Value-added sampling for fishery independent surveys: Don’t stop after you’re done counting and measuring

Abstract

Most fishery independent surveys count, weigh, and measure the majority of species caught. Many surveys also collect selected body structures for in-lab age determinations for selected species. We provide examples from the Northeast Fisheries Science Center's (NEFSC) bottom trawl survey that detail the development of at-sea sampling to elucidate age, growth, maturity, fecundity, spawning season, stomach contents, diet composition, condition, habitat types and prey preferences, basic oceanography (or limnology), and bioenergetics for a suite of diverse species. We show how the development of new methodologies and technologies has decreased both deck-time and time in the lab for processing many of the samples required to provide information on the topics listed above. As new technologies develop to make our trawl catch processing more efficient, we assert that we can notably increase the amount of information collected from trawl surveys with little additional effort. We show that with marginally additional catch processing time on the deck, at-sea sampling can provide a significant return on the knowledge of aquatic and marine resource species, non-resource species, habitats, food webs, and the ecosystems within which they occur. As observing systems continue to expand their remit to provide ecosystem management advice, the need for increased efficiencies on fisheries surveys will remain.