“The Five Best Reasons To Pass The Gulf States Plan”

by Jeff Angers
from The Fishing Wire

Red Snapper

I’m speaking of the five fish and wildlife management agencies of the Gulf states. I’ve spent the last 20-plus years working with the individuals who lead and work in these departments, and I have found them all to be impressively competent professionals — serious and passionate about sustaining the stocks of fish and game under their management.

In my own state of Louisiana, we are justly proud of our Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, which has developed a state-of-the-art creel survey for offshore anglers (“LA Creel”).

Now in its third year, the innovative LA Creel survey is providing pinpoint-precise, real-time estimates of fisheries populations and harvest levels.

This is exactly the kind of data that fisheries managers need to protect red snapper — but only if they have the authority to act.

Once Washington gets out of the way, the five state fisheries managers can respond with flexible approaches that reflect the real state of affairs in the Gulf; they will be able to preserve the species for the enjoyment of all sectors, with no group excluded. Today, federal fisheries managers are left to guess — and to play favorites.

It was this kind of advanced knowledge that led Louisiana’s DWF to realize that the recreational red snapper catch during the regular season was short of its quota by at least 88,823 pounds, making possible an extended season that just began November 20. (The extended season will be subject to a daily bag limit of two snapper per person of 16-inch minimum length; Louisiana’s regular state-waters red snapper season ended September 8).

LA Creel is featured in a new video that also introduces us to representatives from all five Gulf state fishery management agencies. It ought to be “Exhibit A” in the case for adopting the five Gulf States’ plan. I urge recreational fishing advocates to watch the video and share it widely on social media.

Louisiana isn’t alone: each of the five Gulf States has been at the forefront of advanced fisheries science.

It was their devotion to the sustainability of the red snapper that drove the five states’ fisheries directors to put aside regional, political and personal differences and take the historic step of coming together to develop the five states’ plan.

They were doing what we ask all leaders to do: when confronted with a serious problem like federal mismanagement of the red snapper fishery, real leaders set aside distractions, utilize the most advanced scientific tools and information at their disposal and then act in the best interests of future generations.

It wasn’t just a matter of joining together to fill the vacuum left by the federal government’s mismanagement. The five directors then went further, each of them becoming personally involved in advocating for the plan, both in their own state capitals and in the halls of Congress.

Over the last year, testimony advocating state management from Nick Wiley, the executive director of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission; Chris Blankenship, the director of the Marine Resources Division of the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, and Robert Barham, Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, before the U.S. House of Representatives has been especially compelling and persuasive.

The state directors traveled to Washington to move the ball forward on their historic agreement. Once H.R.3094 is enacted, their words will be remembered as watershed moments in saving the fish and the fishery.

As those of us who live here know, the Gulf is a very special place, unique in every way. These are the men and women who know it better than anyone else — certainly better than a distant bureaucrat in Washington, D.C., however well intentioned.

Plugging Into the Gulf Stream?
Can the Gulf Stream be used to generate power? Should it?

by Kip Tabb, Coastal Review
www.coastalreview.org
from The Fishing Wire

MANTEO — The Gulf Stream passes at times just 12 miles from Cape Hatteras. The amount of water it carries past our coast is massive. In fact, if it were a river, the Gulf Stream would be the greatest river that ever existed on this planet.

“”By the time the Gulf Stream gets off Cape Hatteras (it’s greater than) the flow of all the rivers of earth . . . 45 times greater the entire flow of every river on earth (at flood stage) is what we have off Cape Hatteras,” Mike Muglia of the Coastal Studies Institute said.

A team of researchers and scientists from the institute, N.C. State University and the Institute of Marine Sciences in Morehead City has been studying for the last two years whether all that water could be put to use to create electricity.

