Science

January 7, 2015 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

The Gulf of Maine is the first area to be surveyed by NOAA ships in 2015, with a hydrographic project scheduled for about 142 square nautical miles in January and February. The NOAA ship Ferdinand R. Hassler (homeported in New Castle, NH) will conduct the survey from January 5 to February 13, subject to weather and operational conditions, to acquire data for nautical chart updates.

Hassler will survey areas along the coast of southern Maine from Fletcher Neck to Moody Beach, and from Taylor Reef to Woody Island, which are heavily trafficked by commercial fishermen and are priority areas for NOAA chart updates.
 
A chart of the survey area is provided at this link. For more information, click here.

If you have questions, please contact Dawn Forsythe at dawn.forsythe@noaa.gov. If you have a gear conflict or damage issue, please contact Lt. Meghan McGovern at meghan.mcgovern@noaa.gov.

 

December 24, 2014 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:

The states of Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts are seeking four shrimp trawling vessels and captains to collect northern shrimp samples in four regions of the Gulf of Maine (Eastern Maine, Midcoast  Maine, Western Maine, and Massachusetts/New Hampshire region), beginning in mid- to late January, 2015, fishing approximately once every two weeks, until the shrimp are no longer carrying eggs, perhaps near the middle of March. There is a total of $10,000 available to pay the four project participants. Each participant will be required to conduct five research trips in one region, and will be compensated $500 per trip. Participants will also be allowed to land and sell up to 1,800 pounds of northern shrimp per trip.

In addition, Maine DMR is seeking five shrimp trapping vessels to collect northern shrimp samples, beginning February 1, 2015, approximately once every two weeks, until March 20, 2015. Trappers will be allowed to fish up to 10 traps each, hauled as often as necessary during the project, with a 100 lb weekly catch limit per vessel. Shrimp catches may be kept for personal use but not sold.

The purpose of the project is to collect northern shrimp samples during the winter period when the shrimp are in inshore waters, to collect data on the timing of the egg hatch, and the size, gender, and developmental stage of the shrimp.

Information on both solicitations can be found here. Please direct all inquiries and submissions to:

Maggie Hunter, ME DMR
PO Box 8
W. Boothbay Harbor ME  04556
margaret.hunter@maine.gov

Letters or e-mails must be received by 5pm, Thursday, January 8, 2015.

 

December 24, 2014 — Marine rocky habitats provide Essential Fish Habitat for many fish species – places where fish can feed, breed and grow. They are among the most structurally complex habitats in the ocean.

Rocky habitats are three-dimensional, providing both height in the water column and crevices between rocks. These crevices provide fish shelter from predators and strong water currents. Rocky habitats also contain a diversity of sessile (non-mobile) animals and algae that serve as food and cover for young fish.

These habitats include gravel, cobble and boulders. You might expect that a habitat made up of rocks would be rugged enough to withstand a lot of disturbance. That is not always the case. It’s really a matter of how much disturbance occurs. Natural or man-made disturbances that cause sedimentation, turbidity, water quality degradation, or directly contacts rocky substrate can harm or change these habitats.

Natural disturbances from typical storm events are usually not destructive because sessile organisms like barnacles and sea squirts are adapted to high-energy environments. They attach to rock surfaces and can remain upright in the moving current to take advantage of the influx of food and nutrients. However, this adaptation also makes them vulnerable to other disturbances they cannot escape. For instance, beach nourishment projects, where sand is used to restore beaches after major storms, can threaten these important habitats. Some of the sand placed on the beach may run off into the surrounding water. The runoff can cover nearby rocky habitats — filling crevices used by fish, or smothering the animals that live there.  Other human activities like undersea gravel mining, construction and navigation dredging can actually scrape away the rocks and animals that live there, resulting in a loss of structural complexity.

What do changes to rocky habitats mean for the fish and other marine life that use them? Scientific studies have shown that algal cover and attached marine organisms in rocky habitats are important in the survivorship of commercial and recreational species like juvenile Atlantic cod, and forage fish like blueback herring, alewife and shad.

For centuries, Atlantic cod supported important commercial and recreational fisheries along the New England coast. Today, the Gulf of Maine cod stock is in poor condition. The condition of the Georges Bank cod stock is not much better, with few young fish being born each year. Blueback herring and alewife, collectively known as river herring, and shad are key components of the marine food chain. While the numbers of alewife seem to be increasing in some rivers, both species’ overall populations are much lower than historic levels. Protecting rocky habitats is important to helping all of these species recover.

How does NOAA Fisheries protect these important habitats?

We make recommendations to other federal agencies that fund or permit beach nourishment, mining or construction projects. We want to help ensure that projects can move forward in a responsible way. The key is to both protect the rocks that make up the habitat and the attached organisms and macroalgae that are essential for fish.

