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Sea Scallop Working Group Meeting June 17, 2003, 9:30 AM - noon Nantucket Room (Dining Complex) Mass. Maritime Academy Buzzards Bay, MA 1. Welcome - Harlyn Halvorson 2. Introduction new head of SEMAC - Bill Walton 3. Non-Invasive Assessment of Sea Scallop
Habitat and Abundance - Richard Taylor 4. SEABED and sled camera systems - Hanu Singh, WHOI 5. LIHDAT - Scott Gallager, WHOI 6. Update Mass Aquaculture Program - Scott Soares, Mass Dept Food and Ag Sea Scallop Recruitment Since its formation in 1944 the Sea Scallop Working group (SSWG) has been committed to the promotion of sea scallop aquaculture in Massachusetts and in New England. In its 1995 Position Paper, SSWG recommended: Four years later, in a 1999 Blueprint, SSWG recommended the development of a rotational sea scallop fishing effort that includes spat collection, seeding in protected areas and rotational harvest, based on the successful Japanese model. These recommendations led to the formation of A Sea Scallop Recruitment Group in 1999. The long range goals of this group were to integrate real-time technology into the commercial scallop fishing fleet on Georges Bank for the purpose of identifying oceanographic features where scallop larvae aggregate in high numbers, for efficiently collecting juvenile scallops (spat) in the water column, and for providing fishery managers with tools for predicting scallop recruitment as a function of larval distribution in the water column and maximizing the effectiveness of rotational area management practices. Some of the early strategies have been reported in previous SSWG meetings. It is the purpose of this SWWG meeting to report the first results of testing an imaging system for assessing juvenile and adult sea scallop abundance and size distribution and characterizing substrate and habitat resources shared between scallops and other ground fish. Further they will explore the application of web mapping to aquaculture siting. ************************************************************* Dr. Harlyn Halvorson |