Gulf Stream hugging the Southeast coast

It is still too early to tell, but there are characteristics of the Gulf Stream as it passes the Outer Banks that may make better suited for energy production. As it flows north past the Outer Banks, the Gulf Stream is constrained from changing position by the edge of the continental shelf on its west side, Muglia explained. It veers east into deeper water at The Point, an undersea geologic structure about 40 miles off Hatteras Island, and its course can meander.

“The key point is that off of Hatteras, the variability in available energy at a specific location is due primarily to the variability in the Gulf Stream location,” he said.

The Gulf Stream gains three times the amount of flow as it moves north up the Southeast coast. Its flow is measured in svedrups, or Sv — named for the late Harald Sverdrup, a pioneering oceanographer and an early director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California. Off the south Florida coast, the stream’s flow is 33 Sv, or 33 million cubic meters per second; by the time the current reaches Cape Hatteras it’s flow has increased to 90 Sv.

However, with no banks to constrain its flow, the location of the Gulf Stream is not a constant, nor is the force of the current the same at all times. Because it varies in place and flow as much as it does, if the Gulf Stream is to be developed as an energy resource accurate predictions of its fluctuations will be needed, the researchers noted.

Ruoying He, an oceanographer at N.C. State, develops models of coastal circulation currents. It is the modeling that his group has created that is being used to predict where the Gulf Stream will be and the force of the current as it moves past the Outer Banks.

“I got involved in this project because my team at NC State develops a high resolution computer model to predict ocean circulation off the East Coast of U.S.,” He wrote in an email in response to a question. “Similar to the weather forecast, our model provides time and space continuous ocean state . . . predictions. They are quite useful to fill observational gaps and help understand Gulf Stream variability measured by (the) limited suite of observational assets we deployed . . .”

The models He’s team have developed have been remarkably accurate, according to Muglia. “We’ve compared (our) measurements to the model and the model does an extremely good job of capturing the average speed over a long time period,” he said.

He notes there is more work to be done. The model has done a good job of predicting the amount of flow in the Gulf Stream and giving a good idea how it fluctuates. However, if the resource is going to be developed, better information is needed.

“A major research area in my team is to further improve the accuracy of our ocean prediction model,” He wrote. “The model is doing a decent job in predicting the Gulf Stream variability. We hope, through further model refinements and data assimilation, we can perform accurate real-time . . . forecasts of the Gulf Stream to support (and) optimize offshore surveys and energy harvesting efforts.”

Whether the Gulf Stream can be utilized as an energy resource is still very much up in the air. Muglia notes there are a number of hurdles that must be crossed before energy will surge from the waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

“Is it a viable resource in terms of permitting? Is it a viable resource in terms of economics? Engineering?” he asked.

Those questions, especially the topic of engineering, are being addressed by John Bane at the Institute of Marine Sciences. He points out that the studies that are being done are comparable to almost any study looking at a potential energy resource. “The observations that Mike has made shows very clearly that it (the Gulf Stream) fluctuates. It’s very similar to studies of wind energy,” he said.

Expanding on that, Bane talked about other energy resources. “If you were out in West Texas and wanted to drill for oil, you would examine and explore where oil might most likely be. This is a resource assessment. That’s what we’re doing.”

The assessments are ongoing and expanding. Initially the instruments used to measure what was happening with the currents were coastal radars, ongoing measurements taken from instrument in the sea and onsite observations. Instrumentation is being increased to look at a broader cross section of the Gulf Stream, giving the scientists a better picture of the energy closer to shore where it may be more accessible and farther out to sea where there may be more potential energy but the cost of engineering would become higher.

The first biological assessments are also being done. The role of the bottom arrays that are used to assess current and flow is being expanded.

“These now have hydrophones on them. We’re passively listening and seeing what kind of critters we have out there,” Muglia said. “We’ve certainly observed clicks and marine animals. Some of them seem pretty curious. We have one where it sounds like he comes right up to the instrument.”

A place of verdant sea life, the Gulf Stream has been a remarkable asset for the Outer Banks for as long as the islands have been populated. Whether it will be a part of the energy assets of North Carolina is still an unanswered question.

