Animal Sciences Commons^™

Life History, Trophic Ecology, & Prey Handling By Cownose Ray, Rhinoptera Bonasus, From Chesapeake Bay, Robert A. Fisher

Reports

No abstract provided.

An Examination Of Methods: Hand Picking Red Crabs And Keeping Them Alive On Shore, Dan Kauffman, Robert A. Fisher

Reports

No abstract provided.

Estuarine Blue Infrastructure: Final Priority Conservation Areas For Chesapeake Bay And Its Tidal Tributaries And Back Bay – Version 2.0 (Revised 09/2010), Center For Coastal Resources Management, Virginia Institute Of Marine Science

Reports

This project is an extension of earlier efforts within the coastal zone of Virginia to build a platform for enhanced Blue and Green Infrastructure planning. This project is motivated by an interest in extending statewide conservation efforts into estuarine systems and recognition that land use decisions on the upland effect water quality and habitat health in the receiving waters. The project in its entirety has been accomplished in distinct parts. Part one develops a Cumulative Resource Assessment to evaluate the distribution of aquatic natural resources within waters of Virginia’s Chesapeake Bay waters, Back Bay of Virginia Beach, Virginia, and the …

Evaluating Recruitment Of American Eel, Anguilla Rostrata, In The Potomac River (Spring 2010), Troy D. Tuckey, Mary C. Fabrizio

Reports

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) adopted the Interstate Fishery Management Plan (FMP) for the American eel in November 1999. The FMP focuses on increasing coastal states’ efforts to collect American eel data through both fishery-dependent and fishery-independent studies. Consequently, member jurisdictions agreed to implement an annual survey for young of year (YOY) American eels. The survey is intended to “…characterize trends in annual recruitment of the YOY eels over time [to produce a] qualitative appraisal of the annual recruitment of American eel to the U.S. Atlantic Coast” (ASMFC 2000). The development of these surveys began in 2000 with …

An Assessment Of Sea Scallop Abundance And Distribution In Selected Closed Areas: Georges Bank Closed Area I And Hudson Canyon Closed Area, David B. Rudders, William D. Dupaul

Reports

No abstract provided.

2010 Annual Report Estimating Relative Juvenile Abundance Of Ecologically Important Finfish In The Virginia Portion Of Chesapeake Bay Project Number: F-104-R-14, Troy D. Tuckey, Mary C. Fabrizio

Reports

No abstract provided.

Marine Resource Bulletin Vol. 42, No. 2, Virginia Sea Grant, Virginia Institute Of Marine Science

Virginia Marine Resource Bulletin

In This Issue

Scientists in the Classroom 2

The PERFECT Program is taking marine science graduate smdents out of their labs and into K-12 classrooms. Last year, nine VIMS smdents taught in local schools and developed their science communication skills in the process. This fall, a new cohort of scientists-in-training is poised to enter the program.

Spadefish Aquaculture 8

VIMS and Virginia Sea Grant researchers have reared this popular sportfish through the entire life cycle in captivity, opening the way to farming the species for food, for the aquarium trade, or for stock enhancement.

Planning Underwater I0

More and more …

Estimated Economic Impact Of Gulf Oil Spill On Virginia’S Oyster Industry – July 2010, Thomas J. Murray, James E. Kirkley

Reports

No abstract provided.

Virginia Shellfish Aquaculture Situation And Outlook Report : Results Of The 2009 Virginia Shellfish Aquaculture Crop Reporting Survey, Thomas J. Murray, Michael J. Oesterling

Reports

Virginia’s shellfish aquaculture industry continues to add significant value to the State’s seafood marketplace. While Virginia’s watermen harvest hard clams and oysters from the State’s public resources, they also grow shellfish for consumers. In recent years, following the lead of the hard clam industry, there has been a significant transition toward intensive aquaculture of native oysters. The once-extensive oyster planting has disappeared primarily as a result of endemic oyster diseases and wildlife predation of seed oysters. It has been replaced by an expanding aquaculture sector, which is based on improved culture techniques and disease-resistant oyster seed. While these trends are …

Annual Report - 2009 Data Collection And Analysis In Support Of Single And Multispecies Stock Assessments In Chesapeake Bay: The Chesapeake Bay Multispecies Monitoring And Assessment Program, Christopher F. Bonzek, James Gartland, Raemarie A. Johnson, Robert J. Latour

