Resources

Gulf of Maine Library Collection

Continental Shelves. H. Postma, J.J. Zijlstra. 1988. 57 pp.

The continental shelf off the northeast coast of the United States is one of the most intensively studied regions of the North Atlantic. For three and half centuries the ecosystem has supported large and important common-resource fisheries, extending from the export trade in salted cod of the early colonists in the late 17th Century to the heavy exploitation of the total fin-fish biomass in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. Uses of the shelf as a source of petrogenic hydrocarbons and as a repository for wastes had heightened concerns for the ‘health’ of the ecosystem. In an effort to provide the information base from which the ecosystem perturbation could be monitored and forecast, the National Marine Fisheries Service of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration initiated a long-term study of the northeast shelf. This resource is part of a effort to continue updating the analysis from on-going surveys of the northeast shelf. This document provides the most recent information and description of all aspects of the continental shelves in the northeast.

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