Science

Six months ago the University of Massachusetts' Large Pelagics Research Center, headed by Gloucester resident Molly Lutcavage, mapped out plans to renovate the marine station at Hodgkins' Cove and breathe new life into that vacated facility.

Friday brought the center's grand opening, reviving UMass-Amherst's seafood research lab that had been headed by Professor Herbert Hultin from 1979 until his death in 2007.

The university and State Division of Marine Fisheries spent $400,000 on the renovation, turning the once-derelict research center into a functioning lab for Lutcavage's LPRC and the Division of Marine Fisheries.

Research on site, according to a summary from UMass, will focus on tuna and other large ocean-going, pelagic species, while state Marine Fisheries researchers will focus on lobster reproduction.

Read the complete story from The Gloucester Times

 

 

 

 

 

Six months ago the University of Massachusetts' Large Pelagics Research Center, headed by Gloucester resident Molly Lutcavage, mapped out plans to renovate the marine station at Hodgkins' Cove and breathe new life into that vacated facility.

Friday brought the center's grand opening, reviving UMass-Amherst's seafood research lab that had been headed by Professor Herbert Hultin from 1979 until his death in 2007.

The university and State Division of Marine Fisheries spent $400,000 on the renovation, turning the once-derelict research center into a functioning lab for Lutcavage's LPRC and the Division of Marine Fisheries.

Research on site, according to a summary from UMass, will focus on tuna and other large ocean-going, pelagic species, while state Marine Fisheries researchers will focus on lobster reproduction.

Read the complete story from The Gloucester Times

 

 

 

 

 

An independent peer review of an already controversial study that suggests a rapid decline in cod stocks is set to begin this week — with potentially catastrophic implications for Gloucester's dayboat fishermen who fear the results could bring a shutdown of the Gulf of Maine cod fishery.

Just three years ago, a comprehensive stock assessment showed the Gulf of Maine cod was effectively rebuilding.

But, in data first spotlighted last month in the Gloucester Daily Times, preliminary figures suggest the valuable species is in dismal shape and won't rebuild within the timeframe set by the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the framework for federal fisheries law.

In a worst-case scenario, that could mean a broad fishery shutdown to protect the cod. But that step would be drastic and a long ways away.

Read the complete story from The Gloucester Times.

 

 

 

 

 

Standing on the deck of a small fishing boat, Joe Facendola plunged one hand into a 90-gallon rubber tub and grabbed the swishing tail of the 4-foot, 25-pound Alantic sturgeon.

Using a pair of surgical scissors, Facendola snipped a small piece of fin on the fish's stomach.

"There will," he said, "be blood."

But just a little, and ultimately, the process could help protect the rest of the Cape Fear River's sturgeon population. Facendola, a technician with the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries, has spent the past year catching Atlantic sturgeon, collecting their DNA, then tagging the fish and releasing them to track their movements.

Read the complete story from Star News Online.

 

 

 

 

 

 

BOSTON – The best picture scientists can snap of the condition of important New England fish stocks can be blurry, considering the fish they're trying to count live in the dark. But now Sen. John Kerry is asking the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to find out if a developing sonar technology can bring new clarity.

In a letter to Jane Lubchenco last month, Kerry asked her to designate $1 million for a system that can scan dozens of square miles of ocean in an instant.

A fish stock's health is the critical factor when regulators decide how much fishermen can catch. A bad estimate can mean an unnecessarily low catch limit, and that can end a fishing business, or cause unintended overfishing.

Read the complete story by Jay Lindsay of The AP at The Portland Press Herald.

 

 

 

 

 

Research by James Sulikowski, Ph.D., associate professor of marine sciences at University of New England, and John Mandelman, Ph.D., research scientist at the New England Aquarium, contributed to a recent emergency action by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to revise an existing policy and increase the amount of skate that fishermen can land this year.

NOAA announced it has increased the amount of skate that fishermen can land this year from 31 million to 48 million pounds, based on new scientific information showing an increase in the overall skate population. The 56-percent quota increase becomes effective November 28th, and remains in effect through the end of the current fishing season, which ends on April 30, 2012.

At its June meeting, the New England Fishery Management Council reviewed updated 2008-2010 trawl survey data from the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, which shows significant improvements in the overall skate population.

Read the complete story from PR Web.

 

 

 

 

 

 

During November, young scallops, which have drifted in the sea and along ocean currents since their parents’ late-summer spawning, are settling down on patches of sand and gravel seafloor along the Maine coast. No one knows where they have come from, or where exactly they will go, but some will land in a sheltered area and grow to market size. Maine’s scallop harvesters, who have been fishing discrete scallop beds in coastal waters for decades, already know that some places are better for Placopecten magellanicus than others.

