Science

WOODS HOLE, Mass., — February 8, 2014 — It was the Saturday after the Fourth of July 2012 and Nauset Beach in Orleans was packed with thousands of swimmers, surfers and kayakers. They were unaware that just 150 feet offshore, Large Marge, a 16-foot-long female great white shark, was swimming slowly north, undetected in just 8 feet of water.

Then, Marge did something Cape Cod great whites rarely do. She surfaced, and the surreal sight of that flat gray triangle gliding along and the enormous shadow beneath it immediately caught paddleboarder Dana Richardson's eye.

Richardson shouted a warning, waving his paddle at kayaker Walter Szulc Jr. who was unaware that he was being followed until he looked over his shoulder, saw the fin at arm's length and the big gray body slipping under his small plastic vessel.

It was the photo that shot around the world, even though Large Marge didn't cause any harm other than momentary panic and a temporary beach closure.

According to one theory, Marge might just be one of a handful of dominant great whites that have set up territory on the Outer Cape like a lion at a watering hole, where she prefers to hunt for seals without much competition from other sharks. If that's true, she's staked out an area off Orleans and Eastham that may be the most popular and populated territory on the Cape for another water-loving species — us.

It was only fitting then, that the next time Marge made the news, her exact position, right down to every beat of her tail, was tracked with unprecedented precision and recorded on high-definition video by a 5-foot-long self-propelled yellow torpedo. A relatively new marine research tool, this autonomous underwater vehicle is known by its commercial name REMUS-100, but dubbed SharkCam by researchers. It shadowed the big shark like an attendant remora, showcasing groundbreaking technology developed by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution's Oceanographic Systems Laboratory with funding from the Discovery Channel. It's a leap forward in shark science, adding the third dimension of real-time video, that also has major implications for public safety.

"It tells us where sharks are spending their time, how they may approach seals and swimming and surfing beaches," said state shark scientist Greg Skomal who worked with WHOI researchers on the project.

Read the full story and watch the SharkCam footage at the Cape Cod Times 

 

February 10, 2014 — A North Atlantic right whale who surprised researchers more than a year ago when she appeared with a newborn calf in Cape Cod Bay has been seen again for the first time since April.

Wart the whale was spotted in the bay Saturday afternoon by researchers with the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies during a regular aerial survey, according to a press release from the center.

Wart's calf, which was estimated to be 2 weeks old when the pair was first spotted in the bay in January 2013, was not with her, but that's not unusual after a year, said Charles "Stormy" Mayo, director of the center's right whale research program.

"That would not be a surprise," he said.

The birth of a right whale in local waters is rare and has never been documented by center researchers, who have been collecting data on the animals' visits to the area since 1984, Mayo said. The endangered whales typically give birth in warmer waters off Georgia and Florida.

Wart and her calf were last seen in April feeding near Plymouth. Wart is believed to be in her 40s and was freed from an entanglement by the center's Marine Animal Entanglement Response team in stages during a three year period from 2008-2010.

Another whale was seen near Wart on Saturday but it did not appear to be her calf, said Center for Coastal Studies spokeswoman Cathrine Macort.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

February 7, 2014 — The following was released by NOAA's Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC):

The Northeast Fisheries Science Center has released a data report detailing last August’s pilot research survey that focused on flatfish, conducted aboard the F/V Mary K and the F/V Yankee Pride.  The survey was designed by a panel that included scientists, fishermen, and gear manufacturers.

This pilot survey was intended to demonstrate how an industry-based, dedicated survey for flatfish could augment other data collection in the region, and to better understand the resources required to establish and maintain such a survey. A second, related industry-based cruise to compare catch between a commercial trawl and the gear used by the NOAA FSV Henry B. Bigelow was delayed by the October 2013 federal government shutdown, but will be completed later this year. After that we will consider whether a flatfish-specific survey should be integrated into data collection in the region and how information gathered might allow us to better interpret broad-scale survey data collected by the U.S. and Canada on Georges Bank. 

These industry-based cruises are two of several things the NEFSC is doing to work with partners in the region to better understand the condition of flounder stocks. We are especially focused on yellowtail flounder, which are not recovering even as catches are being significantly curtailed.