“We really are just trying to understand what the resource is and whether it’s a viable resource,” Muglia said.

Alabama Red Snapper Tally 56 Percent less than Feds Report

EDITOR’s NOTE: Today’s feature, written by Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources’ David Rainer, is yet another example of the continuing conflict between the five states that comprise the shores of the Gulf of Mexico and federal authorities when it comes to managing the Gulf’s fisheries. As you’ll read, the results don’t seem to surprise anyone- but the fight continues.
from The Fishing Wire

As many Alabama offshore anglers will attest, the results from the red snapper catch data is the same old song, second verse.

When the mandatory Red Snapper Reporting System was implemented for the 2014 season, the Alabama Marine Resources Division had a pretty good idea that the catch numbers compiled by the NOAA Fisheries was significantly inflated. The catch data for the 9-day 2014 season reported through Alabama’s “Snapper Check” was 455,522 pounds, while the feds estimated the catch at a whopping 1,227,469 pounds.

The discrepancy between the Alabama red snapper catch data and the federal catch data was recently confirmed with the 2015 numbers.

Keep in mind the 2015 season was different because of sector separation. The private recreational anglers had a 10-day season. The charter boats with a federal reef fish permit were allowed to fish 44 days.

Still, the discrepancy was significant. The federal catch estimate was 2,355,481 pounds. Marine Resources estimated the catch off Alabama at 56 percent less than the federal estimate at 1,045,042. The average-size red snapper landed was more than 8 pounds.

“We continued the Red Snapper Reporting Program for a second year to compare it to the federal MRIP (Marine Recreational Information Program),” said Chris Blankenship, Director of the Alabama Marine Resources Division. “Last year, the results showed that Alabama caught about two-and-a-half times less red snapper than the federal government estimated we caught.

“Where that’s important is the quota is set before the season, and that’s how they determine the number of days for the season. If they are overestimating what’s been landed, our snapper season potentially could have been two-and-a-half times longer if they had used Alabama’s information.”

Red Snapper

Red Snapper Research

“This year, the federal program estimated there was more than twice the number of red snapper landed than what the Alabama program estimated,” he said.

The reason Blankenship is confident in the Alabama numbers is because of the collection of data through the mandatory Red Snapper Reporting Program and the deployment of Marine Resources personnel to conduct checks at the public boat ramps and marinas, as well as on-the-water checks by enforcement personnel.

“We end up with a correction factor for the ones that were not reported,” he said. “We use that to come up with the final numbers. It’s a much less complicated system than what the federal government uses, and we feel ours is much more accurate.

“We have cameras at the public boat launches; we do vessel counts on how many boats launched during red snapper season. We do this to compare the numbers used by the Alabama reporting program or the MRIP data. What we found was the number of vessels launched very closely corresponds with what the Alabama red snapper program reported. We think that is important validation for our program.”

Blankenship also said the MRIP system is still using a telephone survey of coastal households and extrapolating the data.

“It’s obvious to us when we look at the results from that telephone survey that they are overestimating the amount of effort, the number of fishing trips for the state of Alabama,” Blankenship said. “We are attempting to work with the MRIP team to see what’s causing the difference in data.

“They have been very anxious to see how we have calculated our results from the Alabama Snapper Check, but they have not been as open to show how they come up with their numbers. We’re trying to work through those difficulties. We don’t have anything to hide. We are glad to show how our system works and how we came up with our numbers. It’s not complicated, and we feel it’s very accurate. We want to be able to look under the hood of the MRIP program, and we think it will help them develop a more accurate estimate of the catch, not only in Alabama but nationwide.”

Blankenship said one example of MRIP data that cannot be accurate came from Mississippi.

