Bag 'em and tag 'em

Last week we spent a few days in deep Louisiana at its southernmost port. Port Fourchon (pronounced, Foo-shon), wasn't exactly what I expected. As you drive up to it at night, it's lit up like a Christmas tree. You're thinking you're driving up to a fishing town, but you discover that it's an industrial metropolis. Helicopters always buzzing overhead, you're surrounded by the offshore oil industry. Apparently, this port supplies 16-18% of the US oil supply and produces over 90% of the Gulf of Mexico's deepwater oil.

When you drive into that port, you also realize that this is man country. Offshore oil workers, commercial fisherman, crew boats. I asked the captain of the shrimp boat that I was aboard:

"How many women do you think there are around here?"

He gazed over the Port Fourchon commercial docks.

"Maybe 5, and you'd probably have to pay for 4 of them."

This area of Louisiana is also a fishing mecca. Our mission was to go offshore to catch king mackerel and tag them with pop-up archival satellite tags to estimate their winter migrations. First off, let me show you the King of the Mackerels, courtesy of Diane Peebles.

Satellite tags have been in use for several years now, tracking movements of larger animals. Sea turtles, sharks, marlin, tuna, swordfish, and whales have been the guinea pigs of early satellite tagging studies. Now that technology has gotten things a little smaller, we can now attach the tags to relatively smaller pelagic fish like kings.

So here's what a satellite tag looks like:

If you think it looks expensive, it is. It's like strapping a $5,000 check to a fish and watching him swim off with it.

The tags log temperature, depth, and light intensity. Interestingly, the light data can be used to calculate latitude and longitude. After a predetermined amount of time, the tag detaches itself from the animal, floats to the surface, and then says hello to the satellite. The tag uploads the data to the satellite, and then it magically beams it to your email. That's right, magic...mind blowingly awesome magic.

Of course, bad things do happen. The animal can die, get eaten, or the tag can fall out. You just have to cross your fingers and hope he makes it. And if any of you find one of our tags, we'll give you $500 for it.

So to keep it short, we made it a few miles offshore in the shrimp boat. The seas were rough, but the boat took it well. We managed to catch, tag, and release 5 king mackerel with the sat tags. Things happened pretty quick once the fish got on board, so taking pictures was the last thing on my mind. Here's the only shot I got of us tagging.

The most important part of the process was to keep the fish as healthy as possible so it had a better chance of survival. King mackerel can stress or die pretty quickly if left out of the water even for a short time. As we released the tagged fish back into the water, we tried to encourage them to get moving again; so we would yell, "SWIM!! SWIM!!" "GO, GO, GO!!" "SWIM, YOU #$%&@*!".

I think that helped.

So kings, keep swimming. Send us a postcard from Mexico.

If it’s sustainable, shove it in your pie hole.

A few years ago, I was down in Key Largo, FL for a ROV conference. It wasn’t a huge gathering, so I met quite a few people because of the intimacy of it all. I met the former director of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which was pretty rad. He had moved on to a smaller aquarium somewhere up in the northeast. He gave a presentation on the uses of the ROV for large and small aquariums. When he was still in California, they had an ROV at Monterey Bay for kids to explore the bay behind the building. He also mentioned that they used their little sub to retrieve dead bluefin and yellowfin tuna in one of their bigger tanks. He said they would use the grabber to hold on to the keel right behind the caudal fin, and then pull up the tether to bring the dead fish up to the surface. Crazy.

I love me some aquariums. I’ve wanted to visit Monterey Bay for a while now. I’d also like to visit Churaumi Aquarium in Okinawa, Japan. We just had some friends move to Okinawa, so it may be in the realm of possibility. Check it.



Not only does the Monterey Bay Aquarium provide attractions to the public, but they spearheaded the Seafood Watch program. Seafood Watch educates the public on sustainable seafood choices and raises consumer awareness about the importance of buying sustainably caught seafood. You can view the advisory list here. I’m pretty sure they have also an app for the iphone.

I just took a look at their sushi guide and I noticed that one of my favorite things to order was on the avoid list. Freshwater eel (unagi) is caught or farmed in a way that harms the environment. I never would have guessed. Even though I’ll die a little bit inside, I guess I’ll have to order something else.

Additionally, the Monterey Bay Aquarium just released a benchmark research report about the state of seafood. It’s called “Turning the Tide: The State of Seafood”. It’s a report to be read by the general public on the impacts of commercial fishing, management, aquaculture, and humans growing demand for seafood on our marine environment. If you eat anything that comes from the ocean, read it.

