Re: Not fishin' yet
 

BUT where are the small dogfish? That's the real issue about why commercial landings of the big fish were limited.
If the big females that commercial guys want are producing pups, but the pup population crashes for some reason, and they keep taking the big fish - where do the little ones come from?

turned the corner
 

will be working our way back north. made the turn around Cape Lookout area. Catch includes a big eagle ray and roughtail stingrays(small), coronetfish, lizardfish. 1/2 dozen other species.

Re: Not fishin' yet
 

thanks for the info about the trawl survey! Also not surprised to s THOUSANDS of tiny dogfish show up in nets. They are NOT endangered!

not tiny dogs
 

If I put that we got thousands of tiny dogfish it must have been the lack of sleep or being overwhelmed by the number of fish that my shift, (7 scientists) have worked up. There is a lack of info about the tiny/small dogfish because the majority that are collected/caught are all big. This survey is not meant to catch tons of a specific species but a wide variety and many size categories of fish.
Past catches include much more variety, but fewer of each species.
At least 2 kinds of Batfish, frogfish?, coronetfish, some basses that need positive ID's, at least 8? different kinds of searobins, pinfish, pigfish, many crabs that need positive ID's by some "other" experts, spotted hakes(of course), big squid/little squid/medium squid(mucho squid), northern kingfish, southern kingfish, more roughtail stingrays and of course there are probably more species that were worked on that I didn't see...

Re: Not fishin' yet
 

Its getting bumpy again. I did see that last weeks significant wave height peaked at 26ft. Hope we don't see that again. The big diverse catches from yesterday? were from some inshore gulf stream water that gets tight to NC. Back into the cold water again with less diversity.

Boredom
 

Catches are getting far less diverse. Them 2-4" less than 1 year old spotted hake(ling) have been in just about every catch. Interesting...
Catches with nothing "different" and long distances between stations are energy killers.

Re: Not fishin' yet
 

Thanks for the updates John

Re: Not fishin' yet
 

Hi John....Keep the reports coming, they are fascinating to read. This thread has nearly 1000 hits...that is a remarkable number., and it really shows the interest that people have.
Question ??
In one of your posts you mentioned a large Eagle ray.
Was that a spotted ray like the one that jumped out of the water and killed a woman in the Florida Keys last week ?
Just wondering, do you see that type of ray often...how many species of stingray do you see along the eastern seaboard ?
Keep it up, we all look forward to your real time posts. I hope you get to some dry land soon.

Barry

Re: Not fishin' yet
 

great stuff, i went to school for marine bio, now am in construction, go figure. very interesting stuff. keep up the good work and posts.

Re: Not fishin' yet
 

i love reading these posts its so cool to see all the different species in the atlantic. just curious if theres any theory's on where the spiny pups are ? because i agree we do see tons of the big females but not many pups as opposed to the smooth dogfish where i see tons of pups but not as many big females.