“When you look at the landings on the NOAA MRIP website for the private recreational season in Mississippi and the federal estimate of their catch, for the 10-day red snapper season in June, the federal MRIP system estimated there was not a single red snapper landed in the state of Mississippi,” Blankenship said. “So in Alabama, the feds estimated we caught more than 2 million pounds of red snapper, and in Mississippi, they estimated they caught zero red snapper during the same time period. This just shows the MRIP system obviously has some flaws.

“That’s why we feel it is so important for the feds to use numbers from Alabama Snapper Check because our numbers are much more accurate.”

The current federal quota for the recreational sector has a 20-percent buffer built in to account for overages. Blankenship said the best way to get rid of that ridiculously large buffer is to have more accurate catch data.

“The best way to get that 20-percent buffer back is to have regional management for either a portion of the quota or true management of red snapper where we do the stock assessment and set the quota,” he said. “We feel like with regional management we can get more days for the private recreational anglers and more days for the charter boats.”

The Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council is considering Amendment 39 that would give the five Gulf States regional management of the red snapper fishery.

A public hearing on the amendment was held in Mobile Tuesday night. The full Gulf Council will consider Amendment 39 at its next meeting, which is scheduled for January 25-29, 2016, at Perdido Beach Resort in Orange Beach, Ala.

“The reason Amendment 39 is important is evident in our red snapper reporting numbers,” said Blankenship. “Alabama currently supports Amendment 39 because we feel like we can do a much better job managing this red snapper fishery than is currently being done by the federal government and get our anglers more days to fish.”

Blankenship said Marine Resources is in the process of doing a stock assessment off the coast of Alabama and will hopefully have the results by the end of the year. The early numbers look good.

“The snapper stock seems to be very healthy even after the season,” he said. “Whether we caught a million pounds as Alabama estimates or 2.3 million pounds as the federal government estimates, we’ve been out there doing research since the season ended.

“I can say there is no shortage of legal-size red snapper off the coast of Alabama.”

—DAVID RAINER, Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources

“Bugging” the Fish on Mobile Bay and Mississippi Sound

Today’s feature comes to us from David Rainer of the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources
from The Fishing Wire

Hydrophone locations in Alabama

The microphones, known as hydrophones, are strategically positioned around the Bay and Sound to listen for the fish themselves – a select group of fish.

In a study sanctioned by the Alabama Marine Resources Division (MRD), several inshore fish are being fitted with sonic devices that will be picked up by the hydrophones to get a better idea of where and how much they travel during the year.

Chris Blankenship, MRD Director, said the project is in collaboration with the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources, which has hydrophone stations on the west side of Mississippi Sound.

“This should give us a better picture of the movement of those inshore fish,” Blankenship said. “It started as a tarpon project because that’s Alabama’s state saltwater fish, but we had very little information about the movement of tarpon in our area. Once the hydrophones were out, we had the opportunity to include other species, so we added red drum (redfish) and spotted seatrout (speckled trout) to learn about those fish movements at the same time.

“The interesting thing is that for any fish with an acoustic tag that we pick up, we share that information. Like sturgeon. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has tagged some sturgeon in some of the creeks and rivers in Florida. Occasionally, we’ll pick up some of those fish in our array, and we’ll share that with the people who are gathering data on those fish.”

Dr. Sean Powers and the University of South Alabama Marine Sciences Department are conducting the study, which has been dubbed CAAMP, the Coastal Alabama Acoustic Monitoring Program. There is an array of 40 listening stations with hydrophones strategically placed around Mobile Bay and Mississippi Sound.

“The hydrophones were placed around the bay to cover the entry and exit points of fish, and in this instance, we’re talking about a red drum or speckled trout,” Powers said. “We have all the rivers covered in the (Mobile/Tensaw) Delta. We have a string of them along the Causeway, at Fowl River and Dog River. We also have them in Mississippi Sound.

“Our colleagues in Mississippi and Florida are using same type hydrophones, and we share data. So although we only cover Alabama with our 40 hydrophones, we have partnerships that cover the Gulf from Louisiana to Tampa.”