Reports

Historically, fisheries management has been based on the results of single-species stock assessment models that focus on the interplay between exploitation level and sustainability. There currently exists a suite of standard and accepted analytical frameworks (e.g., virtual population analysis (VPA), biomass dynamic production modeling, delay difference models, etc.) for assessing the stocks, projecting future stock size, evaluating recovery schedules and rebuilding strategies for overfished stocks, setting allowable catches, and estimating fishing mortality or exploitation rates. A variety of methods also exist to integrate the biological system and the fisheries resource system, thereby enabling the evaluation of alternative management strategies on …

Final Report Continuing The Time Series: Calibrating The Nmfs Sea Scallop Survey To The R/V Hugh R. Sharp, David Rudders, William D. Dupaul

Reports

No abstract provided.

Final Report An Assessment Of Sea Scallop Abundance And Distribution In Selected Closed Areas: Nantucket Lightship Closed Area, David Rudders, William D. Dupaul

Reports

No abstract provided.

Estuarine Blue Infrastructure: Priority Conservation Areas For The Seaside Of Virginia’S Eastern Shore, Center For Coastal Resources Management, Virginia Institute Of Marine Science

Reports

This project is an extension of earlier efforts within the coastal zone of Virginia to build a platform for enhanced Blue and Green Infrastructure planning. This project is motivated by an interest in extending statewide conservation efforts into estuarine systems and recognition that land use decisions on the upland effect water quality and habitat health in the receiving waters. The project in its entirety has been accomplished in distinct parts. Part one develops a Cumulative Resource Assessment to evaluate the distribution of aquatic natural resources within waters of Virginia’s Chesapeake Bay waters, Back Bay of Virginia Beach, Virginia, and the …

Data Collection And Analysis In Support Of Single And Multispecies Stock Assessments In The Mid-Atlantic: Northeast Area Monitoring And Assessment Program (Neamap) Near Shore Trawl Program 2010 - 2012, Neamap Near Shore Trawl Program, Virginia Institute Of Marine Science

Reports

This Environmental Assessment (EA) describes, and evaluates the impacts of, the proposed research activities for 2010, 2011, and 2012 for a coastal ocean bottom-trawling program in the Mid-Atlantic and Southern New England waters of the United States, the Northeast Area Monitoring and Assessment Program (NEAMAP) Near Shore Trawl Survey. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) administers NEAMAP, and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) executes the field sampling, laboratory processing, and data analysis components of this survey. The proposed work for the 2010–2012 period will follow the successful completion by VIMS of the survey’s first two-and-a-half years of …

Abundance And Distribution Of Sea Scallops And Yellowtail Flounder During The 2009 Vims/Industry Cooperative Survey Of The Nantucket Lightship Closed Area (Nlca), William D. Dupaul, David B. Rudders

Reports

No abstract provided.

Monitoring Relative Abundance Of American Shad In Virginia Rivers 2009 Annual Report, John E. Olney, Brian Watkins, Eric J. Hilton

Reports

Concern about the decline in landings of American shad (Alosa sapidissima) along the Atlantic coast prompted the development of an interstate fisheries management plan (FMP) under the auspices of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Management Program (ASMFC 1999). Legislation enables imposition of federal sanctions on fishing in those states that fail to comply with the FMP. To be in compliance, coastal states are required to implement and maintain fishery-dependent and fishery-independent monitoring programs as specified by the FMP. For Virginia, these requirements include spawning stock assessments, the collection of biological data on the spawning run (e.g., age-structure, sex ratio, and …

Northeast Area Monitoring And Assessment Program (Neamap) 2009 Data Collection And Analysis In Support Of Single And Multispecies Stock Assessments In The Mid-Atlantic: Northeast Area Monitoring And Assessment Program Near Shore Trawl Survey, Christopher F. Bonzek, James Gartland, J. David Lange, Robert J. Latour

Reports

Concerns regarding the status of fishery-independent data collection from continental shelf waters between Cape Hatteras, North Carolina and the U.S. / Canadian border led the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s (ASMFC) Management and Science Committee (MSC) to draft a resolution in 1997 calling for the formation of the Northeast Area Monitoring and Assessment Program (NEAMAP) (ASMFC 2002). NEAMAP is a cooperative state-federal program modeled after the Southeast Area Monitoring and Assessment Program (SEAMAP), which has been coordinating fishery-independent data collection south of Cape Hatteras since the mid-1980s (Rester 2001). The four main goals of this new program directly address the …

Annual Report To The Governer And General Assembly Of Virginia: Virginia Fishery Resource Grant Program 2009, Virginia Sea Grant

Reports

No abstract provided.