On Georges Bank, the yellowtail flounder stock is a key one for both groundfish and sea scallop fishermen. All signals point to a biomass that is at or near the lowest biomass on record. The current assessment model, however, consistently overestimates total biomass and underestimates fishing mortality rates, making forecasts of future stock sizes more uncertain.

Georges Bank yellowtail flounder stock assessment and management are conducted jointly with Canada through an international agreement, using a Transboundary Resource Assessment Committee (TRAC) to conduct assessments and a Transboundary Management Guidance Committee make management recommendations.

We have proposed a new, empirical assessment approach to be evaluated by the TRAC through a benchmark assessment during the week of April 14-18 at the NEFSC Woods Hole Laboratory. It will not be a typical stock assessment modeling meeting. The empirical approach examines both standard and new data to evaluate hypotheses about what is causing the current stock assessment model to produce poor estimates.

Next week, on Feb 11 from 1:00 to 4:00 pm, some NEFSC scientists will be meeting with representatives from industry and other partners at the UMASS School of Marine Science and Technology in Fairhaven to present data from the flatfish pilot survey and discuss ways in which these data  can be incorporated into the upcoming TRAC yellowtail empirical approach assessment. This will be an opportunity to discuss characteristics of yellowtail flounder and the challenges they pose for survey designs. Additional meetings with industry are intended, but no specific dates have been set.

Results from the April TRAC meeting will be used at the annual full meeting of the committee in June, where status of three Georges Bank stocks shared by the U.S. and Canada will be reviewed, including cod and haddock in the Eastern Georges Bank management units, as well as Georges Bank yellowtail flounder. The TRAC will also develop advice used by fishery managers to evaluate the risk of overfishing given different catches. 

Find out more about this story at NOAA's Northeast Fisheries Science Center

Get direction's to the meeting on February 11 at the UMASS School of Marine Science and Technology 

“Collaboratively [NOAA] can be much more effective in addressing our assessment and science problems than we can working independently.”

WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) – February 10, 2014 — In this installment of Saving Seafood Radio, Dr. Bill Karp, Director of NOAA’s Northeast Regional Science Center, discusses NOAA’s recently announced decision to incorporate information not previously considered in federal assessments for the upcoming Georges Bank yellowtail flounder stock assessment. This new data will include information from the fishing industry; facts and figures collected by the Science Center's Social Sciences Branch, which reviews the economic impacts of management decisions; and studies conducted by the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth School for Marine Science and Technology (SMAST).

According to Dr. Karp, the Georges Bank yellowtail flounder population has been particularly difficult for NOAA to assess due to uncertainty surrounding the cause of a decade-long decline in the stock’s productivity. In July 2012, one of the largest industry associations, the Fisheries Survival Fund (FSF), wrote to NOAA voicing concerns about the methodology used to conduct these assessments. NOAA agreed to make changes to the survey, but maintained its previous approach for the next assessment that took place in 2013. This caused backlash last August when the Transboundary Resources Assessment Committee (TRAC), a cooperative scientific committee that provides advice for jointly managed stocks between the U.S. and Canada, used the unchanged assessment model to recommend drastically reduced catch limits for Georges Bank yellowtail flounder. Following the report, FSF again spoke out against the “deeply flawed” survey. Their criticism was shared by multiple fisheries scientists, including the president of the American Institute of Fishery Research Biologists, Dr. Steve Cadrin, who wrote to the New England Fishery Management Council saying that the TRAC assessment provides an “insufficient basis” for fishery management. The Council’s Scientific and Statistical Team agreed and recommended a re-examination due to the TRAC model’s “troubling diagnostics.” Much of the criticism surrounds the assessment’s “retrospective pattern,” a term used to describe a systematic under or over-estimation of spawning stock biomass or fishing mortality.

In our interview with Dr. Karp, he explains that “the criticisms to address this retrospective pattern are very real and we [NOAA] have the same concerns.” Conventional methods of dealing with assessment uncertainty require NOAA to look at alternative models — which he says the Agency tried. Last summer, NOAA worked with international scientific groups to discuss different assessment methods using the yellowtail stock as an example. But according to Dr. Karp, the workshop did not shed any new light on its assessment issues. “The challenge we have in this assessment is not being able to find data to help us understand what is going on in a contemporary situation,” said Dr. Karp.

