For 16 years, researchers sampling the backcountry waters of Everglades National Park had never seen an adult smalltooth sawfish there. Then, on one expedition, they caught and tagged three — an adult male and two adult females — close to where young sawfish live. It may mean that females move inshore to give birth, or to mate, in those shallow waters.
That find was one of the photos NOAA Fisheries' followers liked most in 2017. Here is the agency's year as its readers and viewers chose it.
Five discoveries in photographs
Image from NOAA Fisheries' page.
Sawfish in the Florida Keys. On a joint expedition through Florida Bay and the Keys, NOAA biologists caught and released 17 critically endangered smalltooth sawfish: nine newborns, two juveniles and six adults. The two juveniles were fitted with satellite tags, which show where they go and how long they stay. The adults in the Everglades backcountry were the first ever caught and tagged there. Partners included Florida State University's Coastal & Marine Laboratory, Everglades National Park, the Florida Museum of Natural History and the Disney Conservation Fund.
Image from NOAA Fisheries' page.
Octopus that survive being caught. A study suggests that most octopus caught by accident in commercial pot fisheries survive after being returned to the sea. That matters because catch limits assume every such octopus dies, so all of them count toward the overfishing limit — and a fishery that reaches its octopus bycatch limit has to close, hurting fishermen and their communities. If a known share survives, the limits could rise and fisheries could stay open longer.
Image from NOAA Fisheries' page.
Loggerheads in Florida Bay. NOAA Fisheries' Sea Turtle Program and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission run a long-term study of loggerheads there — their movements, growth, sex ratios, numbers, genetics and how long they stay. On one trip they caught and released 80 loggerheads, about half of them seen in earlier years; one was first recorded in 1996 and has been seen six times since. Over the whole study, more than 1,200 have been caught and released.
Image from NOAA Fisheries' page.
Terrapins saved during a restoration. Volunteers restoring barrier islands in the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill found a nest of diamondback terrapin eggs. With the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries they moved the 21 terrapins so they could hatch and grow safely before going back to the wild.
Image from NOAA Fisheries' page.
Krill from the deep. In July, NOAA Teacher at Sea Jenny Hartigan sailed on the R/V Fulmar for the ACCESS cruise, which records top predators, plankton and ocean conditions as signs of how healthy the ecosystem is. Plankton came up in the Tucker Trawl, a large three-level net for animals living 200 meters or more down, just beyond the continental shelf; the samples went to a lab to be identified and counted.
The stories read most
| Rank | Story | What it covered |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | National Seafood Month | Every October; U.S. seafood comes from some of the most sustainably managed fisheries in the world |
| 2 | Status of Stocks and Fisheries Economics reports | Released in May: the continued rebuilding of U.S. fisheries, and what commercial and recreational fishing mean to the economy |
| 3 | Whale Week | How NOAA scientists study whales, what they are finding, and how people can help protect them |
| 4 | Aquaculture Week | Farming fish, shellfish and plants, which supplies half the seafood eaten in the United States and abroad |
| 5 | A new Assistant Administrator | Chris Oliver, a Texas native and former Executive Director of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, took office on June 19, 2017 |
Image from NOAA Fisheries' page.
Image from NOAA Fisheries' page.
The videos watched most
On Instagram:
| Video | Views | What it shows |
|---|---|---|
| Hawaiʻi reef fish camera research | 728,398 | Cheap cameras in waterproof housings now reach deeper reefs off Hawaiʻi; a juvenile tiger shark checks out the bait bag |
| Saildrone research | 211,928 | Wind-propelled vessels with solar-powered computers, carrying echosounders to measure fish, or recorders that listen for endangered right whales |
| Oyster Day | 136,828 | August 5; U.S. farmers grew 33 million pounds of oysters in 2014, the largest part of the country's marine aquaculture |
| White abalone | 85,554 | A critically endangered sea snail, one of eight abalone species in California waters |
| Monk seal prey test | 58,582 | Runku, a young Hawaiian monk seal who lost an eye to injury, proving after two weeks of care that she could still catch fish |
On YouTube, the top video followed the rescue of an endangered North Atlantic right whale off Cumberland Island on January 6, 2017. It was dragging more than 450 feet of rope and a 135-pound trap; Georgia's Department of Natural Resources, NOAA, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and Sea to Shore Alliance cut it free. Entanglement in fishing gear is one of the species' leading threats: more than 80 percent of North Atlantic right whales carry scars from it. The others followed endangered Steller sea lions in the western Aleutians — closer to Russia than to mainland Alaska — where some populations are shrinking and others thriving; Springer, an orphaned killer whale found in Puget Sound in 2002, ten years after her reunion and recovery; the dynamiting of Whites Gulch Dam on the Salmon River in California, after which salmon are coming back; and a short film on seafood, an industry worth billions of dollars a year and a few million jobs.
Sources
- NOAA Fisheries, Explore Top 5 Stories, Photos, and Videos of 2017.
Licence: CC0 1.0 (public domain) · Adapted from www.fisheries.noaa.gov
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