From Snails to Whales: Assignment 1, Part 1: Recreational Fishing

Thursday, July 24, 2014

Assignment 1, Part 1: Recreational Fishing

Recreational Fishing: Boston Harbor, Friday 7/18/14

Last Friday we set out aboard Captain Charlie's Charter Fishing boat to see what we could catch in Boston Harbor. We fished from around 9:30am to 11:30am at low tide not far from Deer Island and caught five different kinds of fish using live sea worms as bait. We caught Striped Bass, Black Sea Bass, Flounder, and Silver Hake.

Sea Worms
The worms were an average of about 5 inches in length. They had a row of red cilia on each side to help propel them through the water. Large black pinchers protruded from their mouths when provoked.

Striped Bass

Morone saxatilis, commonly referred to as stripers, get their name from the 7 or 8 continuous horizontal dark stripes that run from gill to tail. They can be found along the East Coast, from Canada to Florida as well as areas in the Gulf of Mexico. Striper, both farmed and wild, are abundant in the fish market and restaurant industry, however most farmed striped bass are actually hybrids, a cross between striped bass and white bass. Striped bass has long been one of the most important commercial and recreational fisheries in the industry, but due to over fishing and environmental issues the fishery faced collapse until fishing regulations were implemented and brought the species to a sustainable state where it is today. Striped bass are anadromous, meaning they live in salt water yet travel into freshwater to spawn. Juveniles live in estuaries, the area where fresh water meets the salt water, for up to four years before migrating to the Atlantic. Striped bass can live up to 30 years old and grow to be over 50 pounds, feeding on other fish making the species piscivorous. While, young stripers have many predators the adults have few other than seals, sharks and the occasional science class.

Black Sea Bass,
Centropristis striata, are a popular commercial and recreational species along the East Coast, from Massachusetts to Florida. There are two separate stocks of black sea bass in the Atlantic, divided at approximately Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. Black Sea Bass not to migrate up and down the coast but rather migrate in respect to the proximity to the shore as the water temperatures change. They prefer to remain close to structures such as rocks, reefs, and wrecks. In contrast with the Striped Bass, Black Sea Bass usually only grow to about 24 inches. Black Sea Bass are protogynous hermaphrodites, meaning that most are born as female but as they mature some will switch to be male, which scientists hypothesize is done as a result of the scarcity (or not done in the case of a multitude) of males in the population. When the species spawn the males turn bright blue and grow a hump of the same color on their heads.

Flounder
As we all know from the Little Mermaid, flounder are dependable, reliable, sometimes timid, friends. Who can speak. And sing. The Pseudopleuronectes americanus can be found along the eastern coast from Maine to North Carolina, residing in estuaries and bays in the summer and feeding offshore in the winter. As one can deduce from the physical characteristics of the species they tend to lay on the sea floor and often bury everything but they eyes, which are situated on one side of the body. The placement of their eyes is a gradual process, when they are first born they have an eye on each side of their head but as they reach maturity and adapt to life on the ocean floor their left eye migrates to the right side of their body. The position of their eyes allows them to almost burry themselves in the sediments while still keeping two eyes on the predators above which include cod, dogfish, and monkfish. Flounder can easily be mistaken as sole, however sole is located in the Pacific and flounder is located in the Atlantic.

Silver Hake

What the hake! Merluccius bilinearis are a nocturnal species that spend the night and dusk feeding near the surface while spending their days at the sandy or muddy bottoms, along most of the east coast. As the name suggests, the species are silver in color while darker on their back and lighter on their stomach. This difference in coloring helps disguise the species from predators from below, by camouflaging them into the lighter waters illuminated by the sun, and from above by camouflaging them into the darker sea floor below.

Sources
NOAA Fishwatch. NOAA, 5 Feb. 2014. Web. 24 July 2014. <http://www.fishwatch.gov/index.htm>.

Drohan, Amy, John P. Manderson, and Dave G. Packer. "Black Sea Bass, Centropristis striata, Life History and Habitat Characteristics." NOAA Technical Memorandum (2007): 1-78. Print.

National Audubon Society (May 2001). National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Fishes. Knopf, Rev Sub edition (May 21, 2002).

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From Snails to Whales

Welcome to Snails to Whales, Bruce Berman's blog focused on both the little and the big things that make Boston Harbor such an interesting and extraordinary place to live, work and play.

With 50 miles of protected water, four sheltered bays, seven river systems, 34 islands and a nine-foot average tide, Boston Harbor is one of the most diverse urban ecosystems in America.

This blog focuses on the flora and fauna of Boston Harbor and Massachusetts Bay - on the beach, the shore, and the harbor islands, and in the cleaner waters of Boston Harbor and Mass Bay - including this ecosystems most important species - people.

During the summer, it is also a place for my Boston University Students and my colleagues at Save the Harbor / Save the Bay to share their work and experiences.

Where I am coming from...

Love that clean(er) water
Learning about the Boston Harbor Cleanup from the waterway’s eyes, ears, and mouthpiece

By Brian Fitzgerald, BU Bridge

On Georges Island, Bruce Berman talks with his students about the history of the Boston Harbor Cleanup,
which is largely complete. Photo by Vernon Doucette

Bruce Berman, aboard a ferry from Boston’s Long Wharf to Georges Island, poses a question to his students: “How clean is clean enough?”

He’s talking about the water below.

It’s a brilliant July day, with the smell of salt spray in the air. The sky is clear, and so is the ocean. But there was a time when Boston Harbor wasn’t so clean, when the stench of sewage assaulted the nostrils of anyone who went near it.

