|
|
|
2005 FRD News, Meetings, and Visitors
|
- Contents
-
November 7, 2005
-
October 17, 2005
-
August 2, 2005
-
June 21, 2005
-
May 10, 2003
-
May 3, 2005
-
April 25, 2005
-
April 11, 2005
-
April 4, 2005
-
March 28, 2005
-
March 22, 2005
-
March 15, 2005
-
March 8, 2005
-
February 28, 2005
-
February 22, 2005
-
February 21, 2005
-
February 7, 2005
-
February 1, 2005
-
January 31, 2005
-
January 25, 2005
-
January 18, 2005
-
January 11, 2005
-
January 4, 2005
Information is chronological with the most recent, first. Choose a date, search for a context string, or browse.
November 7, 2005
- Amy Hays, Dimitry Abramenkoff and Noelle Bowlin departed last Friday on the SIO vessel New Horizon for the fall CalCOFI cruise. They will be complete the six CalCOFI lines between San Diego and Avila Beach and return to San Diego on November 21, 2005.
- The manuscript entitled "The Use of Multibeam Benthic Habitat Mapping Techniques to Refine Population Estimates of the Endangered White Abalone (Haliotis sorenseni)" by Butler, Neuman, Pinkard, Kvitek and Cochrane has been accepted by the Fishery Bulletin.
- John Butler, Randy Cutter, Deanna Pinkard and Scott Mau returned last week from a successful abalone survey on the M/V Outer Limits. Cutter was able to map abalone habitat with 2 m resolution using the centers SM 2000 multi-beam sonar. No abalone were observed with the ROV.
- Dave Holts participated on the organizing committee for the 4th International Billfish Symposium the week of October 30. 200 of the top billfish researches and collaborators from 14 countries participated; there were 72 presentations and 15 posters. Six others here at the Center also attended.
Top
October 17, 2005
-
Paul Crone recently returned from ICCAT’s (/International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas/) Standing Committee on Research and Statistics (SCRS) Meeting, which was held in Madrid, Spain in late September/early October 2005. The overall meeting included a week-long Working Group-related session, as well as a week-long formal Plenary session. Crone presented a paper that addressed age-structured population analysis of North Pacific albacore. He also formally presented to the Atlantic-based Albacore Working Group research currently conducted by the SWFSC that generally concerns North Pacific albacore, including biological and logbook data sampling programs, biological studies (maturity assessment and archival tagging programs), and population modeling efforts (from classical VPAs to fully-integrated, highly-parameterized age-structured approaches). Relatively speaking, the albacore stock(s) of the Atlantic Ocean, both North and South, receive little attention, i.e., when compared with research and modeling directed towards other tuna species, particularly, bluefin. Historically, the catches of North Atlantic albacore have been roughly one-third of typical annual landings (30,000 mt) of albacore harvested from the North Pacific Ocean (100,000 mt). Bottom-line is that researchers interested in albacore research in the Atlantic Ocean (especially the formal Working Group and federal-related biologists with Spain) appeared to be quite excited to continue this formal research ‘exchange’ and expressed strong interest in obtaining SWFSC assistance with their upcoming population assessment in 2007. Apparently, their last attempt at a population-wide model in 2004 was rejected. They are also interested in help with their initial efforts to deploy archival tags on 15 or so fish next year (to date, no archival tags have been deployed on Atlantic Ocean albacore).
Top
August 2, 2005
- The 2005 Juvenile Mako Shark Survey returned after 18 days of fishing in the southern California Bight. A total of 5,719 hooks were fished at the 28 sampling stations. Captured sharks were tagged with conventional spaghetti tags, satellite transmitting tags, and tetracycline. Catch included 80 mako, 101 blue, 2 common thresher shark, and 12 pelagic rays. The preliminary data indicate overall catch rates were 0.369 per 100 hook-hours for mako and 0.443 per 100 hook-hours for blue sharks.