Along with the release of the report, the aquarium has launched a campaign to ask top chefs and culinary leaders to pledge to never serve red “Avoid” items on the seafood watch list. There were even some celebrity chefs on the list, including Alton Brown (I’m a big fan).

It’s hard to make good food choices. People are screaming at you to buy organic, buy local, buy sustainable. But, the majority of us simply look at something we want and we eat it. Unfortunately it’s not that simple anymore. We have to painfully look past the growling stomach and think of where it came from, what it was fed, and how it was caught. We've lost the luxury of eating whatever crosses our path. If we educate ourselves a little bit, we could make some better food decisions.

I'm not one to judge or come down on people for eating something that may have harmed the environment to obtain...But, if I catch you eating bluefin I will shank you.

article link.

Sea Trees? part deux

Sorry for the lack of writing as of late. I guess its been a mixture of bloggers block and sheer laziness.

The epic saga of the sea trees continues...

We made it back out to the Gulf for some more ROV/Hook Selectivity experiments last week, and it was a fun trip. Kate, a colleague of mine, and her friend Kristy drove from LSU to join the field crew (Btw, I love to use the term "colleague"...it's so humorously academic and pretentious. I can't say it without laughing and rolling my eyes). We also recruited some other charter boat captains and deckhands to help with the fishing. So we had some real cooperative research going on with an equal mix of fishermen and scientists. The ROV worked well, we caught some big fish, and the weather was perfect. Our final stop of the day brought us to the sea trees.

We arrived at a different area of the tree ledge a little further away from our last trip. We sent down the ROV to conduct the transects, and the water looked to be a little more murky than last time. There also seemed to be a higher density of tree stumps, with quite a few trunks that were several feet in diameter. It must have been an old forest. There were flounder everywhere. Flying the ROV near the bottom, I would kick up one every few feet. I also kicked up the silty sediment whenever the machine would get close to the bottom. It looked like the bottom of a lake.

After the transects, we attached the grabber arm to the ROV.

Fetch the stick boy. Get the stick...go get the stick!

It was like being inside the biggest crane grabber game in the world. But instead of going after a pokemon plushie, I had to grab a stick. The ROV grabber has one directional movement, open and close. So it's alot harder than you'd think to grab something.

I went the entire day without any advice from anyone about my piloting skills. But for that ten minutes, I had 5 back seat drivers.

Innuendos. So, so many.

I thought maybe it would feel petrified or something, but it looks and feels like any stick that you'd find in your backyard. Hopefully we'll get this carbon aged pretty soon. How old do you think it is?

Sea trees?

A few weeks ago we were doing some offshore research, filming some natural and artificial reefs with the ROV, and the Captain and I had an interesting conversation on the way back into port.

“I know a good spot for you guys to film some natural bottom with the ROV.”

“Oh yeah? What is it?”

“Trees.”

“Trees?”

“Yeah, trees.”

“Like some logs that were dumped by someone?”

“Nah, these are trees that are kinda growing out of the ground on the bottom.”

“Haha….riiiight.”

Last week, we decided to take a look....and he wasn't joking. I’ve never seen anything like it. Tree stumps, branches, and roots forming a dense, interwoven mat on the seafloor. What?!

It's believed that this area is newly uncovered, and this buried “forest” has apparently been unnoticed until recently. I flew the ROV up to the tree/root ledge and sure enough it looked like wood. There was a relatively large reef fish community running along the ledge for as far as I could see. I saw schools of snapper and tomtate swirling around the submersible as we inspected the structure and ran some transects. We also ran into some grouper, numerous chromis and damselfish species, and a blacktip shark being followed by 4 or 5 cobia. Obviously, it’s a natural reef providing habitat for reef fish species. And this isn't the only spot in the vicinity. There are other pockets of “sea forest” nearby, and some with higher densities of tree stumps. But where did it all come from? Is it some ancient forest that never fully decomposed from being buried for so long? Is it the world's weirdest and most obscure practical joke? I’m really curious. I think the next time we check this area out we’ll take some wood samples with the ROV grabber. Should be interesting, I’ll keep you updated.

Kiwis and Micky Dees

in all its glory

The Filet-o-Fish sandwich. Regrettably, I’ve never had one. I just can’t bring myself to order it. Maybe it’s because of the shape of the fish "filet". A square puck of deep fried mystery isn’t too appetizing to me. Same thing with the McRib, it’s shaped like it has ribs in it, but where…I digress.