The hydrophones are designed to pick up acoustic signals with unique codes that identify individual fish. The acoustic tag sends a series of sound pulses in a few seconds. The hydrophone interprets that signal and identifies the fish. If it was a fish from Alabama, the identification of the fish gives researchers data on where the fish was tagged and where it was located when the signal was picked up at different times. If the hydrophone identifies an unknown code, the other states involved in the program are notified.

Inserting probe into fish

“We do a little surgery on the fish,” Powers said. “We insert a little tag. It’s about half the size of a AAA battery. Sound travels really well in saltwater, so we don’t need that big of an amplifier. A little tag can do a whole lot. It sends that pulse out every minute. The tags will last a year. When it swims within 500 meters of a hydrophone, the signal is picked up and will tell us the fish was alive in that location. With our array of hydrophones and collaboration with the other states, we get good information on movement of fish, the seasonal movement of fish.”

The Mobile/Tensaw Delta and its role in the movement of inshore species is of particular interest to the researchers. Typically, the inshore species follow the migration of shrimp and other food sources into the rivers and creeks in the fall, depending somewhat on water salinity and flow.

“One thing we’re really interested in is how the saltwater fish use that Delta – when, and potentially why, they use that Delta area,” Powers said. “Although we have hydrophones all around the Bay, it’s a little more weighted toward the Delta, Fowl River and Dog River.”

The acoustic study is being done in stages, according to species. The first year is red drum. Powers said about 100 redfish have already been tagged.

Bugged fish released

“What we will get is very important information on movement, and we’ll get important information on survivorship. We know how many fished we tagged. We have rewards so fishermen can call the information in to us if they catch one. That way we’ll be able to tell how many survived.”

That rate of survival, or escapement, plays a crucial role in the management of red drum, Powers said. Current management models are based on 30-percent escapement.

“What that means is 30 percent survive to go offshore and spawn,” he said. “The fish we tagged are within the state slot limit of 16 to 26 inches. What we would like to see is verification that at least 30 percent of those survive.”

The red drum study will be expanded next year with different parameters. Half the fish tagged will be wild fish, and half will be fished raised at the Marine Resources Division’s Claude Peteet Mariculture Center in Gulf Shores.

“We’re really interested to see if there is a difference in movement in wild red drum versus hatchery-raised red drum,” Blankenship said.

Speckled trout will be added to the study in year three; however, several speckled trout that were part of the live weigh-in for the Alabama Deep Sea Fishing Rodeo were tagged and released as well. Powers said the species for years four and five are undecided but could include flounder and/or sheepshead.

Before CAAMP came into existence, Powers said a tarpon study had been underway for a couple of years.

“We worked with fishermen on the tarpon, because you’ve got to be pretty good to catch a tarpon,” he said. “We tagged about a dozen tarpon, and we’ve also got satellite tags on a couple of fish that will pop off and float. We also have one receiver off Gulf State Park Pier, so we expect to hear a few tarpon ticking off Gulf State Pier.”

Powers said the information from the hydrophones is downloaded about every six months.

“Sometime next year we should have some good information,” he said. “We know that we’ve already heard from some of the tarpon and some of the red drum. The good thing about the red drum tags is some of the freshwater folks have receivers out to listen for sturgeon, and they’ve already heard some of our redfish up in the rivers.”

PHOTOS: (Crystal Hightower, tarpon by Andrea Kroetz) As part of the CAAMP array, hydrophones are stationed in Alabama coastal waters to pick up the signals from the tagged fish to study seasonal movements and escapement rates. A small acoustic device is inserted by Reid Nelson into the body cavity of the red drum in the study. Larger tags are attached near the dorsal fin on tarpon.