- Four undergraduate students of Bukyung National University (BNU), Korea, visited our Center and SIO on July 26. They had a chance to learn about various projects of the Fisheries Resources Division and visited with Dr. Bill Fox. These four students were the winning team among many college student teams involved in a competition. Their topic was, “Searching and exploring ways toward marine resource conservation of Korea,” and they chose to visit the laboratories and universities specializing in marine science in the United States because they believe that the U.S. is the world leader in marine conservation. During their trip, they visited the Alaska Fisheries Science Center and the University of Washington in Seattle before coming down to San Diego to visit our Center and Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Nancy Lo wants to thank Dr. Fox, Roger Hewitt, and all the scientists for taking time to talk to students, Anne Allen for preparing informative brochures, and Dimitry Abramenkoff for providing transportation.
Top
June 21, 2005
-
John Butler, Deanna Pinkard, David Murfin and Mike Wilson completed the final ROV/Acoustic survey on board the Outer Limits last week. Surveys were completed at San Clemente Island and the 60 mi bank. This cruise was the last in a series that included a total of 42 days at sea for ROV surveys (41 different sites and 107 transects). The acoustic surveys covered 44 sites in 44 days at sea and a total 2,654 nm of track lines in the Southern California Bight both inside and outside the Cowcod Conservation Area.
Top
May 10, 2005
- Dale Squires is finishing editing and related tasks for wrapping up his book with Peter Dutton and Mahfuz Ahmed of WorldFish Center, “Conservation of Pacific Sea Turtles.” Squires, Sam Herrick, Steve Stohs, and Donna Dealy are also preparing for the May 12-13 meeting of the HMS Management Team to be held in La Jolla. On the agenda will be potential re-opening of the area currently closed north of Point Conception for the drift gillnet fleet, high-seas longlining, and writing of the SAFE report.
- Al Coan attended the IATTC data meeting on April 29 and 30. Also attending were Robert Skillman (PIFSC) and Pat Donley (SWR) as well as delegates from Japan, Canada, Korea, China, France, Spain and Mexico. Al Coan presented a working document entitled, "U.S. fisheries for tuna and tuna-like species in the eastern Pacific Ocean." The document describes data collected from fisheries that operate in the eastern Pacific Ocean and any processing of data that occurs before submission to the IATTC. Al was able to also update submissions to the IATTC (2002-2003 longline data) and under the SWFSC/PIFSC HMS data coordination plan is now the official data correspondent for data submitted to the IATTC. Al will be coordinating the submission of data to the IATTC in June.
Top
May 3, 2005
-
John Butler, Deanna Pinkard, and David Murfin returned from a successful cruise on the R/V Outer Limits on Saturday morning. Also on Saturday, Scott Mau held an ROV competition for high school students at the Birch Aquarium. Deanna Pinkard and David Murfin were judges for the competition.
-
Russ Vetter attended the first meeting of the Biotechnology Working Group (BWG) held in Seattle on April 27. The BWG appears to be off to a great start. The six NMFS Science Center representatives plus one HQ representative provided a good mix of talents and perspectives. It was interesting to see the breadth of problems and approaches that the representatives brought to the table. It was agreed that the BWG's task was to identify and evaluate how new advances in biotechnology could be brought to bear on longstanding problems in fishery biology. What was most gratifying was the sense that the BWG would be problem oriented rather than pursue biotechnology for its own sake. Areas where it was felt great progress could be made included egg and larval identification, diet analyses, growth, aging, sex determination, reproductive state, forensics, climate effects, anthropogenic stressors and disease. The need for improved sample collection, sample archiving, and data management were common to all centers but the specific needs of each center (e.g. ocean observing, pollutants, ecosystem management) were remarkably different. It was agreed that the BWG would succeed only to the extent that Science Directors and HQ were strong advocates and this would depend on delivering timely and cost-effective new solutions to practical fishery and ecosystem management problems.
