Tag Archives: monkfish study

NOAA grants SMAST $1.6 million for monkfish study

AR-160609527.jpg&MaxW=315&MaxH=315Researchers at the UMass Dartmouth School for Marine Science and Technology have won a federal grant valued at $1.6 million to conduct research into the growth and movement of monkfish, NOAA announced Tuesday. The grant is part of a unique “research set-aside” program that pays for at-sea research not with direct dollars but with fishing opportunities whose proceeds pay for the researchers and for the boat they are using. In the case of SMAST, where Dr. Steven Cadrin and research technician Crista Bank will be doing the study, 250 days at sea allocated in the grant each year for 2016 and 2017 should produce $1.361 million to pay for the boat and $270,000 for the research over two years, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “A previous monkfish research set-aside grant to this group found that the current approach of estimating monkfish growth is not valid, exposing a gap in the monkfish stock assessment. This two-year project proposes to fill this gap for juvenile monkfish through this tagging study,” said a NOAA press release. Read the rest here 08:04