October 9, 2015 — Researchers at the UMass Dartmouth School for Marine Science and Technology are hoping that new methods of figuring out where fish go in the Gulf of Maine will begin to lead to a much better understanding of what is happening below the surface, aiding in stock assessments.
Dr. Geoffrey Cowles and his research assistants, graduate students Doug Zemeckis and Chang Liu, are partners in a multi-institution effort to tag yellowtail flounder, monkfish, and now cod to learn much more than past methods could tell them.
Called geolocation, the multi-partner research is using new measurements to begin to sort out where fish go after they are tagged and before they are (hopefully) recaptured.
Zemeckis went to sea on a state research vessel, and tagged dozens of cod with lipstick-sized devices that record temperature and pressure. Those can tell researchers quite a lot about where the fish spend their time.
Unlike simple tags, which just show where the fish was released and where it was caught, these devices record the data, which is being recovered and analyzed using methods that are still being developed.
Zemeckis said that since GPS signals do not penetrate water, global positioning doesn’t work for tracking fish.