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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 35 Number 5
January 2008
Fishermen, gear experts trade haddock ideas
PORTSMOUTH, NH – There are a lot of haddock in the waters off New England, and while the rebound in numbers from record lows in the 1980s is good news, it has created major difficulties for fishermen, managers, and scientists.
The two major issues are the discarding of undersized fish and the inability of US fishermen to catch their full share of the total allowable catch (TAC) because low catch limits for cod often limit the effort that fishermen can exert on haddock.
Everyone is trying to figure out, “How can we maximize the use of this large haddock stock so that it lasts?”
This central question was the subject of an Oct. 25-26 conference in Portsmouth called, “Haddock 2007: International Symposium on Haddock Conservation, Harvesting, and Management.”
Event organizers included: the University of New Hampshire (UNH); Rhode Island Sea Grant; Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries (DMF); the Gulf of Maine Research Institute (GMRI); and the Marine Institute of Memorial University, Newfoundland.
The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) Northeast Cooperative Research Partners Program, DMF, Rhode Island Sea Grant, and New Hampshire Sea Grant sponsored the event, which drew more than 100 people from the Northeast region, Norway, Canada, Scotland, and the Faroe Islands. Although not there in person, Russian researchers sent a scientific poster presentation as a contribution to the conference.
Gear specialists, net makers, fishermen, and scientists participated in presentations and discussions, all aimed at the wise use and conservation of the booming haddock stock.
Wardle address
A highlight of the symposium was the second day’s keynote address by Clem Wardle, a fish behavior expert now retired from the Fisheries Research Services’ Aberdeen Marine Laboratory in Scotland.
Wardle’s work from the 1960s through the 1990s can fairly be said to be the most pioneering, creative, and comprehensive effort globally to understand the relationships between fish behavior and physiology and fish capture.
Chris Glass, executive director of the Northeast Consortium, and Pingguo He of UNH, both respected gear scientists in their own right, were students of Wardle.
From the start of his remarks, it was clear that Wardle’s work from the past was applicable to today’s world. He opened by showing a film clip from 1952 that described how investigators were working to “improve efficiency without interfering with fish stocks of tomorrow.”
Wardle’s talk also touched on the challenges of observing fish and fishing gear before the days of scuba gear and even before plastic. Much of the work was dangerous and would raise eyebrows today, including divers riding trawl nets or sliding down trawl warps to observe the doors on the bottom or strapping themselves into towed sleds to fly around a working net.
Fish perception
For those interested in how fish perceive fishing gear, some of the most astonishing information came during Wardle’s discussion of fish vision and the role of contrast and color change.
Orientation of an object plays a key role in whether it is visible under water and, as Wardle said, “fish scales act like small mirrors,” so some of his experimentation involved mirrors.
He narrated a video segment showing two divers holding a mirror shaped roughly like a tiered wedding cake. The mirror gradually became completely invisible as the orientation changed.
He backed this up with shots of fish under water at different angles. In some orientations, the fish were nearly invisible against the bottom while in other orientations they were much more distinct. Other items like a flat mirror and even a saucepan also disappeared when turned the right way under water.
Wardle described a series of twine experiments to create either highly visible or nearly invisible patterns so that fish would either be herded or left undisturbed during the trawling process.
Net designer and builder Tor Bendiksen of Reidar’s Manufacturing in Fairhaven, MA was impressed with Wardle’s presentation.
“What he brought out from the 60s, 70s, and 80s was fascinating. There’s just so much knowledge there,” Bendiksen said. “It sparked a lot of ideas. I’ve already talked to customers about some of the stuff that was showed there, like the effects of lighting and contrast.”
New trawl nets
Day two of the conference was generally concerned with the various types of harvesting gears used for haddock – trawls, gillnets, pots, and longlines.
The trawl section featured presentations on several haddock nets that have been described in articles published in Commercial Fisheries News over the last year, including:
The “Rope Separator Haddock Trawl” developed by UNH gear researchers and fisherman Carl Bouchard (CFN February 2007);
The “Five-Point Trawl” developed by Bendiksen and DMF gear researchers (CFN January 2007); and
The “Eliminator Trawl” developed by the Superior Trawl Company, fishing vessels Sea Breeze and Iron Horse, and Rhode Island Sea Grant researchers (CFN December 2006).
