3 days ago
Anglers catch fish for science and to save a species vital to every state on the Atlantic coast
HIGHLANDS, N.J. (WFXR) — 'There she is, there she is, Fish on, fish on,' shouted Chuck Manny as a huge striped bass began to peel line off of a reel off the coast of northern New Jersey.
Manny is an angler, one of the top striped bass sportfishermen around, but in this case, his fish-catching efforts are all in the name of science. Every striped bass Manny and the people on his boat catch, is tagged and tracked for research.
Manny is one of thousands of charter captains and anglers who tag fish through a research program run by Gray Fish Tag Research.
'We tag and we research fish migrations,' said Roxanne Wilmer of Gray Fish Tag Research. 'We work with charter captains all around the world, so we have about 10-thousand charter captains we work with. What they do as they're releasing fish, they're tagging them with our tags.'
Gray uses two types of tags. One is a 'spaghetti' tag; a thin green tube with a tag number on one side and a phone number and web address for Gray on the other. Anglers who catch a fish with those tags are asked to call the number or visit the website to report it. That way researchers can track the movement of where the fish was caught the first time and then every time after. Knowing those migrations is vital to understanding fish behavior. It is not uncommon to find a fish tagged in Virginia or Maryland several months later off the coast of New York or Massachusetts.
The other type of tag is a satellite tag. It stays on the fish for six months collecting data on movement, depth, and water temperature. After six months, it detaches on its own and floats to the surface where the data is uploaded to a satellite. That data is collected by Gray. Thought to stay primarily coastal, those satellite tags have found striped bass range farther out into the Atlantic Ocean than previously thought.
On this day, the species of interest were Atlantic striped bass or stripers as they are commonly known. Striped bass are a keystone species. Found in the waters of every U.S. state from Florida to Maine, they are a vital part of the commercial and sportfishing economies of those states, accounting for billions of dollars in economic impact.
As of late, striper numbers are down due to poor spawns and other factors. That makes knowing as much about them as possible maybe more important than ever before. The data collected by Gray is made available for free to fisheries managers and researchers.
'So that we can get a better idea of their behavior and migration, but not just because it's static but because it changes as well,' said Stockton University researcher and professor Dr. Adam Aguiar. 'These fish are an important natural resource, not just to anglers, but to everybody, and they're an important aspect of the food chain, too.'
Aguiar was one of a number of people on Manny's boat that day. In addition to researching stripers, he loves to catch them. Catching them is the only way to get tags into them. In this case, Manny was trolling live eels, a bait stripers find delectable.
It was not long before Manny started boating stripers, sometimes three and four at a time in a scene that looked like organized chaos with anglers running for rods bowed double as huge striped bass peeled line off of reels.
'Mayhem's good,' laughed Manny.
And it is in this case because these fish are being caught and released for science mayhem is good, and that is something Manny feels good about because it helps to preserve this iconic species he loves.
'The only thing that I know is that I don't know and that's why it's so important to do all this research on these fish,' said Manny. 'They have tails, they go where they want to go. They go where the bait goes; the temperature, whatever it is. All those satellite tags just prove that none of us really know and that's why you need to do more research.'
Once a fish is caught, things move quickly. The striper is measured and weighed, tagged, and then released back into the water. The tags are inserted into a back muscle. It does not hurt or affect the fish.
While Atlantic striped bass can be found from the Canadian Maritimes to Florida at various times of the year, the vast majority are spawned and reared in three places: The Chesapeake Bay, Delaware Bay, and the Hudson River. In the spring, schools of large striped bass are often found off of New Jersey and New York. Because of their migratory nature, they have a wide-ranging effect on the sport and commercial fisheries of the entire east coast. That is why a Virginia charter captain was on this trip, doing his part to help preserve a species that he will target next winter when he runs charters out of Cape Charles, Virginia.
'The fish that we're tagging today are the same fish that we're catching in the Chesapeake Bay in December and January,' said Captain Johnny Mathena of Patriot Fishing Charters. 'They are a migratory fish. We are tagging them so we can follow their migration patterns.'
Knowing as much about striped bass can help fisheries managers reverse the downward trend in their numbers to prevent what happened in the 1980s when the species nearly collapsed and a fishing moratorium had to be instituted for several years until they rebounded in the 1990s.
'If you don't have data, then you don't know what's going on with the fishery,' said Wilmer. 'We have actual hands-on data. We get countless recoveries every week. If you don't have that information, then how do you know what the fish are actually doing?'
This is part of a continuing occasional series on efforts to preserve Atlantic striped bass, which are Virginia's state saltwater fish and vital to the economies of every Atlantic coast state. On the day of this story, Gray Fish Tag Research held its annual Striper Quest, a one day tournament effort to catch and tag as many striped bass as possible. More than 200 fish were tagged for research on that day.
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