Look Who’s Back: Sturgeon are Spawning Again in the Chesapeake Bay
from The Fishing Wire

Matt Balazik, the sturgeon surgeon. Photo courtesy of Matt Balazik

Atlantic sturgeon are spawning again in the Chesapeake Bay. But they’ve been gone so long that we’ve forgotten the basic life history information that scientists need to boost their recovery. A species recovery grant from NOAA Fisheries should help.

In 1997, Dave Secor was a young fisheries biologist just starting his career at the University of Maryland. Like almost everyone else, he believed that Atlantic sturgeon, a species that has survived since the age of the dinosaurs, had been long gone from the Chesapeake Bay. But that year a small number of juvenile sturgeon turned up, and they were too small to have immigrated from elsewhere.

“That was a major surprise,” Secor said.

Though sightings were rare back then and still are today, the population of sturgeon that spawn in the Chesapeake Bay has grown. In 2012 that population was added to the endangered species list. Usually a listing is bad news, but in this case it was cause for celebration.

Now scientists are racing to find out what’s driving the recovery so they can reinforce it. Their efforts recently got a big boost when NOAA Fisheries awarded a three-year, $1.75 million species recovery grant to the Maryland Department of Natural Resources and the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries.

Atlantic sturgeon were prized for their flesh and for the caviar made from their roe. But fishing for them in the Chesapeake peaked in the 1890’s, and no one alive today has seen a healthy run of sturgeon in the Bay. Even basic information about their life history was forgotten long ago, and this is a problem for the scientists working to protect them.

“We need to find out where they’re spawning so we can protect that habitat,” Secor said. Scientists also hope to locate their nursery grounds and to identify the biggest threats to their recovery. Ship strikes and poor water quality are among the top suspects.

“This recovery may be part of a cycle,” said Secor. “If we don’t pursue this now, we may not see it again for another 20 or 30 years.”

A Fish That’s Hard to Follow

But finding their spawning grounds is difficult, not least because there are so few of them out there. To solve that problem, scientists will use the new funding to tag about 240 sturgeon with acoustic transmitters. That will allow scientists to track their movements in the Bay.

Atlantic sturgeon spend most of their time at sea, travelling up and down the shelf break where they plow the bottom with their snouts, eating worms and crustaceans. Like salmon, they return to their natal streams to spawn.

Unlike most salmon, however, which spawn once and die, sturgeon make the spawning run repeatedly. They can live up to 60 years and can grow up to 14 feet (4.3 meters) and 800 pounds (370 kg).

Matt Balazik, a postdoc at Virginia Commonwealth University, is doing most of the tagging. The acoustic tag, about the size of a Sharpie marker, is inserted into the belly of the fish through a small incision. The minor surgery takes less than five minutes, and the unharmed fish are quickly sent on their way.

The tag emits a coded sound roughly once a minute, a signal that’s recorded whenever the fish passes within range of a receiver. Each tag has a unique acoustic signature, allowing scientists to track individual fish.

“You can think of the tag as like an EZPass,” said Matt Balazik, referring to the device that motorists in the Northeast attach to their windshields, “and of the receivers as toll booths.”

An acoustic signal is used because sound waves travel well underwater. Radio waves would dissipate quickly in the murky Bay.

Collaboration is Key

Scientists have tagged sturgeon all along the Eastern seaboard, but the Chesapeake is uniquely difficult because it’s a meta-estuary-an estuary comprised of many smaller estuaries-and it’s the largest one in the nation.

“In the Hudson it’s a piece of cake,” said Dave Secor. “A few receivers bank to bank and you’ve got the river covered at that point.” The mouth of the Chesapeake, on the other hand, is 20 miles wide.

But the tagging project got a big boost from the Navy, which recently installed an array of 58 receivers, most attached to Coast Guard buoys, throughout the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay.

The Naval Base at Norfolk, Virginia is the largest in the nation, and it’s one of several naval installations in the lower Chesapeake Bay. As a federal agency, the Navy is required to minimize interactions with endangered species.

“We want to know where and when sturgeon are utilizing the Bay,” said Carter Watterson, a Navy biologist. “Once we know that, we can work to minimize any impact we have on the species.”

