterns in the catch. However, statistically significant differences in sex at age remained between the catch and the survey‐derived data. We hypothesize that these differences are attributable to differences in the spatiotemporal distributions of the sexes and of the survey and fishing effort. Received March 9, 2015; accepted June 23, 2015

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The Northwest Tropical Atlantic Station (NTAS) was established to address the need for accurate air-sea flux estimates and upper ocean measurements in a region with strong sea surface temperature anomalies and the likelihood of significant local air-sea interaction on interannual to decadal timescales. The approach is to maintain a surface mooring outfitted for meteorological and oceanographic measurements at a site near 15°N, 51°W by successive mooring turnarounds. These observations are used to investigate air-sea interaction processes related to climate variability. The NTAS Ocean Reference Station (ORS NTAS) is supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Global Ocean Monitoring and Observing (GOMO) Program (formerly Ocean Observing and Monitoring Division). This report documents recovery of the NTAS-17 mooring and deployment of the NTAS-18 mooring at the same site. Both moorings used Surlyn foam buoys as the surface element. These buoys were outfitted with two Air-Sea Interaction Meteorology (ASIMET) systems. Each system measures, records, and transmits via satellite the surface meteorological variables necessary to compute air-sea fluxes of heat, moisture and momentum. The upper 160 m of the mooring line were outfitted with oceanographic sensors for the measurement of temperature, salinity and velocity. The mooring turnaround was done by the Upper Ocean Processes Group of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), onboard R/V Ron Brown, Cruise RB-20-01. The cruise took place between January 6 and 26 2020. The NTAS-18 mooring was deployed on January 10, and the NTAS-17 mooring was recovered on January 15. Inter-comparison between ship and buoys were performed on this cruise. This report describes these operations, as well as other work done on the cruise and some of the pre-cruise buoy preparations. Other operations during RB-20-01 consisted in the acoustic communications with the Meridional Overturning Variability Experiment (MOVE) subsurface mooring array MOVE 1-13 and acoustic downloads of data from Pressure Inverted Echo Sounders (PIES) was also conducted at MOVE 1. MOVE is designed to monitor the integrated deep meridional flow in the tropical North Atlantic. Two ARGO floats were also deployed on behalf of the WHOI ARGO group. During the cruise, atmospheric measurements of aerosols, as well as radar, Lidar, radiosondes were made as part of the ATOMIC campaign.

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