COMMERCE
Subscriber Services
Classified Ads
Subscribe
Advertise
NEWS
This Month
Editorial
Letters
F/V Safety
Past Issues
ABOUT US
Contact Us
Latest Issue
Subscribe
History
MORE CONTENT
CFN Archives
Links
Each month exclusively in the PRINT edition of CFN
Along the Coast
Ask the Lobster Doc
Bearin’s
Classifieds
Coming Events
Editorial
Enforcement Report
FISH SAFE
Fleet Additions
Letters
Lobster Market Report
New Boats
News Catch
Quahog Market Report
|
Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 34 Number 3
November 2006
GMRI to use ME grant money to fund fisheries research projects
PORTLAND, ME – In August, the Gulf of Maine Research Institute (GMRI) received nearly $500,000 in grant money from the Maine Marine Research Fund that it will use to address critical fisheries research priorities in the Gulf of Maine.
The money is being distributed among four projects, including the Coast of Maine-Passive Acoustic Sensor System (COM-PASS), which received $85,000.
According to John Annala, GMRI’s chief scientific officer, COM-PASS involves developing acoustic tags to track the movements of inshore Gulf of Maine cod and other groundfish species.
It also involves tagging alewives and other migratory anadromous species and tracking them with an acoustic sensor system placed at the mouth of rivers to monitor the fish as they travel up river.
Graham Sherwood, GMRI groundfish ecologist, will be working on the project in collaboration with scientists from the Maine Department of Marine Resources, University of Maine, University of Southern Maine, and the National Marine Fisheries Service.
Another funded project is “Ecosystem Approaches to Investigating Fisheries in the Gulf of Maine,” which also received $85,000.
This funding will be used to purchase lab equipment to support research for GMRI’s eight scientists, who have expertise in fishery ecology, oceanography, ecosystem modeling, fish behavior/fishing gear technology, and resource economics.
Trawl monitoring
A total of $143,000 will be used to purchase mobile fishing gear monitoring equipment, including trawl monitoring and camera equipment to document the performance of trawls and midwater trawls.
This monitoring equipment will be used to improve trawl efficiency and to monitor escapement and bycatch.
GMRI recently hired fishing gear technologist Steve Eayrs who will be relocating to Maine from Australia in January to head the institute’s fishing gear program.
The remaining $174,000 in funding will go to a project titled “Oceanographic Equipment in Support of Ecosystem-based Fisheries Management: Transport and Distribution of Early Life Stages of Fish and Their Planktonic Prey.”
This money will be used to purchase mobile equipment such as winches, electrical generators, and monitoring equipment, including sampling nets for fish larvae and plankton.
“This equipment will allow us to work with a wide range of vessels and more people in the fishing industry,” said Annala.
Research fund
The Maine Marine Research Fund was created as part of a $20 million bond issue approved by voters in 2005 to help build nonprofit research organizations to stimulate economic growth in the state.
The fund, whose share of the bond is $4 million, is administered by the Maine Technology Institute, which approved the $486,819 grant to GMRI that was announced late in August.
GMRI has been working for 10 years now to establish an international center for marine science and education in Portland with the goal of recharging the economy of the working waterfront there.
According to GMRI President Don Perkins, the grant is an acknowledgement of the value of that idea.
“The Gulf of Maine, our fishery resources, and our fishing community comprise an underutilized competitive advantage for Maine,” he said. “By creating the Marine Research Fund, the state has made a major investment in Maine’s ability to compete in the global economy, an investment that will likely jumpstart a cluster of marine science-based economic activity.”
Among GMRI’s central goals is to “provide a neutral, collaborative platform for research partnerships among leading research organizations, the fishing community, and private industry with a focus on fishery ecosystem research.”
For more information on GMRI or its projects, call Ben Slayton at (207) 228-1638 or email <ben@gmri.org>. More info also is available online at <http://octopus.gma.org>.
Rosanne Mizzoni
Back to story list
|
|
Tell us what you think.