The Navy will benefit from the tags that Maryland and Virginia researchers deploy because they increase the value of the receiver array. And the state researchers will benefit every time Watterson sends them tracking data on their fish.

The buoys the receivers are attached to also record environmental data, allowing scientists to correlate sturgeon activity with ocean conditions. This will be key to understanding how those conditions affect the fish, and in particular how sensitive the fish are to the low oxygen levels that plague the Bay every summer.

A Living Fossil

Sturgeon have existed in pretty much the same form for at least 85 million years. A living fossil, they survived the meteors that killed off the dinosaurs and many other catastrophes since. “They’re designed to handle anything,” Matt Balazik said. “Except humans.”

But don’t write them off just yet. “The fact that they’re still hanging in there makes me a bit more optimistic than I was earlier in my career,” said Dave Secor, the biologist who was surprised to see juvenile sturgeon in the Chesapeake Bay in 1997.

“What sturgeon have taught me as a scientist,” he said, “is that sometimes it can be delightful when you’re wrong.”

Research Finds More than 50 Fish Species in Gulf Rely on Decommissioned Rigs
Species include fish that are key to fisheries economy
from The Fishing Wire

Divers capture a school of amberjack and red snapper above MI-A-7, a cut-off oil and gas platform located approximately 50 miles east of Port Aransas, Texas.(Credit: Dr. Matt Ajemian)

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas – Early research from Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi’s artificial reefs monitoring program shows that decommissioned oil and gas structures converted to artificial reefs are supporting a high abundance and diverse fish assemblages within the Gulf of Mexico.

The new data from the western Gulf shows a high abundance of red snapper living around these structures for years at a time. Researchers in the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies (HRI) at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi say 52 fish species from 18 families have been identified at 13 surveyed sites near Port O’Connor, Port Aransas, and Port Mansfield, Texas (http://tamucc.edu/news/2013/10/images/artreef_allsitemap.jpg).

“There’s a lot of evidence that the red snapper populations we see today wouldn’t be here if we didn’t have all of these converted oil and gas platforms,” said Dr. Greg Stunz, Director of the Center for Sportfish Science and Conservation. “Red snapper is the most economically important fish in the Gulf of Mexico.”

Stunz, who is the Principal Investigator for a recently awarded grant, says that in addition to supporting a variety of fish populations, artificial reefs lure commercial fishermen, recreational fishermen, and divers; benefiting many Gulf Coast economies.

Schools of gray and red snapper congregate around the deck of a toppled oil and gas platform. This is a structure located 70 miles southeast of Port Aransas. (Credit: Schmidt Ocean Institute).

This new evidence is the reason the HRI’s newly-formed Center for Sportish Science and Conservation was recently awarded $600,000 by Texas Parks and Wildlife and $50,000 from the Fondren Foundation to expand their studies on artificial reefs. Researchers will monitor sites around the western Gulf and log the amount and types of marine life that create homes around the reefs. They will use these data to determine how to sustain these new “fish homes” including finding what characteristics are best suited to become habitats for each type of fish and to find the long-term effects of keeping rigs in the Gulf after they stop functioning.

“There are about 4,000 of these rigs in the Gulf of Mexico,” said Stunz. “About 75 percent of those will be gone in the next 20 years, so we are very concerned that we get these rigs into reef programs so that they continue producing fish.”

Data collected as part of the HRI’s “South Texas Artificial Reef Monitoring – Fish Community Assessment along the Coastal Bend” grant over the next four years will help maximize the benefits from artificial reef structures and assist scientists in better understanding how to continue sustaining fisheries for generations to come.

A scientist removes large red snapper captured from vertical longline gear set on an artificial reef, and collects tissue samples from the red snapper.

“Up until now, there has been very little evidence for what’s happening on artificial reefs on this side of the Gulf,” said Dr. Matt Ajemian, Assistant Research Scientist and Co-Principal Investigator. “One of our major upcoming projects will be to set up an array of acoustic receivers at different artificial reefs and track fish movements among them to determine the types of reefs these animals prefer to live on.”

The “South Texas Artificial Reef Monitoring” program works to enhance the effectiveness of current conservation and management initiatives in Texas, which has one of the largest rigs-to-reef programs, and throughout the Gulf of Mexico. The project is also set to serve as an educational tool, providing research experience for students at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.