Berman is the communications director for Save the Harbor/Save the Bay, a public-interest environmental advocacy organization whose mission is to help restore and protect the harbor and Massachusetts Bay. He also teaches a Metropolitan College summer course called Politics, Public Relations, and Public Policy: The Boston Harbor Cleanup.

“The Boston Harbor Cleanup is an amazing success story, and I just love to share it with students,” says Berman, noting that the harbor’s “bad old days” weren’t that long ago. Those were the days when untreated human waste, syringes, condoms, and tampon applicators routinely washed ashore. The antiquated sewage treatment plants on Deer Island and Nut Island were so poorly designed and maintained that they flooded during even mild rainstorms, sending millions of gallons of untreated waste directly into the harbor.

Since then, bacteria counts in the water have decreased by more than two-thirds. Now the harbor teems with plants and animals, and people can legally dig for clams on Carson Beach in South Boston, which was unheard of in the 1980s.

“It was one of the filthiest harbors in America, and now it’s one of the cleanest,” says Berman. “What I’m trying to impress upon students is how this incredible comeback occurred, and how business, advocacy groups, environmentalists, and government can affect the outcome of large projects such as the Boston Harbor Cleanup through negotiation.”

Paradise regained

Berman points to the left as the boat cruises by the cleanup’s centerpiece: the gargantuan white egglike tanks of the Deer Island waste treatment plant, which in 1995 replaced the antiquated facility. The plant treats an average of 350 million gallons of sewage a day.

“And what comes out of the Deer Island treatment plant?” he asks. Berman, his booming baritone competing with the roar of planes taking off from Logan Airport, has a habit of putting students on the spot to see if they’re paying attention.

“The outfall pipe,” say several simultaneously. “Treated water,” chime in a few more.

“That’s right,” he says with a smile. “The plant separates the solid and liquid waste, and it pumps the treated water through the 9.5-mile outfall pipe, which empties into Massachusetts Bay. The resulting sludge is converted to high-grade fertilizer.”

Now Berman returns to his original question: “How clean is clean enough?” There’s no quick and clear answer to this one. “It’s a question that at the end of the day the federal courts had to decide.”

In 1985, a landmark federal court case required that the harbor’s beaches be made swimmable and fishable by 2000. Save the Harbor/Save the Bay was formed the next year to raise public awareness of the $4.5 billion Boston Harbor Cleanup. Sewer ratepayers in the 43 cities and towns financing the project cried foul over the prospect of astronomically rising bills, but because of the determination of environmental advocacy groups such as Berman’s, the cleanup was largely completed on schedule.

Berman says it isn’t finished, however. There are still frequent beach closures because the counts of Enterococcus bacteria exceed the federal and state standard for swimming. The culprit: filthy storm water and sewage, much of it from leaky pipes and illegal hookups emptying into storm sewers, and then into the harbor.

“So is the harbor clean enough,” the Springfield native asks his students, “when you can’t swim in it one out of five days in the summer?”

Work to be done

Berman and his class look out from Georges Island to Gallops Island (left) and the white tanks of the waste treatment plant on Deer Island (right). Photo by Vernon Doucette

This summer the state approved one of the last parts of the cleanup: the construction, by 2011, of a 2.1-mile tunnel near the Dorchester and South Boston shorelines that will hold sewage and storm water during bad weather. It then will be pumped to Deer Island for treatment.

Berman is ecstatic over this development, the result of “tireless negotiation and consensus-building,” he says. “After 2011, we’re looking at beach closings once every five years, when there is a major storm, instead of once every five days.”

But he is not about to let his guard down. To say that he is a man obsessed with the harbor cleanup would be an understatement. Berman is also Save the Harbor/Save the Bay’s “Baywatcher,” and he lives on his 40-foot trawler Verandah. Polluters beware: if you’re discharging oil or sewage into Boston Harbor, the Baywatcher just might be watching.

He is quick to point out that his zealotry is not just on behalf of the harbor’s flora and fauna. “The harbor is for everyone,” he says. “If you’re from a working class or poor family in Boston, and you can’t afford a Cape Cod getaway in the summer, a clean harbor is important. The same is true if you’re a tourist vacationing in Boston or you happen to live in a pricey waterfront condo.”

Accordingly, Berman, who was a political consultant and contributing editor to the Phoenix newspaper before joining Save the Harbor/Save the Bay nearly 10 years ago, also teaches his students about the harbor’s role in the city’s economy. He points out that in the early 1990s, just a few ferries cruised the harbor’s waters. Today, more than 100,000 people visit its islands each summer, discovering their ecological and historic treasures.

“The best way to protect the harbor cleanup,” Berman tells his students, “is to make sure that the public has access to the resources and can see a return on its investment.”

Trevor Kosmolsick (MET’05) has lived in Boston for seven years, but until taking Berman’s course, he had never been to the waterfront. “I’ve also wanted to go camping in the area, but I never knew that you could camp on a few of the islands,” he says. “Bruce Berman is not only a great professor, but the ultimate tour guide.”

He also backs up his words with actions. Sometimes he takes off his shirt and dives in the water to demonstrate to passing boaters that it’s safe to swim. To show people on ferries that fishing is safe, he’s been known to grab one of the bluefish or striped bass he’s caught and (very carefully) plant a wet kiss on it.

“What I want everyone to understand is that investment in the environment really does pay off,” says Berman. “We’re willing to pay for a clean Boston Harbor, so we should enjoy it.”

From Snails to Whales

Thursday, July 24, 2014

Assignment 1, Part 1: Recreational Fishing

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