FAIRHAVEN, Mass., July 23, 2012 — This summer marks the 10th consecutive year that scallop fishermen and marine scientists from SMAST have collaborated on a wide-ranging video survey of the ocean floor to examine the health of sea scallops along the Eastern Seaboard.
"This is one of the most exciting scientific projects in the ocean," said SMAST's Brian Rothschild who developed the program with Kevin Stokesbury, the chairman of the school's Department of Fisheries Oceanography.
"We've mapped the ocean floor and counted the scallops. Most people couldn't imagine that, never mind actually doing it," Rothschild said Friday at the SMAST campus in Fairhaven during a lunch to mark the milestone.
Fishermen and scientists got together a dozen years ago when federal regulators began warning scallopers to cut back on fishing because of low stock estimates. That conclusion flew in the face of what scallop boats were finding out on the fishing grounds.
"The fishermen asked us for help and we did a dredge survey," Rothschild said. When fishery managers objected to the taking of scallops, the idea of using a video camera was born.
Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard Times.