June 23, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:
Northeast Fisheries Science Center oceanographer Jim Manning has spent more than 35 years studying the ocean. He has sought ways to test ocean circulation models with direct observations and helped others use the data collected for a variety of needs.
Collaborations and partnerships have developed along the way. One of his earliest collaborative projects is the Environmental Monitors on Lobster Traps, or eMOLT. The program was initiated by Manning and the Northeast Fisheries Science Center in 1995, when he handed a fisherman a temperature probe. Since 2001, when it officially began, and to this day about 50 lobstermen have been installing temperature sensors on their traps. The program is now administered by the Gulf of Maine Lobster Foundation.
Through the years, eMOLT has expanded to include other gear types like trawls, scallop dredges, and longlines. It remains devoted to monitoring the physical environment of the Gulf of Maine and Southern New England shelf. More than 100 fishermen along the New England coast have worked with Manning and his colleagues in the center’s Oceans and Climate Branch. Together they have developed low-cost strategies to measure physical conditions, primarily bottom temperature, of interest to them and their livelihoods.
“Our primary goal is to supply fishermen with the latest in low-cost instrumentation so they can maintain continuous time series of physical variables throughout their fishing grounds,” Manning said of eMOLT.