Saving Seafood

Squid processors help new Northeast science center study

September 24, 2021 — Researchers from the Northeast Fisheries Science Center have installed a new electronic data collection system at five shortfin squid processing facilities across the region, a project that NMFS officials say will help “support good management of a burgeoning fishery.”

With a lot of squid available to measure, researchers hope this pilot project will show that processors can help increase the amount of real-time data on this relatively short-lived species.

The Squid Electronic Size Monitoring Pilot Project is new, and was developed by a team of science center researchers including:

• The Cooperative Research Branch, which specializes research with industry partners.

• The Information Technology Division, which manages and develops data and information gathering systems.

• The Population Dynamics Branch, which studies the distribution, abundance, and population dynamics of commercial species like the shortfin squid.

This team worked alongside industry to design the system. The goal is to create a standardized data stream of northern shortfin squid size and weight provided by processors. The northern shortfin squid (Illex illecebrosus) is fast-growing and lives for less than a year. At any given time, there are multiple cohorts (groups of similarly aged squid) in the population with a wide range of body sizes and weights.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

 

ASMFC & NOAA Fisheries Select Coonamessett Farm Foundation to Conduct Components of the At-Sea Monitoring Training Program

August 24, 2021 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, in cooperation with NOAA Fisheries’ Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC), has selected the Coonamessett Farm Foundation to conduct components of the At-Sea Monitoring (ASM) Training Program for NEFSC. Training will include identifying target and bycatch species in Atlantic groundfish fisheries, collecting and reporting fisheries-dependent data following federal guidelines, and instruction in offshore safety and survival.

At-sea monitors collect data aboard commercial fishing vessels that are used to manage and monitor annual catch limits in the Northeast groundfish sectors. A sharp increase in the required ASM coverage rate (up to 100%) and observer attrition during the COVID-19 pandemic have resulted in the need for approximately 140 new at-sea monitors. Coonamessett Farm Foundation will take on the majority of the training with support from NEFSC. ASM training by the Coonamessett Farm Foundation will start this year and extend at least through 2022.

To learn more about becoming an at-sea monitor, contact one of the companies that provides at-sea monitors to the NEFSC’s Northeast Fisheries Observer Program. A list is posted here:
https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/new-england-mid-atlantic/fisheries-observers/sea-monitoring-northeast

For more information on Coonamessett Farm Foundation ASM training award, please contact Tania Lewandowski (Tania.Lewandowski@noaa.gov), Tasha O’Hara (tohara@cfarm.org), or Quinn McWatters (qmcwatters@cfarm.org).

Ambrose Jearld, Jr.: Researcher, Educator, Mentor and Advocate for Diversity and Inclusion

August 9, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Ambrose Jearld, Jr. has spent his life around animals and water—both freshwater and seawater. He was born in 1944 into a Navy family in Annapolis, Maryland, and grew up on the family farm in Orrum, North Carolina. He attended elementary school there, but returned to Annapolis in sixth grade and graduated from Wiley H. Bates High School in 1961. He credits his high school biology teacher and the Boy Scouts for encouraging his interests in science.

He graduated from Maryland State College, now the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, with a degree in biology and a minor in chemistry in 1965. He was just one course away from a double major when he graduated. “My family wanted me to go into teaching, but I wanted to do research and instead went straight into science,” he recalled recently. With a brother and sister heading to college soon, he took a few years off after college to work at “a good-paying job” as a chemist at Publicker Industries Inc. in Philadelphia.

A Fateful Meeting

Meeting Bradford Brown changed the course of Jearld’s career. Brown was a fisheries scientist at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s Woods Hole Laboratory from 1962 to 1965 and from 1970 to 1984. In He had taken a position as assistant leader with the newly established Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Units Program at Oklahoma State University-Stillwater to complete his Ph.D . The Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Units Program in the United States Geological Survey is a joint effort between federal and state governments. It is also a host university offering graduate students research opportunities in fisheries and wildlife sciences.

Brown was recruiting black graduate students to the program. He met two of Jearld’s former professors, who were also completing their Ph.D.s at OSU. They recommended he speak with Jearld. Although some people were skeptical about Jearld heading to Oklahoma given the civil rights climate in the country, Jearld accepted the full ride offer. That meant a research assistantship award that covered all expenses.

Less than a week after he arrived in Stillwater Jearld was headed to his first scientific meeting as a graduate student with Brown and three other white men whom he did not know. The 1967 meeting was for the Southern Division of the American Fisheries Society in New Orleans. The meeting was part of the annual meeting of the Southeastern Association of Game and Fish Commissioners. They had to deal with the intense heat and driving hours in a packed station wagon with no air conditioning. More importantly, they had not discussed safety or how to deal with segregated facilities en route to the meeting. The trip was memorable for many reasons.

Read the full release here

Major Refresh Orients our Fishery Monitoring and Research Division Toward the Future

January 27, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Staff involved with cooperative research and fishery monitoring at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center interact daily with the fishing industry. It’s a challenging job, and an essential one: scientists and fishermen working together in areas of mutual interest improves fisheries science and management.

It’s little wonder that managing the many moving parts of this effort requires constant assessment and adaptation. The most recent effort is a major one that has resulted in a new internal structure to improve operations and maximize resources.

The ultimate goal is to ensure accurate representation of fishing activity.

