|
|
Penobscot East is engaged in a wide range of research activities which address contemporary concerns in fisheries and fisheries management:
- Since 2004 The Zone C Lobster Hatchery has worked to produce hatchery-raised juvenile lobsters for resettlement in local areas with depleted stock. Having successfully demonstrated that this is feasible, the current focus is on continued monitoring of survival at the resettlement sites. This research is in collaboration with Dr. Rick Wahle, University of Maine, and was supported by Maine Seagrant.
Dr. Wahle’s preliminary research results show that there is evidence of long-term accumulation of hatchery-reared lobsters over several years of seeding at the two release sites on the western side of Zone C. Preliminary examination of growth rates of hatchery-reared lobsters suggests that they reached about 30 mm carapace length by the age of 3 years. We will post further findings as they are released during 2010.
Other hatchery research highlights of the 2009 growing season included:
- Releasing 75,100 Stage IV lobsters on 32 different sites in the Zone C area.
- Releasing 3,400 Stage V lobsters on the research sites.
- Hosting several research projects for different principal investigators from the US and Atlantic Canada.
- In 2006 Davis Conservation Foundation supported an Alewife Research Project under the direction of Ted Ames, the question to be examined was: “Could alewife declines have facilitated cod stock collapses?” This investigation was closely related to Ted’s research into Gulf of Maine cod stock. Using historical and paleo-limnological approaches his team explored the potential historical link between cod and alewife in Penobscot Bay and Muscongus Bay.
- In 2009 we started a collaborative research partnership with eastern Maine fishermen and The Nature Conservancy (Maine) and population dynamics expert Dr. Yong Chen of the University of Maine, School of Marine Sciences. Our Sentinel Fishery project is designed to collect much needed data on the status of groundfish stocks in the eastern Gulf of Maine. Davis Conservation Foundation, Island Foundation, and Chichester DuPont Foundation are among the underwriters of this multi-year initiative. Dr. Chen will use the data to examine ways to augment the existing groundfish stock assessment framework to reflect fine scale, localized information. In the future this could identify localized depletions of the sort we have experienced in the eastern Gulf of Maine during the past 20 years.
- In April 2009 Penobscot East hosted a major research workshop/conference: “Exploring Fine-scale Ecology for Groundfish in the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank”, to bring together biologists, oceanographers, fisheries managers and fishermen to discuss spatially explicit fisheries management in the Gulf of Maine. This event was co-produced with the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, Maine Sea Grant, Maine Department of Marine Resources, and University of Maine.
- This conference inspired the production of a Penobscot East DEGI print publication, as yet untitled, laying out the argument for fine-scale fisheries management. This project is supported by The Nature Conservancy (Maine chapter) and will be made available later this year.
- Ted Ames continues his seminal research into the restoration of New England’s depleted groundfish stocks and decimated coastal fishery in a 2010 paper: “Multispecies Coastal Shelf Recovery Plan: A Collaborative, Ecosystem-Based Approach”. He makes the case for creating smaller, contiguous coastal shelf management units, where each unit encompasses the subpopulation of a key species such as Atlantic cod. Each unit would have an inshore core layer encompassing spawning grounds and nursery habitats while providing a limited, small scale fishery for local fishermen using habitat-friendly, selective gear.
|
