Using Commercial Fishing Gear to Collect Bottom Temperatures for Mapping, Species Distribution, Model Validation and By-Catch Avoidance

The Northeast Cooperative Research Program’s Study Fleet has partnered with commercial fishing vessels in the Northwest Atlantic in an effort to collect fine scale environmental data during normal fishing operations. Since 2009 over 3.7 million bottom temperature readings have been collected at various depths on the Northeast Continental Shelf. Two different logger types are used with one system providing the vessel with a near-real time temperatures. After each haul, data is displayed on the wheelhouse computer and derived values are sent via satellite to oceanographers onshore. In addition to telemetering averaged trawl statistics via satellite, another automated system has been setup to upload raw data when the shipboard computer detects an open WiFi. Both these systems now provide ship-to-shore transfer of data without the fishermen needing to act.
The telemetered data can be incorporated into oceanographic forecast models. Using the updated models, temperature forecast maps can then be generated and made available to vessels in order to avoid the thermal preferences of ACL limited stocks and reduce their by-catch. This process has been tested in the offshore long fin squid fishery on two vessels thus far and has been effective in limiting the by-catch of non-target species.