June 16, 2015 — In the ocean off of Massachusetts, an unlikely alliance of scientists and fishermen is on a quest. They’re looking for mating codfish. The goal is not only to revive a depleted fish population but to save an endangered fishing community as well.
Cod were once so plentiful in New England waters that people used to say you could almost walk across their backs. Cod fueled a huge fishing industry. But now they’re scarce, mostly from overfishing.
If you want to be sure to find one, you can do what I did — visit the aquarium at Woods Hole, Mass. I went with Sofie Van Parijs, a biologist with the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Two pale brown, 2-foot-long fish swim in a tank. They have spots and a kind of racing stripe down the side, and a little whisker on the lower lip that’s a sense organ.
Van Parijs is part of a team of scientists hoping to bring this fish back from the brink. The government has tried, by lowering fishing limits drastically, but the cod haven’t bounced back. Then, a few years ago, biologists discovered a sound in the ocean they thought might help. It was nothing spectacular, just a kind of faint thumping against the background gurgle of the ocean.
“We kept seeing these repetitive calls over and over,” says Van Parijs, “and eventually we went to look and found out these were cod.” Biologists called it cod grunting. And they figured maybe they could track the fish by listening for their grunts. Then they could protect them, especially areas where cod spawn, since they seemed to grunt a lot during spawning season.