Striped bass project part of environmental assessment on fish health and tidal power potential

BY SARA KEDDY

Kings County Register

Not many people make the “guzzle” their office, but Jeremy Broome spends four hours a day here in Grand Pre and at other points along the Minas Basin shoreline. “Sure, I’ll spend the whole summer fishing,” he told Acadia University supervisors looking for masters students to help with research projects in the Bay of Fundy.

Broome, a first-year masters of biology student, is in the middle of a two-year survey of striped bass populations. It’s work funded by a three-way corporate partnership to look at tidal power prospects in the bay. A friend was working on a similar project on lobster, and another is working on sturgeon. “How did I feel about striped bass? I’ve always been a fisherman, mainly for trout, and my first bass was 16 inches long; to a trout fisherman, that’s a pretty big fish - now I’m spoiled.”

Broome spends his work days fishing, and what he catches he tags, takes a length and weight, scale and tissue samples from.

Striped bass here in the bay are on the verge of being declared endangered. Native spawning populations in the Shubenacadie, Annapolis and Saint John Rivers are threatened, and any development in the bay could affect them. “That’s the story of tidal power production, but this will be a different story” from the tidal power dam built across the mouth of the Annapolis River years ago, Broome says.

New technology may suspend underwater turbines in the bay channels, taking advantage of the tides. Companies interested in the project need environmental assessments as part of their applications.

Next summer, Broome’s work will be more technical, with satellite tags to track fish through the bay itself, watching where they’re moving through waters that nay someday be home to generating equipment.

Since May, he’s tagged 400 striped bass. He’s caught 100 on his own, but he’s enlisted the help of avid fishermen to tag even more. “One day, we did 36 in one day, basically me running up and down the beach tagging other people’s fish.”

A normal day may see 10 or 12 fish tagged. They average in size from 15 inches to 17 inches; fishermen aren’t allowed to keep anything smaller than 26.8 inches, which would be about a six-year-old fish. Striped bass don’t spawn until they are four to six years old, so the size limits help ensure mature fish have at least one chance to spawn.

Broome’s own largest catch was 28.5 inches, but he’s seen a 38-incher (24 pounds) - “that was a big fish.”

He’s planning, too, to tag fish with a metal tag that will ping off a hydrophone, so he can tell how may times they move past a certain area. He also has a 300-foot seine net to try later this fall.

He’s already heard from people who’ve caught his tagged fish. “ There’s no legal obligation to report a tag, or throw a fish back - I’d just hope they’d report back to me where they caught it,” he says

In the meantime, Broome will keep putting in his days at the “office,” working around the tides at all hours and, tough for him, even fishing in the rain. “I’ve got good raingear!”

WEBLINKS

For information on the study or to add your fishing pole to the project, contact Broome:

acadiastripedbass@hotmail.com