System deviced in Massachusetts University for counting cod. (Photo: SMAST)

Live cam could show real Atlantic cod status

UNITED STATES
Saturday, October 21, 2017, 00:20 (GMT + 9)

New England’s fishermen hope a new video monitoring technique will prove there are more Atlantic cod specimens than federal surveyors believe.

The technique uses a video rig designed by researchers at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, that allows them to record fish underwater and count them on the video later, PBS reported.

With this rig, scientists can sample a larger area in the same amount of time and hopefully improve federal estimates of how many cod are left.

Ronnie Borjeson, the fisherman who helped test the video rig, says the federal surveys don’t match up with what fishermen are seeing.

According to the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), cod are overfished, and in 2014, the spawning population reached its lowest numbers ever recorded.

The once-booming cod fishery has been subject to increasingly strict regulations since the 1990s, forcing commercial fishermen to target less-profitable species while they wait for the cod population to recover.

Kevin Stokesbury, the researcher spearheading the project, hoped to create a more effective and transparent monitoring system by collaborating with local fishermen.

Currently, federal scientists estimate the cod population by towing nets through randomly selected areas of the fishing grounds and hauling the fish on board to be counted. The results of these trawls are combined with information from fisheries observers and catch estimates to create a picture of the overall health of the fishery.

Nevertheless, fishermen from the area state that cod are not evenly distributed across the ocean floor, instead they gather in tight groups to spawn, leaving large areas of habitat essentially devoid of cod and increasing the likelihood that a random sample will come up empty.

Furthermore, they point out that the federally managed area in the Gulf of Maine alone is more than 30,000 square miles. With limited time and resources to accomplish their work, federal surveyors must rely on a small number of these surveys to accurately estimate the whole population.

For his part, Jon Hare, the Science and Research Director for NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center pointed out, fishermen “are targeting and looking for higher abundances of cod. That could also make their perspective on the abundance of cod different than what’s coming out of the [survey].”

Stokesbury thinks his video system can, at the very least, help scientists get a better idea of how many fish are in the spawning groups and help the fishery managers and fishermen see eye to eye.

The video rig has gone through several iterations to deliver clear images in the harsh, salty environment. The current version has two cameras and a set of LED lights facing backwards inside a fishing net. When fish are swept into the net, they pass the cameras and are funneled harmlessly out the open back end.

Hare recognises that the system holds promise and believes the system could be very useful but he cautions that the work is not yet done.  

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