March 23, 2020 — Fisheries biologists used to rely on fishermen to tell them where fish were spawning and when. Fish are attracted to specific areas at certain times of the year, and fishermen find those important spawning grounds because the fishing is easy and the females come up bursting with eggs.
“Historically, researchers try to get in a good relationship with fishermen,” said Timothy Rowell, a research biologist with the passive acoustic research group at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole. “They have the best local knowledge of where (the fish) are aggregating and spawning.”
Although researchers still depend on fishermen, they also use ever more sophisticated technology to help them find and study fish in the immensity of the world’s oceans. That is true of a four-year $1.3 million study of spawning fish in the sprawling blocks of ocean southeast of Block Island that are zoned to build massive offshore wind farms.
NOAA, the state Division of Marine Fisheries, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth School of Marine Science and Technology are all participating in the study, which is funded by the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. The research is focused on what may be one of the last remaining major seasonal spawning gatherings in the Northwest Atlantic, according to the state Division of Marine Fisheries.