Now, the Northeast Regional Science Center is jumpstarting a new effort to address its uncertainties with historical data and the retrospective pattern by examining information from modern, though non-traditional, sources. These sources will include SMAST surveys and independent research, NOAA pilot surveys, industry data, and facts and figures collected by the Science Center's Social Sciences Branch, along with other relevant scientific findings. This is a new direction for NOAA, which despite opposition, has maintained the status quo in past yellowtail assessments.

Dr. Karp addresses NOAA’s changed stance, stating, “We [NOAA] have some very important decisions to be made about how we need to focus our science to be more responsive to the needs of the 21st century.” He concludes, “There’s always more to learn by listening to fishermen and members of the broader community.”

Other future goals and challenges for NOAA that Dr. Karp discusses include:
•    Striving to increase transparency with the stock assessment process
•    Encouraging more participation from outside perspectives
•    Strengthening ties with industry and scientific partners, including SMAST
•    Moving to an ecosystem-based approach by incorporating how climate change and environmental conditions affect fisheries, and how different fisheries interact with each other

The new, integrative yellowtail assessment, dubbed a "diagnostic benchmark" by the Science Center, appears to be a first step for Dr. Karp and his team in enacting these changes. Starting in April, another leg of the assessment process, which includes public meetings and workshops, will begin. With New England fisheries in a precarious economic state, more informative science and management cannot come soon enough. Dr. Karp is hopeful that the results of the assessment will be used in management measures at the start of Fishing Year 2015.

Listen to the full interview with NOAA Northeast Regional Science Director Dr. Bill Karp 

Saving Seafood has previously covered stories concerning yellowtail flounder assessments. For more information on this topic please see:

NOAA Proposes New Georges Bank Yellowtail Assessment that will Allow Consideration of Non-Traditional Information

NMFS Announcement Puts TMGC Yellowtail Quota at 400 Metric Tons Despite Advice that Would Have Allowed More

Scallop Industry: There has been "no progress" in Yellowtail Flounder Assessments

Scientists, Industry Leaders Question Validity of Yellowtail Flounder Assessments 

 

 

February 4, 2014 — The mysteries of the deep have long intrigued oceanographers and researchers.

A new device created locally could help shed more light on some of these mysteries, its developers and area scientists said.

For more than a decade, the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, working with other researchers and oceanographers, has installed an array of measuring devices on lobster traps.

Temperature gauges, salinity sensors, acoustic listening devices and cameras have been installed, said Jim Manning, who oversees the lobster trap program at the science center in Woods Hole, which is part of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.

Current meters, in use for the past few years, help gauge current speeds up to hundreds of feet underwater, Manning said.

The various devices help monitor and research the effects of weather patterns, tides, river runoffs and its impact on various fisheries, including lobster.

"Fishermen are very interested in the results. They've been wondering what's going on down there forever," Manning said.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times 

 

February 12, 2014 — The following was released by the New Bedford Ocean Explorium:

On Wednesday, February 12, Ann Parson, Science Journalist, will present "On Stem Cells, Supersonic Flight and Other Destinations" at the Ocean Explorium.

Ms. Parson will share interesting facts and insights gained from more than thirty years' writing on a variety of subjects.  The author of several books and numerous articles for scientific journals as well as mainstream publications, Ms. Parson will address a broad range of topics, including the current push to find new drugs to treat Alzheimer's Disease and the coming-of-age of stem cells and cell-based medicine.

Ms. Parson will also share what she has learned through her research into the technologies that helped bring about GPS as well as supersonic flight; and the emergence, in the 19th century, of the field of natural history.  Ms. Parson is a gifted translator of the languages of science, making the arcane clear for the lay reader.  The Ocean Explorium is pleased to welcome Ann Parson to Global Voice, the evening speaker series for learners of all ages.

Ocean Explorium doors will open at 6:00 PM; there will be special presentations on Science on a Sphere® at 6:10 and 6:20, and the talk will begin at 6:30 PM.  Global Voice admission is $5 for members, $10 for non-members, $8 for seniors, $3 for children. 

Attendees are invited to continue the conversation at Brick Pizzeria Napoletana, and enjoy a 20% discount on food and soft drinks, just for Global Voice, immediately following the talk.

The Global Voice evening speaker series continues through Spring of 2014.  Visit the Ocean Explorium website, oceanexplorium.org, for more information.