Would a Tagged Hammerhead Shark Travel Widely”
from The Fishing Wire

Smooth Hammerhead Shark

The shark, which is now off Ventura, California, is providing new insight into the great distance hammerheads may cover in search of food, mainly fish and squid. Unusually warm ocean temperatures in the Southern California Bight since last summer has drawn hammerheads north, making them more visible off Southern California.

“The surprising thing we’ve learned from this is just how much they move around within a season,” said Russ Vetter, Senior Scientist at NOAA Fisheries’ Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, Calif. “This one went way down to central Baja and then shot back up here again just to find food, and that is a lot of territory for an animal to cover.”

Hammerheads have been sighted off Southern California more frequently in recent weeks, including one case last weekend where a hammerhead on a fishing line bit the foot of a kayaker reeling it in. While hammerheads are not usually aggressive, scientists warn that caution is warranted around sharks since they can act unpredictably.

Researchers on an annual NOAA shark survey caught the tagged female hammerhead June 30 off San Clemente Island and attached the satellite tag to its distinctive dorsal fin. The satellite position only, or SPOT, tag relays high resolution location data as the animal travels. The shark is known as a smooth hammerhead, one of three types of hammerheads that occur in California waters and also include bonnethead and scalloped hammerheads.

attached a satellite tag to a hammerhead shark

The smooth hammerhead shark traveled more than 1,000 miles to Mexico and back after it was tagged near San Clemente Island June 30.
Credit: NOAA Fisheries/SWFSC
The tagged shark measured more than seven feet long from its head to the fork of its tail. NOAA Fisheries scientists tagged a smooth hammerhead in the same area in 2008 with a different kind of tag that stores data for a few months and then detaches from the animal.

The shark tagging was conducted in collaboration with the Tagging of Pelagic Predators program.

Hammerhead habits are poorly known and researchers took advantage of the animal’s catch to learn more about its movements ahead of an approaching El Niño climate pattern, which typically boosts water temperatures along the West Coast. Patches of unusually warm water known collectively as “the warm blob” had raised temperatures off Southern California last year prior to El Niño, initially attracting warmer water species such as hammerheads.

shark traveled more than 1,000 miles

The sharks’ distinctive hammer-shaped heads carry special sensory features and widely spaced eyes that may help them see and detect prey. The tagged hammerhead mostly hugged the continental shelf along the Pacific Coast but in one case made an open-ocean foray of a few hundred miles off of the Baja Peninsula. Vetter hopes the satellite tag will remain active for two to three years, providing a long-term record of the shark’s movements.

“It’s very interesting to us to see the neighborhoods this shark frequents,” he said. “For an animal to swim all the way to Baja just to see if there’s food suggests its food supply is not super abundant, which tells us something about conditions out there.”

The opportunity to track the shark during a warm El Niño year may provide clues about how hammerhead habitats may shift during gradual warming expected with climate change.

“It’s certainly possible they may spend more time farther north,” Vetter said. “We’ll be very curious to watch how far north this shark goes, which could give us an idea what to expect in the future.”

2015 Coastal Shark Survey Reveals Shark Populations Improving off U.S. East Coast
from The Fishing Wire

Cutting the line

The longest running coastal shark research survey along the East Coast has completed its 2015 field work, capturing and tagging more than 2,800 sharks, the most in the survey’s 29-year history. The results are very good news for shark populations.

“We caught fish throughout the survey,” said Lisa Natanson, a scientist at the Narragansett Laboratory of NOAA Fisheries’ Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) and leader of the coastal shark survey. “Sandbar sharks were all along the coast, while most of the dusky sharks were off North Carolina. We captured a bull shark for the first time since 2001, and recaptured 10 sharks previously tagged by our program and two sharks tagged by the Virginia Institute of Marine Science.”