The collaborators who created the Eliminator Trawl recently won the 2007 SmartGear competition, which emphasizes the promise of this new gear.
And a group from the United Kingdom representing CEFAS (Centre for Environment, Fisheries & Aquaculture Science), SEAFISH, and the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations has purchased an Eliminator Trawl and will experiment with it in their waters.
Artificial bait
Norbait, an artificial bait produced in Norway for the longline industry, was the subject of several talks.
Experiments by the Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fishermen’s Association, Memorial University, and DMF have shown lower bycatch of cod with Norbait in most instances, with catches of haddock fairly comparable to those achieved with traditional bait.
After listening to the discussion, the bottom line appears to be that Norbait is a promising alternative to traditional baits such as mackerel but more testing needs to be done.
Escapee survival
In a demonstration of advanced technology in fisheries gear work, a number of participants in a European collaboration led by Mike Breen of Scotland’s Fisheries Research Services discussed their ability to capture fish that escape from trawls both at significant depths and at the surface in order to evaluate escapee survival.
Using a detachable codend device, the group observed escapee mortality to be low when fish escape while still at the bottom and much higher when they escape at the surface.
In addition, the researchers recommended that escapee mortality be accounted for in stock assessment modeling, citing seabird predation on surface escapees as one factor that should be considered in gauging mortality.
Research to rules
A particularly informative exchange occurred in the midst of the gear session prompted by a question about how best to get new fishing gear factored into management plans and actually used by fishermen.
Tom Nies of the New England Fishery Management Council clarified the situation.
“At present, any new gear must be adopted in a management action,” he said. “However, the council used Framework 42 to set up a process that would allow fishing gear to get approved (for) B-days-at-sea and the Haddock Special Access Program (SAP).”
The council has worked up a standard for the process, he added, and NMFS is in the process of approving the standard. Once that approval is secured, it should speed the process of getting new gear into use for B-days and SAPs. NMFS will have to review and approve the gears, but no management action, such as a framework, will be necessary.
At this time, some gears have been reviewed by the council’s Research Steering Committee and could be recommended to NMFS. These include the Rope Separator Trawl, the Eliminator Trawl, and artificial longline bait such as Norbait.
Biological picture
The symposium’s management session started with the premise that managing fish stocks is a complicated matter with no easy solutions.
As DMF’s David Pierce noted, “Management and assessment is a labyrinth of targets, guidelines, and processes.”
However, several notable research projects are producing results that may help improve our understanding of haddock biology in the future.
Here are some examples.
GMRI researchers Graham Sherwood and Catherine Salerno have been developing acoustic tagging methods to track haddock over time. This tracking information can help answer questions about habitat use and the effectiveness of closed areas in protecting fish stocks.
University of Massachusetts Dartmouth faculty members, including Rodney Rountree, Katie Anderson, and Francis Juanes, have been looking at fine-scale aspects of biology such as whether the egg condition of spawning fish improves during night time. So far, it appears that haddock eggs are in their most ready condition to be fertilized between 9 pm and 5 am.
No one knows why haddock have a boom-and-bust spawning and recruitment cycle, but researchers in the Faroe Islands, including Jakup Reinert and H. Jakupsstovu, think environmental factors are key and that primary production of phytoplankton is a central issue. When primary productivity is high, spawning and recruitment are good.
Sparking ideas
Another highlight of the symposium was the keynote address offered by Capt. Bill Lee of Rockport MA. Lee showed a series of photos and video clips of his work with underwater video to examine the behavior of fish and fishing gear.
The two-day event provided everyone who attended with a chance to talk with colleagues and make new acquaintances. And focusing just on haddock allowed conversations to spin out into different but useful areas.
Said New Hampshire fisherman Carl Bouchard, “I usually learn something new at these kinds of meetings. Sometimes you start by talking about one idea or project, and it turns on a light bulb for something else.”
Anyone who wasn’t able to attend but who would like to learn more about the symposium may call Pingguo He at (603) 862-3154 or e-mail him at <pingguo.he@unh.edu>.
Dana Morse is a member of the University of Maine Marine Extension Team, which is a collaboration of Maine Sea Grant and the University of Maine Cooperative Extension.
Dana Morse
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