Spiny Dogfish Quotas Go Up for 2012

Just a quick dogfish fishery news post for your Friday afternoon.  NMFS has released the spiny dogfish quota for the 2012 fishing season, and as expected the quota has gone up.  This year (starting May 1st) the dogfish quota will be set at 35.694 million…

Great White Sharks Attack Whales. Seriously.

During a literature search for some dissertation-related stuff I stumbled upon quite possibly the most awesome paper ever for a shark fan.  It’s well-known that sharks, especially large, migratory species, supplement their diet of fish and sea mammals by scavenging on whale carcasses.  It’s been…

James Cameron Hits Bottom

Way to totally overshadow my post about makos, guys. In case you haven’t been following, filmmaker and ocean enthusiast (seriously, have you seen The Abyss?) James Cameron has made it to the Challenger Deep, also known as the bottom of the Marianas Trench, also known…

The Most Badass Fish in the Sea

You might think that the title of this post refers to the spiny dogfish (Squalus acanthias), the main species of interest for this blog.  You’d be wrong.  You’d also be wrong to guess the great white, as badass a shark as that is.  This post…

Dogfish and Seals Taking a Bite out of Fisheries?

It should be no secret to readers of this blog or anyone familiar with fisheries at all that spiny dogfish have a pretty rotten reputation among commercial fishermen.  Quickly approaching the notoriety of dogfish are those damn dirty sea mammals, the harbor seals.  Both animals…

The Tidewater Recap

Last weekend I attended the 26th Annual Meeting of the Tidewater Chapter of the American Fisheries Society, better known as AFS Tidewater or just plain Tidewater.  To recap, this conference encompasses fisheries academics, students, and managers from the so-called “tidewater region,” which is made up…

Tidewater Time

From tonight to Saturday afternoon I’ll be in beautiful sunny Beaufort, North Carolina for the 26th Annual Meeting of the AFS Tidewater Chapter.  This is one of my favorite conferences every year and has the distinction of being my first academic conference.  I’ve attended and…

Blacktip or Spinner?

During my last trip out to the field, I documented a small shark that came up in the gillnet, and identified it as a juvenile blacktip shark.  Now, after looking over the picture in better detail and consulting the literature, I’m not so sure.  I’m…

Sustainability for Atlantic Spiny Dogfish?

This week the U.S. Atlantic spiny dogfish fishery took another step towards becoming the second shark or ray fishery ever to earn a sustainability certification from the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC).  The first was the Pacific spiny dogfish fishery, which turned out to be a…