Read the release here

 

February 3, 2014 — The following was released by the Commercial Fisheries Research Foundation:

The following event has been postponed due to weather.
An announcement with a rescheduled date will be distributed as soon as possible.

Commercial Fisheries Research Foundation Announcement:

Shellfish Research Results to be Presented

The research results from the Commercial Fisheries Research Foundation (CFRF) sponsored project entitled  “An Assessment of Quahog Larval Supply and Distribution in the Upper Narragansett Bay with a Focus on  Spawning Sanctuaries and Alternative Area Management Strategies" will be presented on Monday, February 3, 2014, in the Corless Auditorium, University of Rhode Island, Bay Campus, Narragansett, RI beginning at 6:00 PM. The presentation will be given as part of the Shellfish Management Plan Stakeholders Meeting and Public Lecture organized by the RI Sea Grant Program. The Stakeholders Meeting begins at 5:00 PM.

The collaborative research project, solicited and funded under the CFRF’s Southern New England Collaborative Research Initiative (SNECRI) program through NOAA Award #NA08NMF4720595, was carried out by the following team: Dale Leavitt, Roger Williams University; Dennis Erkan, RI DEM; Michael McGiveney, RI Shellfishermen’s Association; Scott Rutherford, Roger Williams University; Mark Gibson, RI DEM; Jeff Mercer, RI DEM; Chris Kincaid, URI-GSO; Dave Ullman, URI-GSO; and Tim Scott, Roger Williams University.

For more information on this project and other projects sponsored by the CFRF, please visit:
www.cfrfoundation.org or contact Jane Dickinson, CFRF Administrative Assistant, at (401) 515-4892 or jdickinson@cfrfoundation.org

To learn more about the RI Sea Grant organized meeting please visit:
http://www.rismp.org/calendar/ or contact the Shellfish Management Plan Project Team at SMP@etal.uri.edu

 

January 31, 2014 — The following was released by NOAA:

NOAA Fisheries Northeast Fisheries Science Center Cooperative Research Program has made three awards under the 2014 Mid-Atlantic and 2014/2015 Atlantic Herring Research Set-Aside programs. Click here for details.

PROVINCETOWN, Mass., — January 31, 2014 — A new "Carib Tails" international citizen science effort has begun to track humpback whale seasonal migrations between Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary and marine sanctuaries in the Caribbean.

Recreational yachters and sailors and others out on the Atlantic Coast waters are asked to photograph the tails of humpbacks they encounter at sea to support research on the estimated 1,000 humpbacks that migrate between Stellwagen Bank and its Caribbean partners. The photographs will be matched with existing entries in the North Atlantic Humpback Whale Catalog and could be added to the collection — particularly if the humpbacks are previously unknown or unphotographed.

Instructions on how to take and contribute photographs are available at caribtails.org.

"The benefit to Cape Codders is that this program advances knowledge and protection of our Cape Cod humpback whales," Jooke Robbins, who directs the humpback whale research program at the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies, said Thursday by email. "The humpback whales that we see here in the summer spend their winters mating and calving in the Caribbean. The program raises awareness about this well-loved, wide-ranging species and its dependence on habitats in different parts of the North Atlantic. It also gives the yachting community a way to add to our understanding, through simple data that they can collect and share with researchers."

The idea of photographing tails works well for humpback whales because they are identified by the black and white patterns on the underside of their tails, or flukes. The scars and natural pigmentation, ranging from all white to all black, along with the scalloped shaped edges of the tail, give each whale a unique marker.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

 

 

January 31, 2014 — The following was released by the Commercial Fisheries Research Foundation (CFRF):

The research results from the Commercial Fisheries Research Foundation (CFRF) sponsored project entitled  “An Assessment of Quahog Larval Supply and Distribution in the Upper Narragansett Bay with a Focus on Spawning Sanctuaries and Alternative Area Management Strategies" will be presented on Monday, February 3, 2014,in the Corless Auditorium, University of Rhode Island, Bay Campus, Narragansett, RI beginning at 6:00 PM. The presentation will be given as part of the Shellfish Management Plan Stakeholders Meeting and Public Lecture organized by the RI Sea Grant Program. The Stakeholders Meeting begins at 5:00 PM.

Read the full press release here