The survey began in 1986 and is conducted every two to three years. It covers coastal waters from Florida, where coastal shark species concentrate during the winter and spring, north to Delaware, where many shark species migrate during spring and summer as more northerly waters warm. Following this migratory route, at this time of year, makes it easier to survey the whole population.

tagging a shark

The last survey was in 2012, during which 1,831 sharks were captured and tagged, compared with 2,835 in 2015. Sandbar, Atlantic sharpnose, dusky, and tiger sharks were the most common shark species captured this year. In all, 13 shark species were among the 16 species of fish caught. The three non-shark species were remora, cobia and gold spot eel.

“Sharks are very vulnerable. Even though they are at the top of the oceanic food chain and can live for decades, they are fragile in the sense that compared to other fish they grow very slowly, reproduce late in life and have only a few offspring,” said Karyl Brewster-Geisz of NOAA Fisheries Office of Highly Migratory Species. “An increase in the numbers caught and tagged during each survey indicates a slow climb back. It is very good news for shark populations and for the ecosystem.”

This year, the survey was conducted aboard the 100-foot charter fishing vessel Eagle Eye II from Port Royal, South Carolina, from April 4 to May 22, and from just south of Ft. Pierce, Florida to North Carolina. As in 2012, poor weather and time prevented sampling further north. The surveys are conducted in the 5-40 fathom (30 to 240 feet) depth zone with most sampling between 11-20 fathoms (66 to 120 feet deep) and use commercial Florida-style bottom longline fishing methods to standardize survey results. This method uses a long, or main, line with baited shark hooks spaced at regular intervals along the line.

“The number of fish this year was amazing. We captured and tagged more fish than ever before, but once again weather was a factor. It started off nice, but conditions worsened as we headed north,” said Natanson.

sandbar shark

Most (2,179, or 77 percent) of the sharks captured were tagged and released, 434 (15.3 percent) were brought aboard, and 222 (7.8 percent) were released untagged or lost. Researchers record the length, sex, and location of each animal caught. Environmental information, such as water temperature and ocean chemistry, was also obtained at each station.

Researchers do not intentionally kill any animals for their studies. However, some sharks do not survive capture, and these are carefully dissected at sea to obtain biological samples important for studies on shark age and growth, reproduction, and food habits. On this survey, reproductive information was obtained from 170 sharks, backbones were removed for age and growth work from 109 sharks, and stomachs were examined in 82 sharks. The scientists also collect parasites, DNA and blood samples.

Among the catch this year were three white sharks, which were tagged and released; all were less than eight feet long. No white sharks were captured during the 2012 survey, and only one white shark was captured during the 2009 survey. The largest shark captured on the 2015 survey was a tiger shark, 12.5 feet in fork length, off North Carolina.

Natanson said the survey’s primary goal is to gather information about the distribution, abundance, and species composition of sharks found in these waters. Survey objectives also include tagging sharks for migration studies and collecting catch-per-unit-effort data.

tag a tiger shark

“All the survey data are provided to NOAA Fisheries managers to monitor the health and abundance of shark populations in the Atlantic,” said Natanson. “We’ve seen an increase in the number of sharks in every survey since 2001; that reflects management efforts to conserve the populations of various shark species.”

NOAA Fisheries is the federal agency charged with managing commercial and recreational shark fisheries in U.S. waters, including the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. The United States shark management began in 1993; currently 42 species are managed.

In addition to Natanson and colleagues from the NEFSC’s Narragansett and Woods Hole Laboratories, researchers participating in the 2015 survey came from the Southeast Fisheries Science Center, Florida Atlantic University, and the University of New Haven.

Another memorable tale from the 2015 survey
In addition to the record number of sharks caught this year, which was itself cause for excitement, the team aboard the Eagle Eye II also rescued five people off Oregon Inlet in North Carolina during the survey. Their small fishing boat had experienced engine trouble and was adrift in the Gulf Stream. The boat’s mayday signal was not received by the Coast Guard, but was by the Eagle Eye II, who came to the rescue. After determining that everyone aboard was okay, they contacted the Coast Guard and towed the vessel for a few hours closer to shore, where the Coast Guard took over.