Executive Summary
The UMass/NOAA Cooperative Marine Education and Research (CMER) Program is now in its seventh year. Established in early 1989 under a Cooperative Agreement between the University of Massachusetts (UMass) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the CMER Program combines university and agency expertise to address marine issues affecting the Commonwealth, region, and nation. As of October 1995, cooperative projects funded through the UMass/NOAA CMER Program have totaled close to $900,000, have involved 24 UMass faculty and staff, and have supported close to 70 undergraduate and graduate students. On the NOAA side, agency scientists have been participating in the CMER Program as principal investigators, academic instructors, and chairs and members of graduate student committees. A considerable amount of facilities and equipment have also been donated to the CMER Program by UMass and NOAA.Base funding for the CMER Program is provided by NOAA through the Northeast Fisheries Science Center. Most of the funds available to the CMER Program in 1995 will be used to start new projects; many projects begun during 1989-1994 have been or are nearing completion. New studies starting in 1995 include understanding the effect of contaminants on reproduction of winter flounder, compiling sources of information related to habitat use by Hudson River fishes, developing new methods to detect trace metals in phytoplankton, determining the habitat and genetic limits to recovering shortnose sturgeon, and assessing the effects of predation on Atlantic salmon smolts in the Merrimack River.