Read the story at NOAA

December 29, 2014 — Half-submerged in the ocean east of Scituate, the canary-yellow glider with swept-back wings looked like little more than someone’s errant model plane. But appearances can be deceiving, especially in this electronic age where more and more sophisticated technology is being loaded into ever smaller and sleeker packages.

From his perch over the deck, Bob Wallace, captain of the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary research vessel Auk, swung the stern around so crew member Dave Slocum and Eric Matzen of the National Marine Fisheries Service could grapple the sophisticated torpedo that researchers hoped would provide valuable clues to the future of cod, the most iconic fish in New England.

In the Gulf of Maine, as many as 80 percent of legal-size cod die each year from fishing and natural causes and the size of the spawning stock is considered to be just 3 percent of what constitutes a healthy population. NMFS is considering reducing the annual catch to a level so low that it could shut down all fishing well before the limits on other, more plentiful species are caught.

Everyone agrees that finding cod spawning grounds is critical to rebuilding the species. Although significant anecdotal and research data exist on where and when cod spawning occurs, the areas and timing are so broad that shutting them down could result in significant closures and potentially cause fishermen unnecessary pain and economic losses.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

December 23, 2014 — The osprey comeback story added another happy chapter in 2014, a study released today by the Conserve Wildlife Foundation (CWF) of New Jersey finds.

Highlights of the 2014 Osprey Report, which provides the number of nesting pairs, active nests, and nest productivity for the raptors throughout New Jersey, include 420 active osprey nests (up from 395 in 2013) and 567 pairs (up from 542 in 2013).

In addition, the study notes that 339 known-outcome nests fledged an average of 2.02 young per active nest (a slight increase from 1.92 in 2013) and 526 young, a new all-time high, were banded by volunteers and staff with United States Geological Survey leg bands for future tracking.

New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection Division of Fish and Wildlife biologists, CWF biologists and dedicated volunteers collected the data.

Read the full story from NewsWorks.org

December 19, 2014 — Scientists have discovered a new species of fish that glides gently through the water on white, translucent wings 5 miles beneath the ocean surface.

It is the deepest living fish ever discovered.

"We were just blown away when we saw it," said Paul Yancey, a biology professor at Whitman College, Washington who studies how animals adapt to life in the deep sea. "Someone on the ship said it looks like a cross between a puppy, an angel and an eel."

The fish was first spotted in November during an international research cruise to the Mariana Trench — the deepest place on Earth.

The new fish, which has not yet been named, was discovered by accident. In the video above you can see it swimming around a series of tubes that were part of an instrument collecting mud samples from the sea floor.

The camera was supposed to be filming the core collecting, when suddenly this ghostly fish swam into view.

It is about 10 inches in length, and almost entirely transparent. The dense white part you can see is actually its skull, visible through its skin, Yancey said. It's lengthy, mostly see-through tail is probably made of gelatin.

Read the full story and watch the video at the Los Angeles Times

 

 

December 17, 2014 — The following was released by the American Bluefin Tuna Association:

In a new scientific paper Dr. Molly Lutcavage, and her colleagues Drs. Gilad Heinisch, Hanna Rosenfeld, Jessica M. Knapp and Hillel Gordin have discovered the critically important fact that western Atlantic bluefin tuna are sexually mature at a much younger age then currently assumed in ICCAT stock assessments. The accuracy of the input of size and age at sexual maturity in stock assessments is crucial for precise determination of spawning stock biomass (SSB) which is used as a key reference point to determine the health of a fish stock and its reproductive potential.

Applying a new approach utilizing a well characterized hormonal mechanism, which was part of Heinisch's PhD research, Dr. Lutcavage's team found that bluefin sampled in the Gulf of Maine and off Canada are sexually mature at 61 inches (155 cm) curved fork length (CFL), with some males beginning to mature at 52 inches (132 cm) CFL, considerably younger than age 9 currently used by NMFS and ICCAT to estimate the spawning stock biomass. The authors note that "Recent studies show that bluefin in the eastern and western Atlantic grow at the same rates, eat similar prey, and can mix on the same Atlantic feeding grounds early in life. With similar life histories, it's hard to see they could maintain vastly different maturity schedules." Eastern Bluefin are documented spawners at age 3-5 years old.

The team of scientists published their cutting edge research last month in Nature's prestigious 'Scientific Reports' where it underwent rigorous peer review prior to publication. Nature's Scientific Reports is one of the top ranked journals for natural and clinical sciences in the world today. The new approach of Dr. Lutcavage's team overcomes the limitations of the National Marine Fishery Service (NMFS) procedure of only sampling the size of catches on the known spawning grounds as an indicator of sexual maturity. This strategy ignored the possibility of alternative spawning scenarios which has always seemed likely given the much younger Mediterranean sexual maturity and the unlikelihood that such "an intrinsic feature of growth and life history schedules would vary widely" as maintained by the current biological and management assumptions originating from NMFS estimates.

