July 5, 2017 — A few decades ago, Jim Manning wanted to know what was at the bottom of the sea. And after years of studying waterways on the Atlantic coast, he says he’s seen a steady change in ocean temperatures that he calls ‘unprecedented.’
Manning is an oceanographer at NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. He partners with lobstermen on the Northeast Shelf from Maine to New York, attaching low-cost temperature and depth loggers to some of the millions of lobster traps deployed throughout New England.
The project, called eMOLT (Environmental Monitors on Lobster Traps) records and plots long-term seabed temperature records.
Fishermen use bottom water temperatures to look for changes over time in their favorite locations, which might indicate lobsters are moving in or out of that area.
“Every day they go out, they wonder why does their catch change from day to day and what is it that drives the animals to one day go in the trap and others not,” Manning said. “Almost all of the hundreds of lobstermen that I’ve talked to are convinced that temperature is the big driver and what moves the animals. The more the temperature changes, the more the lobsters move. The more they move, the more [they are] exposed to the traps.”
About a dozen boats are outfitted with wireless sensors that can deliver data immediately as the fishing gear surfaces, allowing near real-time data transfer to NOAA.