Just a brief one today.

Yesterday we got out on the water again for what should have been a nice half-day excursion to wrap up this round of tagging and surgically implant acoustic receivers into live dogfish.  What it turned into was a comedy of errors in which we found… exactly ten dogfish.  In an entire day steaming around Cape Cod Bay and all the way out to Stellwagen Bank, we found barely double digit numbers.  In an amusing reversal of the type of fishing normally done off of Massachusetts, we actually caught more cod and haddock than dogfish (and more sculpins and winter skates than anything else).  Apparently the week-long storm that marked the beginning of our trip really messed with the local ecosystem.  Apparently before the blow Stellwagen Bank had been loaded with birds and whales, but on this day it was virtually lifeless at the surface.

Hopefully the weather holds and we can get back out this week.  Ah, field work on the ocean…