According to the press release of the federal fisheries service the new trawl survey has produced “higher catch rates for nearly all species” throughout Middle Atlantic and New England waters. The new $60 million research ship, the Henry B. Bigelow, with its new trawl technology was designed to catch more fish than the 45-year-old Albatross IV it replaced.
The result produced by Bigelow created in a cooperative project between government and industry. Jimmy Ruhle, a commercial fisherman and industry expert in trawl gear and surveys, said that the industry will have confidence in the surveys by the 208-foot Bigelow, because of the way the trawl survey technology was developed. The Bigelow is using a trawl that is much more accepted by the industry.
Russell W. Brown, chief of the Ecosystem Service Branch of the Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, states that they have had a tremendous opportunity to make some changes in how we survey fish stocks. The new ship and trawl technology traces to the infamous “Trawlgate” revelations that exposed shoddy work in 2002.
Commenting on the survey Ruhle said that every species is increasing in size, just looking at the data supplied by the science center. A committee of commercial fishermen and NOAA scientists was coordinating the research and development. The committee was formed in the aftermath of the “Trawlgate” controversy, a term that has come to mean the 2002 discovery that the Albatross had been towing mismatched gear for years, skewing the trawl data or at least destroying industry confidence in the results, which were showing depleted stocks.
