Scientists from the UMass Dartmouth School for Marine Science and Technology have launched a new initiative showing fishermen where not to catch fish, and the New Bedford fleet has lined up in droves to participate.
On Monday, an area of Georges Bank known as the Nantucket Lightship area, off limits since 2008, was reopened to scallop fishermen. Located some 40 miles south of Nantucket, the area is likely to yield an abundance of scallops for the 346 limited-access permit holders in the fleet. Boats holding full-time permits are allowed one trip inside the 20-by-25-mile area and are limited to 18,000 pound of scallops.
But there is one large caveat. Under fisheries regulations, a catch limit of 47 metric tons for the entire fishing year has been imposed for yellowtail flounder, a bottom-dweller that routinely comes aboard in scallop dredges. Fishermen are required to land all of the legal-sized yellowtail they catch. Once the annual limit is reached, all scalloping ceases immediately.
To help scallopers avoid large concentrations of yellowtail, SMAST has developed a system to update boats at sea with real-time data on yellowtail "hot spots."
"We're very excited about this because participation is voluntary, and the information we gather goes right back to the fishermen," said SMAST's Cate O'Keefe, who is managing the program. "I thought we'd get 30 boats but, once the word got out, we had 119 boats sign up for it."
Boats fishing in the closed area e-mail information daily to SMAST detailing their location, the number of tows they make and the amount of yellowtail they are catching. The cutoff time for submission is 8 a.m., and the information is then analyzed ashore and e-mailed back to the fleet by mid-morning, O'Keefe said. "Yellowtail move seasonally. There are a number of factors that affect that, like feeding, spawning and water temperature. But there was not a lot of good information up till now."
However, on Tuesday morning, the first day of reporting, that began to change. "We got 33 reports today," O'Keefe said Tuesday afternoon. "We were able to see where the yellowtail were being caught and where the boats were towing. We compiled that information and sent it right back out to the boats. We found one area that was a hot spot and, if we don't get any data from there tomorrow, it will be an indication that the advice is being heeded."
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