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Feature Articles
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NMFS to launch cooperative research projects
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This article is reprinted with permission of Commercial Fisheries News, the Northeast's fishing newspaper for over 30 years, ©2003 Compass Publications Inc. Commercial Fisheries News is published monthly; annual subscriptions are $21.95. To subscribe or request a sample issue: call (877) 263-4496; fax (207) 367-2490; e-mail (cfoster@fish-news.com); or click on the hot link.
by Lorelei Stevens
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The Northeast Fisheries Science Center has dozens of logbook records and correspondence from
fishermen during the 1930s. Much of this is very detailed descriptions of catch, fishing patterns,
and weather observations recorded at-sea. Above is a sample page from a 1931 logbook.
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GLOUCESTER, MA - Several large-scale cooperative research projects managed by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) with advice from the New England Fishery Management Council's Research Steering Committee (RSC) are finally getting underway this fall.
The projects include a coordinated cod tagging program, a pilot study fleet, and a pilot industry-based survey that will take place in cooperation with state fisheries agencies and industry groups in near and offshore waters from Maine to Rhode Island.
These new initiatives are different from the 25 one- to two-year research projects that NMFS and the RSC have sponsored since fiscal year (FY) 2000, projects which have been funded at anywhere from $25,000 to $570,000 to organize industry workshops, test gear, and try out study and survey techniques. They are also completely separate from cooperative research projects funded by the Northeast Consortium.
Rather, the large-scale projects are the result of years of meetings and planning to bring together NMFS, the council, the states, and industry groups for a coordinated effort to get the information fishery managers need to make better management decisions.
"The whole process has been slow because it has been difficult," said Earl Meredith, who is the coordinator of NMFS's Cooperative Research Partners Initiative. "All the programs have had to evolve, but now we're really building momentum."
Funding
The money for all the NMFS-funded projects has been appropriated by Congress over the last few years, Meredith explained.
The first appropriation was in FY '99 in the form of emergency disaster relief funds. This $5 million was distributed to fishermen impacted by groundfish regulations who filled out socio-economic surveys, participated in meetings, agreed to aid whale disentanglement efforts, or volunteered to "take a manager to sea."
Following the relative success of that effort, Congress agreed to pony up seed money for more extensive cooperative research - $5 million in FY '00, $15 million in FY '01, and $4.2 million in FY '02 for a $24.2 million total.
During these last three years, NMFS distributed $4.66 million of this money to fund short-term projects, while it and the RSC focused their efforts on planning the large-scale cod tagging, study fleet, and industry-based survey projects.
But in the meantime, the unspent money had to be returned to the US Treasury. While some of those funds were subsequently reappropriated, congressional "rescission" actions took their toll and a whopping $8.4 million of the $24.2 million total was lost from the cooperative research effort, Meredith said.
The three large-scale projects will be funded with what's left ‹ around $11 million.
The hope is that, working on a pilot level, the three projects will prove their worth and convince Congress to provide substantial long-term funding.
Study fleet
The study fleet project was developed in close cooperation with the NMFS Northeast Fisheries Science Center and is designed to encourage working commercial fishermen to track their at-sea observations.
Participating fishermen will log their catches on a tow-by-tow basis, recording the standard details on species, amounts, and areas fished. But they will also provide insights on how they fish and the changes they notice and, by doing so, hopefully open new lines of communication with scientists and managers.
The program, which has been championed by Northeast Fisheries Science Center scientist Steve Murawski, is based on the kinds of information fishermen routinely provided to researchers back in the 1930s.
For example, Murawski dug up a Jan. 30, 1933 letter from the captain of the trawler Breeze that told of a Jan. 5-15 trip to Georges Bank, which proved frustrating because fishing was "scarce" pretty much everywhere until the Breeze steamed to the Northeast Peak. The following trip, the Breeze landed 140,000 pounds, 80,000 pounds of which was haddock.
Three groups
According to Meredith, there will be three specific pilot study fleets. He described the first as five to 10 small, inshore, open wheelhouse, fixed gear vessels. The Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fishermen's Association has been helping to coordinate this group.
The second study fleet will be made up of two large offshore vessels, probably from the New Bedford or Point Judith area.
"These boats are familiar with Boatracs and have e-mail capabilities. They've already worked with the scallop and monkfish cooperative surveys, so we'll develop on that theme," Meredith said.
The third study fleet will consist of small draggers and gillnetters from Gloucester to midcoast Maine.
The fleets will begin work sequentially and all three should be functioning by late winter.
This is a "pilot" project because it's meant to test the idea of data gathering by industry, as well as a large array of different kinds of data logging devices to see which work best in each fleet.
As of mid-September, NMFS was still working on the contractual details but hoped to hire Technology Planning & Management Corp. (TPMC) in Scituate, MA to be the coordinating entity for the study fleet project.
As such, TPMC will be responsible for acquiring the computer hardware and software for the project and overseeing data processing. The information technology company has provided NMFS with support in the collection and processing of fishing vessel trip reports, and succeeded last year in finally eliminating a four-year backlog consisting of thousands of reports.
Industry survey
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"One of our concerns is that fishermen will read 'stratified random' and think this is just a repeat of
the federal survey. But there will be opportunities for fishermen to identify stations they feel should be sampled."
- David Pierce
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NMFS has designated the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries (DMF) as the project manager for the pilot industry-based survey project. The industry-based survey will compliment the annual NMFS spring and fall surveys by collecting information during the rest of the year.
According to DMF Deputy Director David Pierce, DMF will be meeting with fishermen this fall to put the project together. The work will basically involve having fishermen use their vessels to conduct tows at specific stations every two months and record what they catch.
While many of the stations will be determined by scientists using a stratified random bottom trawl survey strategy, fishermen will have the chance to put their two cents in.
"One of our concerns is that fishermen will read 'stratified random' and think this is just a repeat of the federal survey," Pierce said. "But there will be opportunities for fishermen to identify stations they feel should be sampled."
The Gulf of Maine portion of the survey will use four inshore boats and four offshore boats. The vessels will conduct the surveys in two-month increments "to focus on different life stages of cod," Pierce explained.
The state of Maine will be getting a portion of the available federal funding to work on a geographic information system in concert with the industry-based survey.
The state of Rhode Island will be coordinating the Southern New England yellowtail portion of the survey with April Valliere of the RI Department of Environmental Management as the coordinator.
The project will be patterned after a report titled "Implementing an Industry-Based Survey Pilot Fleet in New England," which was written by the Gulf of Maine Aquarium based on the results of various port meetings held last year.
To get a better idea of how it will work, readers can obtain the report from the NMFS Northeast Region web site at under the Cooperative Research Partners Initiative heading.
Cod tagging
The NMFS cod tagging project aims to coordinate several ongoing tagging efforts and to expand their reach. Projects are currently being run by the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth School of Marine Science and Technology (SMAST), the University of New Hampshire, the Island Institute, and the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans.
In August, NMFS put out a call for proposals for companies, groups, and individuals interested in being responsible for the actual tagging work in five specific areas Cashes and Fippennies; Mount Desert Island to Browns Bank; Cape Cod and the Great South Channel; Georges Bank and the Northeast Peak; and Nantucket Shoals and Coxes Ledge or in acting as the "central coordination/outreach entity" for the project as a whole.
Earl Meredith said NMFS had received nine proposals by the Sept. 13 deadline and was optimistic that contracts would be in place by sometime in November.
"By January, we should be doing cod tagging in a big way," he predicted.
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