- The R/V New Horizon returned to San Diego with Amy Hays and Noelle Bowlin after completing the southern half of the CalCOFI pattern. A science writer and photographer from the San Diego Union Tribune were on board for the second half of the cruise. He will be writing an article on CalCOFI for the newspaper that will appear in the Sunday section around the end of May. The cruise was very successful with more anchovy spawning than we have seen for several years.
- John Butler, Deanna Pinkard, and David Murfin returned from a successful cruise on the Outer Limits on Saturday morning. Also on Saturday, Scott Mau held an ROV competition for high school students at the Birch Aquarium. Deanna Pinkard and David Murfin were judges for the competition. Finally, a manuscript entitled "New Estimates of Habitat and Abundance of White Abalone (Haliotis sorenseni) in Southern California" by John Butler, Melissa Neuman, Deanna Pinkard, Rikk Kvitek, and Guy Cochrane has been submitted to Fishery Bulletin.
Top
April 25, 2005
- The NOAA ship David Starr Jordan is on it way back to San Diego. Dave Griffith, Ron Dotson, Bev Macewicz, and Dimitry Abramenkoff will return from the spring sardine EPM cruise on April 26. The R/V New Horizon continues to make good progress on the southern half of the CalCOFI pattern and is due back to San Diego on May 1.
- John Butler and his team are currently aboard the F/V Outer Limits conducting ROV operations to visually validate the acoustic target strength measurements for rockfish obtained previously by Dave Demer’s group. As long as the weather holds, Butler anticipates returning to San Diego on Friday.
Top
April 11, 2005
- Sam Herrick attended the PFMC’s April meeting in Tacoma last week and presented an economic analysis of long-term Pacific sardine harvest guideline alternatives to the Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee, the CPS Management Team, the CPS Advisory Subpanel (AP) and the Council itself. After a rigorous review by the AP of the economic data used in the analysis, values for a number of the economic variables were revised. The analysis was rerun using the revised data and presented to the Council. Preliminary results show that there will be increases in net economic benefits under most of the alternatives. The Council requested that a sensitivity analysis be conducted on a number of the economic parameters incorporated in the analysis and reported at its June meeting. It went forward with a shortened list of alternatives for public review, and will make a decision on a preferred long-term sardine harvest guideline alternative in June.
- John Butler attended a White Abalone Recovery Team meeting at the SWR during April 6-7, where the draft recovery plan was completed. Most of the discussion focused on the spread of Withering Syndrome (WS) at the only permitted facility. Although many of the team members expressed concerns about bringing more white abalone into this facility, there are no restrictions on the permit that prevent more brood stock collection or out-planting of infected progeny. The facility itself is now a point source for this fatal disease in the surrounding areas. The need for wastewater treatment at abalone farms was also discussed. WS has spread to other abalone farms on the West Coast as well as those in Iceland and Chile. The spread of WS to aquaculture facilities and wild populations in Japan, China, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa through exchange of brood stock is considered a looming catastrophe.
- The NOAA ship David Starr Jordan had to go into Monterey Bay Saturday morning because of 30 plus knot winds and 20-25 ft. seas. The weather improved and they were able to get back to work on the CalCOFI cruise on Sunday afternoon. They will be going into San Francisco on April 12 to take on fuel. They have been finding moderate numbers of sardine eggs.
Top
April 4, 2005
-
John Butler, Melissa Neuman, Deanna Pinkard, Rikk Kvitek, Guy Cochrane and Chuck Oliver have completed a manuscript on the abundance of white abalone in California. The manuscript will be submitted to Fishery Bulletin. A paper entitled “Refining Estimates of Potential White Abalone Habitat at Northern Anacapa Island California Using Acoustic Backscatter Data,” authored by Cochrane, Butler and Gary Davis has been accepted for publication in the AFS symposium volume on essential fish habitat.
