Weekly Update #1

Hi everyone,

Pollachius pollachius aka Atlantic Pollock

This week was exciting as we received our first set of raised gill net data from the summer 2017 field season!  Our fisherman from Harpswell, Maine were using our experimental nets alongside their standard nets to catch Pollock this past may.

Compared to our data from last spring (previous data can be found under "results" tab), this year's data looks a bit different.  One of the first things we noticed was that our experimental nets were catching an equal amount / less Pollock than the standard nets.  One of our goals for this project was to ensure that Sea Grant experimental raised gill nets were catching an equal amount / more target fish than the standard nets.  Last spring, our experimental nets were clearly catching more target fish than the experimental nets.  This spring, our nets often caught less fish.

Another goal of the raised gillnet was to reduce the amount of Cod bycatch.  This new data shows that our experimental nets didn't do an adequate job in reducing the Cod catch.  Although these results don't support our goals necessarily, it is still early in the season, and this is the first time we have seen these sorts of results.

After talking with the Captain, he said this spring has been much more "alive" and variable than previous springs.  He stated that there is more feed around, and that it is higher in the water column.  With these observations, he said the Cod have been higher off of the bottom as well.  

This goes to show that fish behavior is extremely variable.  Maybe the variability in behavior this spring is the cause of our peculiar results?

Stay tuned for future data!!  Talk to you next week.