7/19/2013-SNAPPERS!!!!

Last night the acoustic crew “mowed the lawn” through a pretty sizable area. The scientists determine areas before leaving on the cruise that they would like to know more information about. During the night, the ship literally motors back and forth across the area, using a piece of equipment which collects information about the depth & “hardness” of a wide swath of bottom under the boat based on the acoustic echo that it provides. This is important to finding fish because many fish species (especially reef fish) prefer to live in areas where the bottom is hard (rocky) and/or the depth changes. Therefore, if we can pin-point habitat which seems suitable, there is a higher likelihood of finding the fish we are interested in finding.  In the morning, the mapping crew  gave Zeb the data in the morning. He picked out a few areas to sample. The mapping work had definitely found some good areas. We ended up catching about 17 red snapper(Lutjanus campechanus) throughout the whole day along with hundreds of black seabass (Centropristis striata), tomtate (Haemulon aurolineatum), scup (Stenotomus sp.), and a few assorted oddballs like gray triggerfish (Balistes capriscus), sand perch (Diplectrum formosum), and bank seabass (Centropristis ocyurus).

SEFIS doesn’t need additional information on most of these fish, so they are just measured, weighed, and returned to the sea. However, red snapper is a really high-priority species because fisherman really enjoy catching them & we don’t have a very good idea of how many are out there. We take a variety of samples from every red snapper we capture. These include length & weight, along with a piece of fin for DNA analysis, otoliths for aging, a piece of gonad for sex determination & how ready they are to mate, and stomachs to learn about what they eat. All of these samples are labeled individually & taken back to the lab for scientists to use on shore. All of this information will be invaluable in getting a better picture of how many red snapper are living in the South Atlantic Bight.  After the samples are taken, the fish are filleted and the meat saved to give to homeless shelters when we get back to port.