Top
March 28, 2005
- Al Coan and Ken Wallace met (March 15-17, 2005) with Pat Donley, Bill Jacobson and Rick Deering of the SWR, Robert Skillman of the PIFSC and Glen Taylor of S&T to discuss the recently completed installation of a permits system at the SWFSC for storage and management of the new HMS FMP permits. The system will also be used to house other SWR permits. Glen Taylor, on behalf of the Fisheries Information Systems group of S&T, installed the system over the past year and was here to demo it and gather any suggestions for improvements and additions to the system. Some additions were identified and Glen was able to install these before leaving. We have also identified future projects that will need to be completed, such as a compliance monitoring module. The SWR has already used the system to generate and mail approximately 1,045 permit applications. Approximately 1,000 applications are being entered to the system and HMS permits should be printed and sent out by April 11, 2005.
- Jim Kinane, after extensive negotiations with caliper manufacturing companies, has received a prototype electronic caliper and hand held computer (Allegro). The new electronic fish measuring device represents the first time measuring devices of this type have been manufactured that can measure fish up to 1.6 meters in length. These devices will be used in an experiment this summer to measure albacore from landings of North Pacific albacore troll fishermen. The experiment will be done in San Pedro and will assess the functionality and durability of the unit. If the experiment is successful, Al Coan will seek funding for 10 more units to be deployed to port samplers in Oregon, Washington and California and maybe American Samoa. The units will finally bring our HMS fish measurement data collection into the 21st century by deploying technology that will significantly impact the way we collect fish measurements. Data will be delivered electronically to our HMS database and will alleviate transcription errors that occur with paper collection systems, increase the numbers of samples that can be taken, increase sampling efficiency, increase data management efficiency, and help us to comply with the Paper Reduction Act.
- John Childers, Al Coan, and Jim Kinane will be holding a meeting of west coast albacore port samplers at the SWFSC, March 24, 2005. The meeting will be chaired by John and will review 2005 sampling with port sampling coordinators from Washington (Wendy Beeghley), Oregon (Bill Barrs) and California (Dave Parker), and Russell Porter of the PSMFC. A new electronic fish measuring device and electronic logbook will be demonstrated at the meeting. Discussions on the new HMS FMP will also be held by Craig Heberer of the SWR.
- Dale Squires is completing reviews of several papers, and is co-authoring a book chapter with Peter Dutton, Jeff Seminoff, and Chuck Janisse of FISH on sea turtle conservation investments in Baja California by FISH of the California drift gillnet fleet. The book is co-edited by Josh Bishop of IUCN, Stefano Pagiola of the World Bank, and Sven Wunder of CIFOR, and is about market-based instruments for biodiversity conservation. Squires is also working with Jason Murray, a gradate student of economics at UCSD, and George Sugihara of SIO on SIO'S forthcoming KUU conference.
- The Cooperative Fisheries ROV/Acoustic rockfish survey was suspended last week due to recent storms. In the meantime, Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute, who is aiding the development of this research, captured a live cowcod last week. The cowcod was recompressed in a chamber on deck and is now at their facilities. This will allow SWFSC scientists to obtain acoustic signatures for this species.
- The San Diego chapter of American Statistical Association held a one-day short course on March 25th at Sumner Auditorium, SIO, on applied nonlinear methods by Dr. Timothy E. O'Brien of Loyola University Chicago. Close to 70 people from San Diego and Los Angeles attended. This course covered the latest developments in nonlinear regression techniques, in particular regarding the construction of confidence interval of parameters. Although many of the examples were from pharmaceutical areas, the techniques are also useful for fisheries application. Nancy Lo thanks Merle Marrow and his group for helping with the setup for coffee break and lunch.
