Sea Grant’s 2006
2nd Quarter Highlights
(Archive of SG Highlights)

Sea Grant E-Currents Newsletter now available!

The National Science Foundation and NOAA-National Sea Grant announced funding support this week for COSEE Great Lakes, the eighth center in a nationwide network. Funds will be divided among seven programs that make up the Great Lakes Sea Grant Network: Illinois-Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. COSEE Great Lakes is expected to create dynamic connections between Great Lakes and ocean research and education with the goal of enhancing scientific literacy and environmental stewardship.

For years Hawaii’s longline fishermen have been collecting derelict net and fishing gear encountered while out at sea and discarding it in the county landfill upon their return. Recognizing the efforts made by these fishermen, HI Sea Grant and partners helped form a private-public partnership to coordinate a more environmentally friendly approach to this debris disposal. With the new derelict net disposal program the debris will be taken to the City and County of Honolulu’s HPower facility and recycled to produce electricity.

Sea Grant's Seafood specialist Quentin Fong traveled to Asia to promote Alaska seafood in order to enhance market development for Alaska processors and the Alaska Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development's Asian Trade Development project. Fong was able to get statistics on Hong Kong sea urchin roe import and re-export for the Southeast Alaska Regional Dive Fisheries Association, from the Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department. On his return he reported on China and Hong Kong seafood markets to James Wemyss, aide to Sen. Lisa Murkowski on Asian trade.

Results from a study that a Sea Grant extension agent took part in will allow Alaska Department of Fish and Game to define acceptable gear for the directed octopus fishery. They also measured and tagged forty-two octopuses, which may give information on growth rate, population estimates, and migration.

Florida Sea Grant Extension (FSGE) coordinated a hurricane action and assessment response in service training. Participants included 28 extension faculty from the states of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida and Georgia. Discussion centered on pre-hurricane event, response, recovery and rebuilding strategies and exploration of regional cooperative, mutual aid efforts in preparation for the 2006 hurricane season. The training was developed by Don Jackson, FSGE Special Project Coordinator.

MIT and Hawaii Sea Grant Bring Underwater Robots to Classrooms: Hawaii teachers are using "Sea Perch," an underwater remote-controlled vehicle made of PVC pipes and hardware store materials, to help students probe underwater environments and learn engineering skills. As a result of this Sea Grant training workshop, community college students will introduce Sea Perch to high school students this summer.

Sea Grant funded biologists have identified the molecular mechanisms by which marine sponges synthesize their silica skeletons. They are now translating these mechanisms to develop new approaches for low-cost synthesis of semiconductors. Compared to current manufacturing practices, the methods they have developed operate at low temperature and use no harmful or caustic chemicals. Materials with novel structures and electronic properties are being produced. Results are especially encouraging for lowering manufacturing costs and improving energy efficiency of solar energy (photovoltaic) converters.

California Sea Grant researchers detected algal toxin and domoic acid in the viscera (guts) of two popular sport fish - white croaker and staghorn sculpin, but the toxin has not been detected in muscle tissue of either fish. The preliminary findings do present compelling evidence of the need for further study, as domoic acid was found in white croaker specimens four of the 13 times the fish were caught off the wharf. The toxin was found in staghorn sculpin on only one of the 10 sampling dates. To expand the study and more fully document public health risks, California Sea Grant has awarded a research grant to quantify toxin exposure rates for different sub-groups of anglers at the wharf.

New Hampshire Sea Grant researchers have collected thousands of seaweed samples from 200 sites around Casco Bay. Comparing their findings to samples collected from the Gulf of Maine during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, they’ve discovered that the bay’s seaweed community is quite similar to that of the late 1800s, overall. Specifically, the researchers found 79 percent of the species that existed in the bay a century ago. In some specific sites within the bay, however, the similarity between historical and modern seaweed flora was less than 50 percent.

A bill that would allow Wisconsin to grant Brown County the rights and title to certain submerged and dry lands of the Cat Island Chain for the purpose of restoring it to its former function of protecting water quality in the bay and providing natural habitat to area plant life, aquatic life, birds and water fowl. The chain also will serve as a place to deposit dredged material from navigation channels and will allow opportunity for public use. The effort is the result of a partnership between Brown County, the Department of Natural Resources, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the University of Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute.

New Hampshire Sea Grant and the Northeast Consortium have partnered to produce "A Guide to Fisheries Stock Assessment: From Data to Recommendations." Stock assessments lie at the heart of virtually all fisheries regulations, providing decision-makers with the information necessary to make sound management choices. For many people affected by those choices, though, the stock assessment process is largely a mystery. "A Guide to Fisheries Stock Assessment" is designed to clarify the stock-assessment process for fishermen, regulators, science journalists and others interested in the fishing industry.

Commercial fishermen and seafood processors now can turn to a single web site, aptly called AlaskaFishBiz.org, for information and resources about financing, small business development, education and training, and other seafood industry business needs and services. The web site is part of the Alaska Fisheries Business Assistance Project, or FishBiz, created by the Alaska Sea Grant Extension Program.

Through the combined efforts of Louisiana, Washington and Alaska Sea Grant programs, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Pacific Coast Congress of Harbormasters (PCCH) and Valdez Port Director Alan Sorum, the idea of donating a surplus Travelift to help the hundreds of fishing vessels that were pushed by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita into areas from which – when the storms subsided – they could no longer reach the sea.