Ghost Fishing
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12A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, APRIL 26, 2016 Salmon: Research could change how wetlands are restored Continued from Page 1A The crew, less than two weeks into a study that runs through July, got their trawl net tangled up, but still returned to port with a modest catch: a sin- gle hatchery yearling Chinook, and a wild steelhead trout. “In three days of sam- pling here, we’re trying to get 50 ish of each yearling Chi- nook and steelhead,” Weitkamp said. “The idea is that some of the ish we’re catching are not stocks we’re interested in, and Lance Renoux, a wildlife biologist from Ocean Associ- so we need to get enough so ates, takes a blood sample from one of the juvenile fish. we have a big enough sample size of the stocks we are inter- ested in — the Snake River and mid- upper-Columbia Chinook … and the Columbia steelhead as well.” The juvenile salmon and Photos by Joshua Bessex/The Daily Astorian steelhead caught in Weitkamp’s Crews prepare a trawling net on the Columbia River near Cathlamet, Wash. nets could be some of the same counted by a separate NOAA ‘The goal is to try to draw some survival study upriver as the ish swim through an antenna array inferences of how these wetlands afixed to an open-ended trawl net. are benefiting the salmon.’ Gut and freeze Kurt Fresh Docked back in Cathlamet, the principal investigator in the migration study and head of the estuarine and ocean Laurie Weitkamp, a biologist with NOAA, measures the the crew started untangling the ecology program in the National Marine Fisheries Science Center, part of NOAA length of a juvenile Chinook. net, while Weitkamp and Lance Renoux, a wildlife biologist ice. Meanwhile, Renoux hooked intestines, ear bones, gills and at what sort of organic mat- Cathlamet and just downriver ment of Energy’s laboratory from Ocean Associates, pro- up a small, portable centrifuge to a in clip, before sending the ter lows from wetlands intofrom the Astoria Bridge. They’ll sends researchers into wetlands cessed the catch. spin the blood samples. specimens to various National the channel, with the overar- keep sampling into the summer, nearby to see how the migrants Renoux snatched the ish “We have to bleed immedi- Marine Fisheries Science Cen- ching goal of inding linkageswhen the yearlings all reach the interact with the restored areas from the bucket and submerged ately, and we have to take the ter labs from Newport to Seattle. between migrating yearlings ocean and the focus shifts to while in them. them in a liquid anesthetic livers within 10 minutes,” Weit- With juvenile yearling and wetlands. subyearling fall Chinook from After two years of ieldwork, before measuring and taking kamp said of the quick progres- salmon spending only a week the Snake River that can spend researchers will synthesize the blood samples. As he removed sion from lopping yearling in in the estuary on their way out Are wetlands working? weeks to months in the estuary. collected data and turn it into a his needle and placed the sam- a bucket of water to a dissected to sea, Weitkamp said research- Weitkamp’s crew inished NOAA’s and the Paciic inal report to the Corps. ple in a small plastic test tube, corpse on ice. ers need quick indicators of their irst round of sampling Northwest National Labora- “The goal is to try to draw Renoux passed each ish on to growth related to time spent in Friday. In a few weeks, they’ll tory’s studies are joined at the some inferences of how these Weitkamp, who quickly sliced Signs of growth the estuary, such as the animals’ begin a new two-week ield pro- hip and paid for by the Corps. wetlands are beneiting the open the guts and removed the Back at the Point Adams diets and nutrients gleaned from cess, trawling for salmon and While NOAA focuses on the salmon,” Fresh said, adding Red Hots-sized livers, crushing Research Station, research- nearby food sources. steelhead along the Columbia indirect beneits of wetlands to the results, if deinitive enough, and lash-freezing them between ers remove more parts of the Fresh said NOAA has near Rooster Rock in the Colum- salmon and steelhead swim- could lead to changes in how metal blocks supercooled in dry salmon, including the stomach, another researcher looking bia River Gorge, Longview, ming by, Fresh said, the Depart- and where wetlands are restored. Ghost ishing: ‘Crabs get trapped in the pots and starve to death’ Continued from Page 1A incentive to ditch broken gear. 640,000 tons of abandoned ing year, a study in South Korea such effort, called “Fishing For teers taking boats onto the bay “Crabs get trapped in the ishing nets on the ocean looroff the coast of Incheon found Energy,” has collected over 3 and using sonar to detect crab Recommended solutions pots and starve to death,” said worldwide. A 2005 survey 97,000 tons of discarded ish- million pounds of discarded pots on the bay’s loor. They include degradable panels on John Wnek, supervisor of New found ishing boats in -Greening gear, and about 1,000 tons ishing gear nationwide. It hasmark the spot with buoys and traps that will quickly break Jersey’s Marine Academy of land lose an average of 15 nets of lost gear are recovered each already plucked more than 400 slowly sail over them, trying down and allow trapped marine Technology and Environmen- per day, stretching nearly 2,500 year from the Sea of Japan. crab traps from Barnegat Bay to snag the debris with a grap- life to escape, and fast-de- tal Science, whose students are feet. The U.S. National Marine and has its sights on 600 more. pling hook dragged from a grading screws on whelk pots involved in a project to collect A 2001 study suggested that Fisheries Service estimates 12 It also is active in Massachu- heavy rope. It is funded in part that serve the same purpose. abandoned ishing gear from ghost ishing kills 4 million to miles of net are lost each day of setts, Oregon, Rhode Island, by a $109,000 grant from the Numerous international agree- New Jersey’s Barnegat Bay. 10 million blue crabs each year the ishing season in the North New Hampshire and Florida. National Oceanic and Atmo- ments also prohibit the delib- “They’re still ishing long afterin Louisiana alone. Paciic, and in Queensland, Traps that are still usable spheric Administration. erate dumping of ishing equip- they’re not supposed to be. This A 2002 study found 260,000 Australia, about 6,000 crab pots are returned to local isher- Cleanups are also underway ment at sea. happens everywhere there’s traps being lost each year in are lost each year. men; unusable ones are either in other countries. A Septem- Some debris is deliberately commercial ishing.” the Gulf of Arabia, leading the recycled or burned in one of ber effort in Orkney, England, thrown overboard; in England, United Arab Emirates to man- Solving the problem 40 trash-to-energy incinera- retrieved 60 crab pots and 25 small vessels can run up landill Tons of nets date degradable panels in the While the scope of the prob- tors run by the energy company whelk pots, along with rope and charges of 500 British pounds A 2009 United Nations traps, a step other jurisdictions lem is vast, so is the range Covanta. netting that a local artist used to ($702) per year, giving them an report estimated there are have also adopted. The follow- of projects to address it. One The work involves volun- create doormats. 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