Top
March 22, 2005
- Russ Vetter reports that he, Suzy Kohin and Dave Holts returned from the latest Ocean Exploration cruise (March 6-19) in Costa Rica. The project was an extraordinary success. Ten animals were tagged, 4 double tagged with satellite archiving SPOT and PAT tags. In all, seven silkys, one scalloped hammerhead and two big eye threshers were tagged in 5 fishing days. All tagged sharks were released in excellent condition and as of this morning (3/21) all 10 sharks appear to have survived the tagging event. Good working relations were made with Costa Rican conservation biologists from Pretoma and the commercial longline fisherman.
- John Butler, Deanna Pinkard, Scott Mau and David Murfin conducted rockfish surveys on the Outer Limits during March 15-20 around Santa Barbara Island. Butler left the boat on Wednesday and on Thursday presented a talk on abalone restoration to the San Diego Shell Club in Balboa Park.
- Dave Griffith, Bev Macewicz and Noelle Bowlin have completed the northwest sardine trawl survey on the F/V FROSTI and returned to Bellingham on Sunday afternoon. They completed 49 trawls, 18 of which were positive for sardine. They will return to San Diego on Monday and prepare for the sardine EPM cruise on the David Starr Jordan which will depart on the following Monday, March 28.
Top
March 15, 2005
- Dale Squires and Peter Dutton met with PIRO and the Turtle Advisory Committee at the Western Pacific Fishery Management Council (WPFMC) staff. Squires discussed turtle projects with PIRO, conservation concessions for sea turtles with the TAC, and along with Dutton discussed with WCPFMC staff Dutton, Squires, and Ahmad's upcoming book, “Conservation of Pacific SeaTurtles.” Squires and Dutton will also be discussing their book in a call with Mahfuz Ahmad of WorldFish Center. Tuesday and Wednesday this week, Squires is meeting at Walmart Headquarters with Walmart, Starkist, Conservation International, OceanConservancy, Jim Joseph, and Sean Martin for an Information ExchangeWorkshop, "Sourcing Tuna to Promote Sustainability and Conservation." Squires has also met with prospective IGERT students and will participate in part of the SIO IGERT Marine Protected Area workshop. In addition he is also meeting with George Sugihara of SIO and Jason Murray of UCSD Economics to discuss the upcoming SIO conference.
- Bill Watson reports that the ichthyoplankton group sent the ethanol-preserved bocaccio larvae from the 2002 and 2003 Cowcod Conservation Area surveys to Keith Sakuma (Santa Cruz Laboratory) for aging. The resulting data will be used in a bocaccio biomass estimate that Steve Ralston will be leading.
- Stephane Conti of the SWFSC's Advanced Sampling Technologies Program successfully defended his dissertation at the University of Paris, VI on March 3. Dr. Conti received his doctorate in the Department of Mechanical, Acoustical and Electrical Sciences. His dissertation is titled "Characterization of a multi-scattering acoustical technique and its applications." Co-directors of his studies were Dr. Philippe Roux, MPL/SIO, and Dr. David Demer, AST/SWFSC. Since beginning his studies at SWFSC in April 2001, Dr. Conti has authored or co-authored 6 papers on the subject, and has another six manuscripts in various stages of publication.
- On March 9, Demer presented an update on the NMFS AUV Program at the NOAA Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Workshop in Silver Spring. The update included: 1) a status report for system testing of the new NMFS Fetch 3.5 AUV from Sias-Patterson Inc.; and 2) a pilot study using an SPI Fetch 1 AUV to study the nearshore krill population off the Antarctic Peninsula. The latter study was a cooperative effort between the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, SPI, the U.S. AMLR Program, and SWFSC's Advanced Survey Technologies Program.
- On March 10, Demer represented NMFS at the NOAA AUV Working Group meeting. The group began development of a strategic plan.
- Also on Thursday, the NMFS Advanced Sampling Technologies Working Group met to review a strategic plan drafted by Guy Fleisher of NWFSC. The ASTWG is scheduled to meet again on May 17-18 at SWFSC in La Jolla.
