It’s that time of year again. The days are shorter, the air is colder, and every so often (even in North Carolina) it snows. Also, the dogfish are back in North Carolina waters snowbirding it up.
Yesterday I and other Rulifson lab members deployed ten acoustic receivers south of Cape Hatteras. These receivers pick up signals from acoustic tags surgically implanted in spiny dogfish as part of the lab’s research, as well as tags from other sharks, sea turtles, and sturgeon marked in other studies. This year the array may even pick up great white sharks tagged in Cape Cod. Basically anything carrying a Vemco acoustic tag can potentially show up.
The array was deployed just in the nick of time. Spiny dogfish have already begun showing up around the Outer Banks, including some photographed by surf fishermen in Avon.
Spiny dogfish angled near Avon, NC. Photo by Brian Creidler.
It’s field season baby! I won’t be doing any extra field work for my thesis (I’m finishing off the lab portion and dipping my toes into the math/writing portion), but I’ll be assisting the other dogfishers as needed and potentially grabbing some extra data here and there. In any case, I should have nifty new field pictures in the coming months.
Pfft, that’s not a dogfish. This is a dogfish.
It’s also a clever car commercial.
That was amazing. It’s getting its own post.
well fish,ing here in the great northwest…. in washington state…. out in the Old dog fish bay, also knowen as liberty bay… if only i knew more about them… and how to tag them… that would be fantastic…. i take photos when i bring them up on the dock but thats about it……