I’ve had some friends of mine say it’s pretty good for a fast food fish sandwich. Well, if you’re curious about the ambiguous square fish, wonder no more. The majestic filet-o-fish fish is what the New Zealanders call: The hoki (or the blue grenadier).

Doesn’t look square to me.

At one time, McDonalds used around 15 million pounds of it annually. It’s not the most attractive fish in the sea, but it tastes great. White, flaky, and slightly sweet. (for another fugly sea treat, read the ugliest, tastiest fish in the ocean). The hoki lives in the deep murky waters off of New Zealand, where it is sought after by a large commercial fishing industry. The species had been certified by the Marine Stewardship Council as a well managed and sustainable fishery back in 2001.

In recent years, New Zealand had cut back the allowable catch of hoki from a quarter of a million tons back to 100,000 tons. This suggests that this fishery is hardly sustainable. The numerous factory trawlers scoop up the dense aggregations of this fish pretty easily, with the side effects of ecosystem damage and unsustainable bycatch.

The hoki is relatively long lived for a fish at about 25 years. About my age. If you hammer the population of a long lived species down enough, it takes that many years to bring it back. For example, the orange roughy, which is also found in this area was heavily harvested for many years. They can live to be older than your grandmother... over a hundred years, with one that was reported to be 149 years old. That fish was swimming around before the civil war. Long lived fish species tend to be resistant but not very resilient to heavy fishing.

Sounds like there is a need for a new management plan. Meanwhile, McDonalds hasn’t been loving it. They’ve made the switch from Hoki to some other white fish. My guess is Pollock. Although, New Zealand is one of the more innovative countries in the world when it comes to fishery management, it looks like the Hoki fishery may not be a poster child of sustainability anymore.

NY Times article, here.

Carnival of the Blue

The Saipan Blog is hosting Carnival of the Blue XXVIII. 28, I know, it makes my brain hurt too. This monthly blog carnival covers the best of ocean related blogging from the internets.

You should check it out. There are some great ocean blog posts from last month just waiting to be read by your sexy eyeballs...you little ocean lover, you.

New Arctic Fisheries

Where once there was ice, now there are fishing grounds.

As climate change melts away at the polar ice caps, it's beginning to reveal new areas for commercial fishing north of Alaska.

For those of you that are unaware or are naysayers/inbreeds here is where we stand on the melting arctic ice caps.

mad shrinkage.

The U.S. Secretary of Commerce approved a plan last week to halt the expansion of commercial fishing in Arctic waters until researchers gather sufficient information on fish stocks to prevent adverse impacts of commercial fishing on the arctic marine ecosystem.

This was a little surprising to me, because I really thought it would be something like:
The U.S. Secretary of Commerce approved the expansion of commercial fishing in Arctic waters. On your mark, get set, go!

The Arctic Fishery Management Plan will govern any future commercial fishing for fish and shellfish in federal waters. Apart from some species that are managed under different authorities, the plan will regulate arctic cod, saffron cod, and snow crab fisheries. Since I like pictures and you like pictures. Here are some pictures.

Arctic cod

Saffron cod

Snow crab

I feel like this is the way it should be done. We go into a new environment; we conduct some science, establish procedures before authorizing a fishery, and monitor and adjust the plan as needed after the fishery takes off. Sadly, the reality is that this is an extreme case. In a world full of overfished, fully exploited fisheries, the mistakes have already been made.

Hold on a sec, I need to climb up on this box. Ok…alright.

I sincerely hope that we’re starting to take hold of this precautionary approach with not only the world’s fisheries, but the environment in general. We’ve thrown away our grandfather’s ideals of an “inexhaustible” planet, and we’re desperately trying to give a serious upgrade to our father’s generational “eh, maybe we should have done something earlier” attitude about environmental catastrophes.

I believe it’s up to my generation to not only attempt to solve the mistakes of our fathers, but to embrace the precautionary principle. In a sentence: We have a responsibility to protect the public when we know better. No more fixing it after it breaks, but making sure it never breaks in the first place.

Ok, I’m down. Stop throwing stuff at me.

But honestly, who would want to fish up in the Arctic? I’m fine right here in my flippie floppies and my sunglasses. Then again... maybe in a few years when Florida is underwater and it’s hotter than Hades, I’ll be wearing the same thing up in Alaska.