About the HRI: The Harte Research Institute, an endowed research component of Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, is dedicated to advancing the long-term sustainable use and conservation of the Gulf of Mexico. Expertise at the Harte Research Institute (HRI) includes the consequences and long-term effects of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The Harte Research Institute is made possible by an endowment from the Ed Harte family. For more information, go to http://www.harteresearchinstitute.org/.

About Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi: Offering more than 60 of the most popular degree programs in the state, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi has proudly provided a solid academic reputation, renowned faculty, and highly-rated degree programs since 1947. The Island University has earned its spot as a premier doctoral-granting institution, supporting two research institutes and 10 research centers and labs. Discover your island at www.tamucc.edu.

Suspected Rockfish Poachers Indicted After Two-Year Investigation

by kking
Maryland Natural Resources Department
from The Fishing Wire

AV Sandusky pulls up a massive, old gill net found at Bloody Point from the poaching operation.

Conservationists, watermen and anglers are applauding efforts by the Maryland Natural Resources Police and its federal law enforcement partners in obtaining indictments of four Talbot County watermen accused of running a striped bass poaching ring that spanned four years and was worth nearly a half million dollars on the wholesale market.

The 26-count indictment handed down Thursday provides the link between the actions of the four men and the discovery of illegal gill nets filled with fish found off Kent Island in February 2011. The incident triggered a massive police enforcement effort, generated a series of tough laws from the General Assembly and closed the commercial striped bass season three weeks early to prevent overfishing.

“Marylanders can be proud of these officers, whose hard work, long nights and nonstop investigative efforts have paid off,” said Governor Martin O’Malley. “Poachers steal from honest anglers, watermen, and all of us who responsibly enjoy our State’s natural riches and respect the livelihoods of the hardworking men and women who rely on this fishery.”

The indictments by a federal grand jury in Baltimore came after a more than two-year joint investigation by NRP officers, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Justice Department, who painstakingly shifted through thousands of documents and reports to construct a paper trail of the crimes.

“We hope that Maryland citizens are beginning to realize that these are crimes against the State,” said Tony Friedrich, executive director of Coastal Conservation Association Maryland. “All of our best science is based on reliable catch reports. By falsifying data and poaching Maryland’s State fish, they are not only putting the entire stock at risk but making a mockery of our combined efforts to conserve the striped bass population.”

Beginning in January 2007, Michael D. Hayden, Jr. and William J. Lednum, both of Tilghman Island, and unnamed others conspired to overharvest striped bass and falsify records submitted to the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. Their illegal catch was sold to wholesalers in Maryland, New York, Delaware and Pennsylvania.

In addition, the grand jury found that in 2011, Hayden, Lednum and two other watermen – Kent Sadler, of Tilghman Island, and Lawrence “Daniel” Murphy, of St. Michaels – attempted to catch about 20,000 pounds of striped bass before the start of the 2011 commercial season using gill nets illegally set and left unattended in the Chesapeake Bay.

Hayden also was indicted on one count of witness retaliation and two counts of witness tampering in connection with the grand jury probe.

Billy Rice, chairman of the Tidal Fisheries Advisory Commission, expressed his gratitude on behalf of the commercial fishing industry for law enforcement efforts.

Officers discover illegal attempts to harvest fish using a gill net as part of this poaching ring.

“Poaching does not reflect a majority of our industry,” Rice said. “It hurts our livelihood and our image. We hope these indictments send a strong message.”

Bill Goldsborough, chairman of the Sport Fisheries Advisory Commission, praised the State and federal partnership that led to the indictments.

“Egregious fishing violations are major challenges for fisheries management,” said Goldsborough, also a senior scientist with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. “Effective enforcement like this is essential to healthy fisheries.”

As part of any sentence should the watermen be convicted, the federal government will seek to seize Hayden’s 38-foot work boat, his 2009 pick-up truck and all his fishing gear and Lednum’s 46-foot work boat and his fishing gear.

If these watermen are found guilty they could permanently lose their Maryland commercial fishing privileges.

As part of its continued effort to better protect Maryland’s public fishery, DNR most recently introduced the Maritime Law Enforcement Information Network – MLEIN, a network of radar units and cameras that scans the Chesapeake Bay for law breakers.