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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 33 Number 6
February 2006
SMAST adds lobster, groundfish to program mix
NEW BEDFORD, MA – The School of Marine Science and Technology (SMAST) at the University of Massachusetts (UMass) Dartmouth has adopted a new administrative structure and launched several research projects related to lobsters and groundfish.
Last fall, SMAST was split into two departments: the Department of Fisheries Oceanography, chaired by Kevin Stokesbury; and the Department of Estuarine and Ocean Sciences, chaired by Wendell Brown. Lobster, groundfish, and scallop programs fall under the fisheries oceanography department.
SMAST was first created as a research center, but the reorganization further elevates the status of the school. Now it’s more on academic par with other UMass Dartmouth schools and colleges. Not only will the new structure allow SMAST professors, staffers, and technicians to better focus on their own research interests, it will allow the school to bring in additional people and assume more educational responsibilities.
SMAST Dean Brian Rothschild said, “We want to be among the number-one training grounds for people who go to the fisheries service, state agencies, or universities. The training of new fisheries scientists – this is a real shortfall in the nation right now.”
Stokesbury, well known within industry for heading up SMAST’s scallop video survey, added, “The goal is to have a top notch fisheries science program in New Bedford, which is the top fishing port.”
According to the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), New Bedford was the number one fishing port in the nation dollar-wise in 2004, the latest year for which statistics are available. Landings were valued at $206.5 million, marking the fifth year in a row that the economic value of New Bedford’s catch had increased.
Research expansion
While the scallop program still carries enormous weight at SMAST, the Department of Fisheries Oceanography is increasing the amount of research it conducts on other species.
“There are several major fisheries in Massachusetts and we want to be involved in all of them,” said Rothschild.
The expansion was possible for three reasons. First, lobster and groundfish fishermen requested it. Second, SMAST’s strong partnerships with state and federal fisheries agencies enabled new projects to go forward under teams of researchers from multiple institutions.
And third, the Massachusetts congressional delegation supported the move and ensured that SMAST and its partners received adequate funding to make the expansion a reality.
Through the support of US Sens. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and John Kerry (D-MA), as well as US Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), SMAST has received roughly $5 million in federal funding for three years in a row.
SMAST is currently working on its second $5 million allocation, which was channeled through NMFS, and congressional representatives announced in November that they had secured an additional $4.82 million for fisheries research and roughly another $1 million for textile and cranberry research.
“I am pleased that we have maintained a strong level of federal support for these programs, which are so important to the economy of our area,” said Frank in a joint announcement with Kennedy and Kerry.
Kennedy added, “With this funding, we move one step closer to making the SouthCoast an internationally renowned center for fisheries research.”
Lobsters
This kind of federal support has enabled SMAST to begin a lobster program in close cooperation with its state partner, the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries (DMF).
Back in 2002, SMAST and DMF joined hands to form the Massachusetts Marine Fisheries Institute, which is the umbrella under which SMAST’s new lobster research is being conducted.
At the moment, the program includes three primary focuses:
A ventless trap survey of lobsters in the Massachusetts portion of Lobster Conservation Management Area (LCMA) 2 headed up by DMF lobster biologist Bob Glenn;
A SCUBA diving operation through which SMAST researchers visually count and tag lobsters in parts of Buzzards Bay as a means of calibrating the ventless trap work; and
Water chemistry research in Buzzards Bay to determine whether declines in lobster abundance are related to water quality issues.
The overall purpose of the project is to develop more precise estimates of relative abundance of legal and sublegal sized lobsters in the Massachusetts portion of LMCA 2.
The SCUBA program is a partnership with the state and will benefit other projects in the future. And the water chemistry research, headed up by SMAST’s Jefferson Turner, may help scientists determine whether changes in water quality have contributed to shell disease.
Lobstermen wanted help
According to Rothschild, SMAST agreed to enter the lobster research field after being approached by industry leaders who were well aware of SMAST’s cooperative research with scallopers.
“They said, ‘Hey, we have problems too with lobster stock assessments, disease, water quality. Can you help us?’” explained Rothschild.
Stokesbury, who had worked on lobsters for six years in Nova Scotia prior to coming to SMAST, was willing to take it on. Furthermore, he strongly supported the development of a diving program, and now, numerous SMAST researchers and graduate students are checked out as divers.
Last summer was SMAST’s first involvement in lobster counting and tagging.
Groundfish
In addition to work on separator trawls and other groundfish-related projects, SMAST is building on the success of its scallop video survey and moving the camera technology into the groundfish field.
The research team, headed up by Stokesbury and Jennifer Miksis-Olds, has begun field-testing a video-equipped pyramid in Massachusetts Bay to document cod aggregations.
Similar in design to the scallop video survey pyramid, the modular frame is 6'x6' at the base and 5' high, and the pyramid, which sits stationary on the ocean bottom after being deployed, is equipped with sonar and multiple cameras.
The sonar picks up the presence of fish that swim by, triggering the video cameras, which take images that are stored on a hard drive for viewing once the pyramid is retrieved. The unit, still in the prototype stage, is called an acoustic-optic system (AOS).
SMAST hopes to use this technology to obtain better estimates of groundfish stock sizes within defined areas since the video images can accurately record fish numbers and species.
“It’s a new stock assessment technology,” said Rothschild. “We’re hoping to develop a better method for counting fish.”
Underwater vehicles
More remarkable yet, SMAST has entered into a partnership with Lockheed Martin Sippican in Marion, MA, the “world’s largest producer of low-cost underwater vehicles,” according to the company.
To augment the fixed-station AOS work, SMAST and Lockheed Martin Sippican are developing an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), which looks like a torpedo, to better track fish on the move.
Before sending the AUV out on its own, however, the research team first plans to mount the AUV with its video cameras in a protective frame on a trawl net head rope so it can “assess images observed of fish going in and out of the trawl net.” The team also wants to properly test the unit’s new low-level lights.
Stokesbury said, “I’m hoping that with five cameras in five different directions running at the same time, we’ll get some interesting data on how a trawl fishes.”
Although all of this work is still in its preliminary stages, Rothschild was optimistic, concluding, “It’s really exciting.”
Janice M. Plante
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