- As one of the FATE projects of FY2002, Nancy Lo has analyzed hake larval data collected from 1951-2004 and has obtained time series of estimates of larval production at hatching for the area from San Diego to San Francisco based on January CalCOFI cruises. This time series of larval production can serve as a population index of hake, will contribute to better understanding of the hake population dynamics as well as their migration, and might be included in stock assessments of hake by NWFSC. This hake larval production will be updated yearly.
Top
March 8, 2005
Dave Griffith reports that all is going well on the F/V FROSTI. They are conducting a sardine trawl survey on the Washington-Oregon coast and have reported positive trawls for sardines on the first two lines with water temperatures of about 9.5 C. The weather has been good so far but they expect a storm later this week.
Top
February 28, 2005
-
Dave Griffith, Beverly Macewicz and Noelle Bowlin will depart March 1 for Port Angeles, Washington to meet the F/V Frosti. They will be conducting the winter northwest sardine trawl survey off of Washington and Oregon. The survey will take 20 days and they will return on March 22.
Top
February 22, 2005
- Ken Wallace, Al Coan, John Childers, and Jim Kinane met with a Jdeveloper contractor February 14-18 to review the highly migratory species (HMS) database development of web-based forms and to learn how Jdeveloper is used to enhance form development. The contractor reviewed forms that will be used to manage HMS data that will be placed on the new HMS Oracle database. The contractor also reviewed data entry forms that will be used to enter logbook, landings, species composition and length data from U.S. purse seiners fishing under the South Pacific Tuna Treaty. A training session was held where the contractor used the Pacific troll logbook form and showed the actual steps used in developing data entry forms. If funds can be found the contractor will finish this form in the near future. The HMS database, for the first time, will allow the storage of HMS logbook, landings, length frequencies, species composition, tagging, vessel specifications and other types of fisheries data under one database structure. The form’s development will allow for more efficient entry and management of HMS data and will allow data entry to occur not only at the Center but also at the Region and by port samplers directly into the new database. These efforts are integral steps in moving HMS data management into the 21st century.
- A one-day short course on 'Applied Nonlinear Statistical Methods' will be held at the La Jolla Laboratory on March 25. Any interested staff are welcome to attend with a nominal fee. For further information, please contact Nancy Lo.
Top
February 21, 2005
- Nancy Lo, Beverly Macewicz and David Griffith finished a paper on 'Spawning biomass of Pacific sardine from 1994-2004 off California.' This paper will be submitted to CalCOFI report as it was presented at the sardine symposium of CalCOFI last November.
- Nancy Lo co-authored a paper with Jin Yeong Kim, South Sea Fisheries Institute, NFRDI, Korea, on 'Correction factors for quantitative analysis of anchovy eggs and larval stages from the southern waters of Korea' submitted to Journal of Korean Society of Oceanography.
Top
February 7, 2005
- The NOAA ship David Starr Jordan has been having bad weather for the past few days while working on the cowcod acoustic survey. Ship engineers also discovered a leak in hydraulics heat exchanger. The hydraulic oil has been contaminated with salt water so the ship will have to go into port on Monday to get more hydraulic oil. They are able to continue the acoustic survey but until the hydraulics are repaired they will not be able to do any of the scheduled bongo tows.
- David Holts reports that this week the shark group received 2 of the 72 satellite pop-up/transmitter tags that were deployed on sharks during the 2004 juvenile shark survey. These two tags contain detailed archival data on the sharks’ daily behavior and habitat during the deployed period. Other tags continue to report data or have completed the scheduled data collection.
Top
February 1, 2005
- On January 30, the NOAA ship David Star Jordan pulled into San Francisco after completing the northern half of the winter CalCOFI cruise. Dave Griffith, Ron Dotson and Noelle Bowlin will disembark in San Francisco and return to San Diego. Amy Hays will be traveling on February 2 to San Francisco to join Dimitry Abramenkoff for the cowcod survey which will start on February 3. They will proceed to Santa Barbara where scientists Demer, Pinkard, Asato and Giddens will board the ship.