According to Dr. Lutcavage "We needed to analyze sexual maturity in bluefin of different sizes where they mix, on their feeding grounds such as the Gulf of Maine. But since this is not a breeding location, fish lack the obvious characteristics of those in spawning condition. We had to come up with a novel approach … (and) endocrine tools, recently developed in Israel for bluefin aquaculture, were just what we were looking for." She further notes that "Endocrine profiling, however, provides alternative direct and accurate information on sexual maturation."

In the most recent October 2014 stock assessment, under the current NMFS age 9 hypothesis, the spawning biomass of age 9 through age 16+ estimates 136,745 individual spawners. Using the Heinisch et al. new scientific findings of western sexual maturity by age 5-6 the corrected number of fish in the spawning stock biomass will be substantially higher.

This new peer reviewed science and scientific advice could not be any clearer and takes a step toward improving the stock assessment with fishery independent science, a goal that fishermen and researchers have shared for a long time. The authors note that "Therefore a revision of the western ABFT maturity schedule is warranted". Tens of thousands of western Atlantic bluefin fishermen and stakeholders anxiously await the ICCAT Bluefin Working Group and SCRS adoption and implementation in the next stock assessment of the "best available science" on sexual maturity of western Atlantic bluefin tuna.

Contact: Rich Ruais, Executive Director, American Bluefin Tuna Association

 

December 16, 2014 — Climate change seems to be pushing several species of fish and crustaceans northward along the east and west coasts of North America which could have serious effects on birds, marine mammals and those who depend on fishing for food and income.

“As temperatures have warmed in the waters off our coasts, animals with a low tolerance for that warming have just picked up and shifted,” says Malin Pinsky, a marine biologist at Rutgers who is leading a team researching these shifts. “I hesitate to say ‘moved,’ mainly because we don’t yet know whether fish are actually swimming, or whether they’re simply reproducing more slowly in their old ranges and faster in their new ranges.”

Pinsky says lobsters that were once abundant off Long Island have moved to cooler waters of Maine while summer flounder and black sea bass, once common to the waters off Cape Hatteras, have moved north and are now more abundant off the coast of New Jersey.

During the past 18 months, Pinsky, an assistant professor of ecology and evolution in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, has published two papers — Climatic Change in October 2012 and Science in September 2013 — documenting this trend and exploring its implications. He and his team have found that the shift northward is happening at different rates among the species not because of their biological differences but due to the rate and direction of climate change in their waters.

Read the full story from Rutgers

December 16, 2014 — Usually, it's Hollywood that's inspired by the U.S. military. This time, it's the other way around.

The U.S. Navy is developing a robotic fish for possible use in naval operations, Virginia's Daily Press reports. The name of the project: "Silent Nemo," in a nod to the popular 2003 Disney film "Finding Nemo."

The unmanned, biometric device — dubbed "Ghost Swimmer" — is being developed by the Office of Naval Research Rapid Innovation Cell and Boston Engineering. Controlled by a joystick, the 5-foot, 100-pound, tuna-sized "fish" took part in an underwater test swim last week at Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story in Virginia.

Read the full story and watch the video at Yahoo News

NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — December 9, 2014 — The following was released by the New Bedford Ocean Explorium:

The collaboration between the Ocean Explorium and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution wrapped up on December 4.  Funded by the National Science Foundation, the joint project resulted in an Ocean Explorium exhibit "Life, Smoke, and Fire – Underwater:  Deep Sea Vents Explored" which included artifacts from expeditions to the deep sea floor as well as special Science on a Sphere® presentations.
 
Principal Investigator for the project, Dr. Stace Beaulieu, presented project results at a Biology Seminar at Woods Hole attended by graduate students and colleagues. Dr. Beaulieu and her team, including Kate Madin, Kathy Patterson, Meredith Emery, Annette Brickley and others, conducted public outreach at the Ocean Explorium.  Evaluations, performed before and after exposure to the exhibit and related presentations, indicate gains in learning for every audience:  youth, life-long learners and educators.
 
The collaboration kicked off one year ago when Dr. Beaulieu spoke at an Ocean Explorium Global Voice event.  She introduced the project and spoke of her research on deep-sea life.  In addition, there were two free Family Science Nights at the Ocean Explorium focused on the Deep Sea Vent exhibit.  At each of these, members of the public participated in Skype chats with scientists aboard research vessels at sea, engaged in a variety of interactive activities and viewed presentations on the Science on a Sphere® (SOS).  Content from the collaboration is available for viewing on You Tube and at the NOAA SOS Users' Network website.
 
Ocean Explorium Executive Director Abbey Spargo attended the wrap-up session and stated that "The report on the collaboration was well received by the scientific community at Woods Hole.  Dr. Beaulieu did a wonderful job overseeing all of the project components and her team, working with the staff at the Ocean Explorium, was exemplary in delivering interest and excitement to our audiences.  This project successfully modeled the collaboration of formal research science and informal science education, and the beneficiaries were students who engaged with the new exhibit in field trips, families who discovered the Deep Sea together and the greater New Bedford community."