May 26, 2016 — The following is excerpted from a story published today by the Boston Globe:
Shortly after dawn last Friday, the R/V Hugh R. Sharp was towing a sophisticated array of sensors and cameras along the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Then suddenly, the research vessel shuddered.
Within seconds, the line went slack, and the team of scientists and volunteers realized the $450,000 camera system was lost, somewhere off the Virginia coast.
Officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said they believe the cable connecting to the camera system, known as HabCam, snagged on the remains of the Bow Mariner, a well-known wreck in the area.
The scientists lost contact with the HabCam as a college student was piloting it. HabCam, which is about 10 feet long and weighs 3,700 pounds, was at a depth of about 240 feet, some 90 miles southeast of Delaware Bay.
The Sharp has only several weeks available in the spring to survey scallops, which last year had a catch valued at nearly $425 million, more than three-quarters of which went to fishermen in New Bedford.
Those representing fishermen said they’re deeply concerned about the prospects for this year’s survey.
“This will create uncertainty in the scallop assessment, meaning there’s a greater chance that we’ll catch too few scallops, which will be a short-term loss, or too many, which will be a long-term loss,” said Drew Minkiewicz, an attorney for the Fisheries Survival Fund, a trade group that represents scallopers throughout the Northeast.
Some in the fishing industry blame NOAA for allowing a college student to pilot the HabCam. They also raised questions about whether the incident occurred as a result of problems with another NOAA ship, the Henry B. Bigelow, which required unexpected maintenance this spring that delayed its survey of groundfish stocks more than ever before.
“I’m told that because of the Bigelow fiasco, [NOAA] transferred more experienced people from the scallop survey to the groundfish survey to try to make up for lost time,” said Robert Vanasse, executive director of Saving Seafood, a Washington-based group that represents the fishing industry.
“Since the volunteer wasn’t as experienced, and since the captain was apparently driving directly into the path of a 600-foot sunken tanker, they didn’t react quickly enough,” he added.