Once one of the state’s most valuable fisheries, scallop landings declined to an all-time low six years ago, and now provide only part-time jobs for a few fishermen in most coastal communities. However, the fishery remains important in some areas, particularly in the Cobscook Bay region, where nearly 70 percent of Maine’s harvest is landed.

In response to declining numbers of scallops, the Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR), which regulates the fishery in state waters within three miles of shore, closed a number of scallop fishing grounds in 2009. The closures were inspired by the success of rotational closures established in offshore scallop fishing grounds, including on Georges Bank, since the 1990s. The offshore scallop fishery is one of the most valuable in the United States and the rebuilding scallop population is one of the Northwest Atlantic’s few fishery success stories.

Read the complete article from Working Waterfront.

 

 

 

 

 

Cooperative Research Folks – We have a session of the Marine Resource Education Program (MREP) 200 scheduled for November 16-17, 2011 in Falmouth/Woods Hole.  This is a 2 day program that focuses on how information is collected and used in the stock assessment process.  It includes a tour of the Bigelow, the Center's net loft, the age and growth lab and talks and demonstrations about the data collection and stock assessment programs in the Center.

The first two installments of the program were very successful.

The next installment of the program is scheduled for November 16-17 because of Bigelow availability but also conflicts with the NEFMC meeting.  As a result, the program coordinators are having trouble recruiting enough participants.  That's where I need your help.  I'd like folks to get the word out to industry stakeholders that there are still a few slots available for the program later this month.  If they are interested, they need to contact Alexa Dayton (P:207-228-1645 E:adayton@gmri.org) immediately and she will work with them.  I attached a recruiting post card and there is more information about the program at the following site.

The program provides meals and lodging for participants (and maybe some travel costs but don't quote me on that).  The target is commercial or recreational fishery stakeholders who have the potential to communicate to others.

View the informational flyer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A new study of the Chesapeake Bay’s water quality offers a glimmer of hope that a major pollution-reduction effort is improving the health of the nation’s largest estuary.

Researchers from Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science found that the growth of oxygen-depleted dead zones, where plants and animals cannot live, has generally been reduced since pollution limits were implemented in the 1980s.

Dead zones have their gen­esis in heavy spring rains that wash pollution from lawn fertilizer, livestock manure, urban street garbage and other sources into rivers that flow into the bay.

The zones start to form in early summer and grow in the middle to late summer as nutrient pollutants such as nitrogen and phosphorus feed huge algae blooms that die and decompose. As summer progresses, microbes feed on the dead algae and use up the dissolved oxygen in the water.

The bay experienced an unusually large dead zone this past summer because of heavy flows of polluted water from the Susquehanna River earlier in the year. The bay was further fouled in September by sediment pollution whipped up by rains from Tropical Storm Lee. And heavy rains from Lee and Hurricane Irene caused major sewage overflows into several creeks and rivers that empty into the bay.

Estuaries are bodies of water where salt and fresh water mix. The 200-mile-long bay supports more than 3,500 plant and animal species. Bivalves, such as oysters, cannot survive in a dead zone’s depleted oxygen. Fish can swim to safer waters, but many die nevertheless.

Researchers studied water-quality data for the Chesapeake from 1949 to 2009 for the study, released Thursday and published in the November issue of the journal Estuaries and Coasts.

“We now have evidence that cutting back on the nutrient pollutants pouring into the bay can make a difference,” said Rebecca R. Murphy, a doctoral student in the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering at Johns Hopkins and the study’s lead author.

Read the full article at the Washington Post.

Read additional coverage at the Baltimore Sun.

 

 

In the groundfishing world, conventional wisdom is that Gulf of Maine cod is back. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, reported just three years ago that cod levels appeared to be improving at a time when other groundfish were still struggling. But preliminary NOAA data rocking the industry indicates that the exact opposite is happening.

That's according to Steve Cadrin, a marine scientist working with NOAA and others on a stock assessment. "The results are now that the stock is overfished again and the stock cannot rebuild by 2014–even if no fishing is allowed," he says.

2014 is the deadline set by fisheries managers a decade ago for rebuilding Gulf of Maine cod, which has been heavily fished in New England for centuries for its white, mild flesh.

Cadrin, an associate professor of marine science at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, says that suspected overfishing by commercial and recreational fishermen alike may lead to more restrictions. "How that plays out we can't say right now–that has to go through the management process–but some very strong management actions will be needed if these results are accepted."

The results still face a peer review process later this month, but they're already alarming fishermen and fisheries managers. Pat Fiorelli is spokeswoman for the New England Fisheries Management Council, which develops regional fishing policy subject to review by federal regulators.

Read the complete story from Maine Public Broadcasting Network