April 25, 2012, NEW BEDFORD — With competition literally on the horizon, the National Marine Fisheries Service has pulled 80 percent of the UMass Dartmouth funding from this summer's scallop survey in what scientists say is a critical year.
UMass officials and state Rep. William Straus, D-Mattapoisett, say they fear that NMFS is going to rely on an as yet untested, unproven, un-peer-reviewed technology and methodology being developed at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
Scott Gallagher, the Woods Hole scientist who is developing what is called the HabCam, disputed that characterization and said tests and calibration against the scallop survey dredge have been under way for years. He said he expects it to displace UMass' apparatus as it is phased in over time.
The phase-out appears to have begun already. UMass is getting just $100,000 for the scallop survey, as opposed to $500,000 last year, Dr. Brian Rothschild said.
The UMass Marine Science and Technology Center still intends to conduct the survey using money that was intended for other uses, according to Dr. Kevin Stokesbury, who is research director.
But the federal government is redirecting its focus to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, which is developing the fourth generation of a survey apparatus called HabCam that features a stereo high-definition camera and side-scan sonar. They are mounted in a framework that moves through the water and scans the ocean bottom from a height of about 10 feet.
The images are then pieced together in a mosaic, Gallagher said.
UMass, which for more than a decade has been using a pyramid-shaped camera platform that is dropped to the ocean floor, revolutionized the surveys in the late 1990s with that invention. It revealed with visual evidence that scallops, rather than being overfished, were abundant — and the fishery became what it is today.
Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times.