Graham Sherwood, Ph.D.

Graham is an ecologist, whose Fisheries Ecology lab research focuses on the intersections between food-web ecology, behavioral ecology, and energetics of diadromous, estuarine, coastal and continental shelf fish species. He uses a broad range of observational methods to discern patterns in movement, stock structure, feeding, growth, and reproduction of a broad range of commercially and ecologically important species in the northwest Atlantic (e.g., Atlantic cod, Atlantic herring, alewife, monkfish, American lobster, northern shrimp). This includes fisheries acoustics, tagging (conventional and electronic), stable isotope analysis, and various stock discriminating techniques like morphometrics and otolith microchemistry.

Recent work has focused on evaluating the efficacy of closed areas for rebuilding cod stocks, identifying cod spawning locations, using acoustics to track herring and northern shrimp abundance and distribution in coastal Maine, and examining alternate life-history strategies in cod.

Graham is the lead PI on GMRI’s flagship coastal ecosystem monitoring program known as the Casco Bay Aquatic System Survey (CBASS) and lead PI on a new NSF funded summer internship program – Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) – which began in 2019.