Evaluation Of Striped Bass Stocks In Virginia, Monitoring And Tagging Studies, 2005-2009 Annual Report, 1 September 2008 - 31 August 2009, Philip W. Sadler, Matthew W. Smith, John M. Hoenig, Robert E. Harris, Lydia M. Goins, Rebecca J. Wilk

Reports

This report presents the results of striped bass (Morone saxatilis) tagging and monitoring activities in Virginia during the period 1 September 2008 through 31 August 2009. It includes an assessment of the biological characteristics of striped bass taken from the 2009 spring spawning run, estimates of annual survival and fishing mortality based on annual spring tagging, and the results of the study that documents the prevalence of mycobacterial infections of striped bass in Chesapeake Bay. The information contained in this report is required by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission and is used to implement a coordinated management plan for …

Marine Resource Bulletin Vol. 42, No. 1, Virginia Sea Grant, Virginia Institute Of Marine Science

Virginia Marine Resource Bulletin

In This Issue

From Discovery to Market 2

Virginia Tech’s Zhiyou Wen is looking for a way to capitalize on a chance connection between the biodiesel industry and the demand for omega-3 fatty acids. Algae that grow on waste glycerol from biofuel production can turn that byproduct into omega-3s for use in a variety of foods and nutritional products.

Marketer, Educator, Processor …and waterman 6

One Virginia fishing family is taking on all of these roles and more to sell their catch directly to consumers at farmers’ markets. They are also spreading the word to other watermen about the increased …

Survival In An Urbanized Landscape: Radio-Tracking Fledgling Eastern Bluebirds (Sialia Sialis) On Golf Courses, Allyson Kathleen Jackson

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Controlling Excess Capacity In Common-Pool Resource Industries: The Transition From Input To Output Controls, D Squires, Y Jeon, Rq Grafton, J Kirkley

VIMS Articles

Overcapacity is a major problem in common-pool resources. Regulators increasingly turn from limited entry to individual transferable use rights to address overcapacity. Using individual vessel data from before and after the introduction of individual harvest rights into a fishery, the paper investigates how characteristics of rights, scale of operations and transition period affect changes in individual and fleet capacity utilisation and excess capacity. The results indicate that individual harvest rights in both theory and practice offer the potential to address the problem of overcapacity in common-pool resources currently managed with limited-entry regulations.

Temperature Effects On Growth, Colony Development And Carbon Partitioning In Three Phaeocystis Species, Xd Wang, Kw Tang, Y Wang, Walker O. Smith Jr.

VIMS Articles

Phaeocystis is an ecologically important marine phytoplankton genus that is globally distributed. We examined the effects of temperature on the 3 most common species: P. globosa, P. antarctica, and P. pouchetii, which grew at 16-32, 0-6, and 4-8 degrees C, respectively. P. pouchetii did not form colonies; P. globosa formed colonies at 16, 20, and 24 degrees C, and P. antarctica colonies were observed at all temperatures. More cells were partitioned into the colonial form at lower temperatures than at higher temperatures for P. globosa and P. antarctica. P. globosa colony size decreased with temperature, whereas P. antarctica colony size …

A Molecular Genetic Investigation Of The Population Structure Of Atlantic Menhaden (Brevoortia Tyrannus), Abigail J. Lynch, Jan E. Mcdowell, John Graves

VIMS Articles

Atlantic menhaden (Brevoortia tyrannus), through landings, support one of the largest commercial fisheries in the United States. Recent consolidation of the once coast-wide reduction fishery to waters within and around Chesapeake Bay has raised concerns over the possibility of the loss of unique genetic variation resulting from concentrated fishing pressure. To address this question, we surveyed variation at the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) gene region and seven nuclear microsatellite loci to evaluate stock structure of Atlantic menhaden. Samples were collected from up to three cohorts of Atlantic menhaden at four geographic locations along the U.S. Atlantic coast …