“Improving integration of our efforts, modernizing our systems, and making the data we collect even more useful will enable us to have increased confidence in our science, take some of the burden off the industry, and make it easier for fishermen to access information,” said Amanda McCarty, chief of the center’s Fishery Monitoring and Research Division, which includes the fishery monitoring and cooperative research efforts.

Read the full release here

Major Reorganization Improves NEFSC Fishery Monitoring and Research

January 27, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

A new internal structure within the NEFSC’s Fishery Monitoring and Research Division  is a major overhaul intended to improve operations and maximize resources.

The ultimate goal is to ensure accurate representation of fishing activity.

While the basic tasking is the same, separating work into four branches allows better accountability and expansion of existing capability.

Four organizational groups, rather than two, are now responsible for:

  • Fisheries observer program
  • Fisheries observer training and trip data
  • Data and information systems management and development
  • Cooperative research.

Read all about the “new” Fishery Monitoring and Research Division here.

Read the full release here

NOAA Fisheries ending Northeast observer waivers, preparing to restart program

June 23, 2020 — NOAA Fisheries and the Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s (NEFSC) Fisheries Sampling Branch is preparing for a 1 July restart of the Northeast Observer Program.

NOAA Fisheries first announced on 20 March that it was waiving observer requirements in light of the challenges posed by the COVID-19 outbreak. That initial waiver was extended on 29 May, with a planned restart date of 1 July.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

National Science Foundation awards two prestigious research internships to SCeMFiS graduate students

August 22, 2019 — The following was released by the Science Center for Marine Fisheries:

The Science Center for Marine Fisheries (SCeMFiS) is proud to announce that two of our graduate students, Laura Solinger and Kathleen Hemeon, have been awarded non-academic research internships with the National Science Foundation (NSF).

The internships, valued at about $45,000 each, will support each student for a 6-month position at NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. There they will be working on surfclam and ocean quahog research, two of the most valuable shellfish fisheries in the U.S.

“The NEFSC is thrilled to host Laura and Kathleen and support their burgeoning careers while conducting good science,” said Dr. Mike Simpkins, Division Chief at NEFSC. “This is a win-win for NEFSC, as a scientific agency and a member of SCeMFiS, these internships are the best of both worlds for us.”

The internships are part of NSF’s mission to promote a globally competitive and diverse research workforce, and to advance American scientific and innovation skills. SCeMFiS, which, as an industry/university cooperative research center (I/UCRC), is partially funded through an NSF grant, is also part of that mission.

“Receiving two NSF internships in 2019 demonstrates the quality of graduate student participants in SCeMFiS research,” says Dr. Eric Powell, Director of SCeMFiS. “We are particularly excited in expanding our collaboration with scientists at the NEFSC, while providing important career training for our most promising graduate students.”

SCeMFiS works with its industry partners to fund groundbreaking research around pressing scientific issues in finfish and shellfish fisheries, including a recent study examining how surfclams have adapted to climate change. We are pleased that two of our graduate students will now be able to conduct similar research in their internships with NSF.

“Providing our students with the opportunity to work across the spectrum from science theory to practical application in management is critical as we strive to responsibly and sustainably manage critical fishery resources,” said Dr. Roger Mann, SCeMFiS Site Director at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. “These awards are at the leading edge of that spectrum.”

“The research conducted by SCeMFiS graduate students provides essential knowledge for many critical fisheries,” said Greg DiDomenico, Executive Director of the Garden State Seafood Association and Chairman of the SCeMFiS Industry Advisory Board. “The industry is proud to support their work, as well as the work of our scientific partners at the NEFSC.”

About SCeMFiS

SCeMFiS utilizes academic and fisheries resources to address urgent scientific problems limiting sustainable fisheries. SCeMFiS develops methods, analytical and survey tools, datasets, and analytical approaches to improve sustainability of fisheries and reduce uncertainty in biomass estimates. SCeMFiS university partners, University of Southern Mississippi (lead institution), and Virginia Institute of Marine Science, College of William and Mary, are the academic sites. Collaborating scientists who provide specific expertise in finfish, shellfish, and marine mammal research, come from a wide range of academic institutions including Old Dominion University, Rutgers University, University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, University of Maryland, and University of Rhode Island.

The need for the diverse services that SCeMFiS can provide to industry continues to grow, which has prompted a steady increase in the number of fishing industry partners. These services include immediate access to science expertise for stock assessment issues, rapid response to research priorities, and representation on stock assessment working groups. Targeted research leads to improvements in data collection, survey design, analytical tools, assessment models, and other needs to reduce uncertainty in stock status and improve reference point goals.

MASSACHUSETTS: Provincetown rescue team frees entangled right whale off Cape Cod coast

August 7, 2019 — On Friday, Aug. 2 the Marine Animal Entanglement Response team (MAER) from the Center for Coastal Studies (CCS), in collaboration with the Northeastern Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) partially disentangled a North Atlantic right whale, one of only about 400 individuals left, east of Cape Cod.

The entangled whale was initially discovered in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Canada, on July 4, 2019 by Transport Canada. Despite a horrific entanglement, the whale was highly mobile. On July 19 it was spotted again by an aerial survey team from NEFSC and the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans. A response team from New England Aquarium (NEAQ) was in the area and succeeded in attaching a telemetry buoy to the whale to track its movements for disentanglement.

Over the next two weeks the whale traveled east, out of the Gulf, then south, past Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. During that time Canadian disentanglement teams made several attempts to free the animal and were able to make some cuts to its entanglement.

Read the full story at Wicked Local