- Dale Squires is preparing a book chapter for a book he is authoring with Quentin Grafton, Jim Kirkley, and Tom Kompas. The book is entitled, “The Economic Evaluation of Fisheries,” to be published by Ashgate Press. Squires is also working on other papers.
Top
January 31, 2005
- On January 30, the NOAA ship David Star Jordan pulled into San Francisco after completing the northern half of the winter CalCOFI cruise. Dave Griffith, Ron Dotson and Noelle Bowlin will disembark in San Francisco and return to San Diego. Amy Hays will be traveling on February 2 to San Francisco to join Dimitry Abramenkoff for the cowcod survey which will start on February 3. They will proceed to Santa Barbara where scientists Demer, Pinkard, Asato and Giddens will board the ship.
- Dale Squires is preparing a book chapter for a book he is authoring with Quentin Grafton, Jim Kirkley, and Tom Kompas. The book is entitled, "The Economic Evaluation of Fisheries," to be published by Ashgate Press.
Top
January 25, 2005
- Al Coan attended the FIS planning team meeting in Washington DC, January 10-14. The planning team established priorities for spending in FY05 and finalized a FY05 spending plan. Approximately 50% of the FY05 funding (~$2.0 million) will be used to accomplish the National permits system. The remaining funding will cover FIS administrative costs and continuing projects that were started in FY04. All new FY05 FIS proposals submitted at the August 2004 FIS meeting will have to be resubmitted for FY06 funding. Coan was also able to present the SWFSC/PIFSC data portal for HMS data systems. The planning team will be reviewing the HMS data portal for use in other Regions.
- John Butler, Deanna Pinkard, Scott Mau and David Murfin returned from an Acoustic/ROV cruise January 19. Photos were taken of an unusual rockfish whose identity was unknown. John Hyde, SIO grad student, went fishing on Sunday and caught two specimens of the rare Chameleon Rockfish at the exact location. Comparisons of the photos of the fish at depth and on the deck confirm the identity of the previously unphotographed species.
- Amy Hays and Sue Manion returned to San Diego on January 20 after completing the southern portion of the CalCOFI pattern on New Horizon. The David Starr Jordan departed on January 19 to do the northern portion of the CalCOFI pattern with Ron Dotson, Noelle Bowlin, Dimitry Abramenkoff and Dave Griffith as chief scientist. They are due to complete the pattern in San Francisco on January 31.
- Ray Conser traveled to Seattle last week to attend a meeting of the steering committee for the NOAA Fisheries Stock Assessment Toolbox (NFT). The committee discussed the development of new modules for NFT, protocols for performance testing, and a strategic plan for long-term development.
Top
January 18, 2005
- Nancy Lo participated in a three-day meeting January 12-14 in Concepcion, Chile. She was invited by the Department of Oceanography of the University of Chile to participate in a working group on the spawning biomass of small pelagic fish off of central Chile. The two species studied by this working group were anchovy and common sardine based on 2004 survey data. According to the survey results, the spawning biomass of common sardine has been reduced from 150,000 mt in 2003 to 6,000 mt in 2004, and the Chilean government scientists are greatly concerned about this decline. The spawning biomass of anchovy remains on the level of 60,000 mt. Lo also gave a talk on “The spawning biomass of Pacific sardine from1994-2004 off California.”
- SIO is currently conducting the southern portion of the CalCOFI survey on the New Horizon, with Amy Hays and Sue Manion from FRD aboard. Hays reports that the cruise is going well. They had to drop a few net tow stations due to bad weather last week but it has been good the last few days. They should complete the southern half of the pattern on Wednesday and return to San Diego on Thursday morning.
- The NOAA ship David Starr Jordan will depart on January 19 to do the northern part of the CalCOFI pattern with Dave Griffith, Ron Dotson, Noelle Bowlin and Dimitry Abramenkoff aboard. They will complete the cruise in San Francisco, where we will stage for the cowcod survey.