Habitat Utilization And Dive Characterization Of Blue Marlin (Makaira Nigricans) And White Marlin (Kajikia Albida) In The Western Atlantic Ocean, Daniel J. Dutton

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Blue marlin Makaira nigricans and white marlin Kajikia albida (formerly Tetrapturus albidus) are overfished in the Atlantic Ocean, with the vast majority of fishing mortality resulting from the pelagic longline fishery that targets tunas (Thunnus spp.) and swordfish Xiphias gladius. Time series of catch-per-unit-effort (CPUE) data have been fundamental to assessments of blue marlin and white marlin stocks, but these time series have been affected by a shift over time in pelagic longline fishing practices from shallow to deeper sets. One method for adjusting CPUE data for changes in fishing practices is a habitat-based standardization that modifies fishing effort in …

The Impact Of Conservation On The Status Of The World's Vertebrates, M Hoffmann, C Hilton-Taylor, A Angulo, M Bohm, Tm Brooks, Et Al.

VIMS Articles

Using data for 25,780 species categorized on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List, we present an assessment of the status of the world's vertebrates. One-fifth of species are classified as Threatened, and we show that this figure is increasing: On average, 52 species of mammals, birds, and amphibians move one category closer to extinction each year. However, this overall pattern conceals the impact of conservation successes, and we show that the rate of deterioration would have been at least one-fifth again as much in the absence of these. Nonetheless, current conservation efforts remain insufficient to offset the …

Changes In Age Composition And Growth Characteristics Of Atlantic Sturgeon (Acipenser Oxyrinchus Oxyrinchus) Over 400 Years, Mt Balazik, Gc Garman, Ml Fine, Ch Hager, Sp Mcininch

VIMS Articles

Populations of sturgeon (Acipenseridae) have experienced global declines, and in some cases extirpation, during the past century. In the current era of climate change and over-harvesting of fishery resources, climate models, based on uncertain boundary conditions, are being used to predict future effects on the Earth's biota. A collection of approximately 400-year-old Atlantic sturgeon spines from a midden in colonial Jamestown, VA, USA, allowed us to compare the age structure and growth rate for a pre-industrial population during a 'mini-ice age' with samples collected from the modern population in the same reach of the James River. Compared with modern fish, …

Challenges Of Modeling Depth-Integrated Marine Primary Productivity Over Multiple Decades: A Case Study At Bats And Hot, Vs Saba, Mam Friedrichs, Me Carr, D Antoine, Ra Armstrong, Et Al.

VIMS Articles

The performance of 36 models (22 ocean color models and 14 biogeochemical ocean circulation models (BOGCMs)) that estimate depth-integrated marine net primary productivity (NPP) was assessed by comparing their output to in situ C-14 data at the Bermuda Atlantic Time series Study (BATS) and the Hawaii Ocean Time series (HOT) over nearly two decades. Specifically, skill was assessed based on the models' ability to estimate the observed mean, variability, and trends of NPP. At both sites, more than 90% of the models underestimated mean NPP, with the average bias of the BOGCMs being nearly twice that of the ocean color …

Dead In The Water: The Fate Of Copepod Carcasses In The York River Estuary, Virginia, Dt Elliott, Courtney K. Harris, Kw Tang

VIMS Articles

Using laboratory and field experiments we investigated three fates of copepod carcass organic matter in the York River estuary, Virginia: ingestion by planktivores (necrophagy), microbial decomposition, and removal by gravitational settling in the presence of turbulence (sinking). The ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidyi ingested live copepods and carcasses indiscriminately in feeding experiments. Microbial decomposition led to ca. 50% of carcass dry weight loss within 8 h after death. Carcass settling velocities in still water were ca. 0.1 cm s(-1), implying short residence time (hours) in the shallow estuary. However, turbulent mixing kept carcasses in suspension much of the time, reducing sinking losses. …

Using Traps For Catfish In Virginia Tidal Rivers, James Bristow

Reports

The project tested a different way to commercially fish for catfish in the tidal rivers, while allowing by-catch and smaller catfish to escape. Ten traps were constructed of coated wire mesh and steel rod, equipped with an entry funnel, and fished alongside three strings of trot-lines in the same area and times. The test period covered September and October 2010 over a period of warm weather when salinity changed dramatically from 10 ppt to zero and water temperatures eased downward from 68 degrees to 60 degrees.

The trap design and all boat modifications operated as designed with only a few …