Jim Moore, a longtime ATA board member and prior ATA president, has done some heavy lifting for our troll organization. In the last year, he has coordinated and applied for grants to help ensure the future financial viability of our organization. Jim's tireless work cannot be overstated.
Since the disappointing news last November that ATA failed to get the NFWF Grant for our e-logbook pilot project, the project has evolved and has attracted the attention of members of the fisheries and ocean science community on three continents and has gained the support of some of the international leaders in electronic oceanographic data collection and management. We are being advised by Dr. Hassan Moustahfid, senior scientist at NOAA-Federal/IOOS, by Jack Carroll of Ocean Data Network (Maine), and by Cooper Van Vranken of Bering Data Collective (Denmark). We are also working with the Australian company (Real Time Data) which has created and developed the most advanced, customizable, and fisherman friendly logbook application we have seen (Deckhand Pro). In short, the delay in our launching this project has allowed it to mature into a far better program, with far greater potential benefit to scientists, managers and most importantly our fleet.
Sunny Rice of SeaGrant has been our partner throughout the two and a half years we have been developing this program. Linda Behnken and Dan Falvey of ALFA, and Lisa Busch at Sitka Sound Science Center have provided guidance and support. So now we are again applying for the NFWF Grant and this time prospects for funding our 10-boat pilot project are excellent, and when the time comes, the connections we have made will be a great help in finding support for expanding to scale.
What are the benefits to our fleet from our developing and participating in this project? Here are some of my thoughts. I think a good troller is a natural scientist. We seek to understand what goes on in a realm mostly hidden from our natural senses. You know, where are the fish? Why are they there? Structure? Feeding? Migrating? What are they feeding on? What kind of gear is most effective? What is the tide doing? When is the bite? How deep should I set my gear? How fast should I troll? We discover the answers to those questions mostly by observation, experimentation- educated intuition. And when we get it right, we are rewarded by a nice catch at the end of the day. That’s applied science.
And like the scientist, we build our working knowledge of our fishery not only on our own experience, but also on the discoveries of others. We, as least some of us, benefit from working together to be more effective. The seasons (especially Chinook) these days are just too short. In recent years, especially if I’m working alone as I like to do, I am just beginning to get “dialed in” when it’s time to quit. And every season is so different! But there seem to be patterns that repeat, and sometimes you can recognize them and …. You get the idea.
I have had the privilege of knowing and fishing along side some of the most renowned trollers of years gone by, and most of the legends about their amazing canny are true. I don’t expect there will ever be better trollers because they fished entire seasons when and where they wanted and built an amazing intuitive connection with the ocean. Can we ever approach the kind of wisdom with present management of our Chinook fishery directing our efforts away from the most productive times and areas? With our six-day seasons and three-day openings, and no fishing in areas of high abundance? Perhaps not, but we do have GPS and bathy charts and satellite imagery and access to “big picture science” which our predecessors didn’t have, and with all of this emerges whole new sets of unanswered questions about the fishery and about the sea, questions that can only be solved by educated intuition…. aided by lots of good data and technology.
Just as it’s our job to make those discoveries that increase our understanding of what is really happening beneath the surface- to increase our production, it is job of the scientists, oceanographers, fisheries biologists to gain a better understanding of how the marine environment works, the dynamics of an ever-changing ecosystem, the effects of changing climate conditions on fisheries. Here our interests converge. The better the science (knowledge based on reality), the heathier the relationship between fisheries and managers. A poor handle on stock assessment, for example must lead to “precautionary” management. When the forecasting models are based data that is too thin or otherwise unreliable, they fail to be accurate. Mix in a little politics and it’s a real mess!
How is a Pacific Salmon Treaty fisheries scientist like an artist? …They are both in danger of falling in love with their models! There is nothing wrong with using technology to generate models of ocean ecosystems and biological and physical trends…. The problem is the ocean data for Southeast Alaska is too thin (in many important aspects practically nonexistent) to produce reliable results. Our fleet could collectively help address that problem by providing a research platform to collect data useful for scientists and managers, as well as for us fishers, through resurrecting the ATA Logbook program in an electronic format. This would provide near real time data on catch for managers. Through a daily logbook entry on an iPad, catch data would be integrated with location and some simple observations to provide a permanent personal record for individual fishermen. The combined entries from the fleet would provide useful data for oceanographers, and marine biologists that would otherwise be unobtainable at any cost.
Today, we trollers are fishing with an amazing array of technology- GPS, computer nav programs displaying bathy charts, color sounder, perhaps sonar, radar, sea surface temperature meter, and more. When I began my fishing career the only electronics aboard was a Ross Fisherman depth sounder. For positioning I had a chart and a compass. As each new technology was added to the dash, another dimension was added to help me “see” where I was and what was happening below, and as my view was thus expanded, so was production. Just as Sea Temp meters were purchased and provided to original ATA Logbook participants by SeaGrant and NOAA, I believe that CTDs which measure temperature at depth will be the next tool to be added to the dash as the logbook program develops.
If any of this report has caused your inner scientist to stir, please consider participating in the 10-boat pilot project. We will be assembling that team this fall. In the meantime, check out the final report from our original ATA logbook program by clicking on the link below. This report will give you a good sense of the value of the project. This 15-year data set provides a valuable baseline for comparing to today’s observations. I guarantee you will find something in this you will find interesting and helpful.