- John Butler submitted his cruise report detailing results from the October 22 – November 18 cowcod survey in the Cowcod Conservation Area (CCA). Twenty-one ROV transects were conducted at seven CCA sites and one site outside of the CCA. A total of 53,882 fish were counted and identified as 52 different species or members of six broad groups. The most abundant broad group was the rockfish group comprised of squarespot, speckled, and bank rockfish.
- On January 13, John Butler, Deanna Pinkard, Scott Mau and David Murfin tested modifications to the ROV equipment on board the M/V Outer Limits. After positive tests, Pinkard, Mau, Murfin and Lara Asato embarked on a three-day cruise. Blessed by halcyon weather, 11 ROV transects were completed in three days.
Top
January 11, 2005
- Russ Vetter reports that John Hyde and visiting scientist Matt Bartosiewicz are making significant progress towards the goals of the Fish and Chips project, (a molecular approach to the automated identification of eggs, larvae and forensic material).
First; John Hyde and coauthors Eric Lynn, Robert Humphreys, Mike Musyl, Andrew West and Russ Vetter, have had the paper "Shipboard Identification of Billfish (families Xiphiidae and Istiphoridae) Eggs and Larvae Using a Species-Specific Multiplex PCR and First Description of Eggs of the Blue Marlin (Makaira nigricans), Shortbill Spearfish (Tetrapturus angustirostris), and Wahoo (Acanthocybium solandri)" accepted for publication in Marine Ecology Progress Series.
Second; the goals of the Fish and Chips project emphasize low cost and flexibility in dealing with a range of species and issues, (e.g. billfish one day, rockfish the next). Towards that end Matt is working on a system whereby the array is printed with many thousands of unique genetic addresses "oligonucleotide zip codes" at specific locations in a microscopic x-y neighborhood. Specificity is achieved through the probing and PCR amplification of the unknown larvae by species-specific probes containing a corresponding known "zip code." Thus the array is generic but any given species can be assigned a specific zip code that will bind at a specific xy location. The same x-y location "zip code" can be assigned to a particular rockfish species in one study while in another it might be a billfish species. This approach coupled with improvements in the probe approach, (the subject of a different report) should lower costs and increase flexibility.
- David Holts reports that data from the 72 satellite tags deployed during the mako and thresher shark surveys (southern and central California) are continuing to come in extremely rapidly. Darlene Ramon is continuing processing OTC-marked vertebrae to validate mako age and growth. Marina Som, a work-study student, completed entering the billfish angler tag data and continues with shark survey data.
- Richard Charter is in Moss Point, Mississippi this week to tour the new FSV Oscar Dyson. In addition he is assisting Kirk Gores from the NWFSC on the requirements document for FRV number four.
Top
January 4, 2005
- Amy Hays and Sue Manion are preparing to leave on the winter CalCOFI cruise. They will depart on the New Horizon on Tuesday, January 4 and return on January 20, 2005. They will complete the southern half of the CalCOFI pattern and the David Starr Jordan will cover the northern half when they go out later in the month.
- The ROV group, John Butler, Deanna Pinkard, Scott Mau and David Murfin have finished analyzing video tapes from three cruises on the M/V Outer Limits. The species composition from each locality are being integrated with acoustic data collected by Dave Demer.
- Nancy Lo co-authored with David R. Smith and Jennifer A. Brown a chapter entitled “Application of adaptive sampling to biological populations” for a new book: Sampling Rare or Elusive Species: Concepts, Designs, and TechniquesforEstimatingPopulationParameters.ThebookiseditedbyWilliamLThompson,andwaspublishedbyIslandPressinDecember,2004.(http://www.islandpress.org/books/detail.html?cart=109595836812976&SKU=1-55963-451-0&startat=1)
Top
|
|
Last modified:
6/28/2006 |
|
|