Intern Log for Week Ending July 31

Type: Chesapeake
Region: Eastern
Location: Maryland

Diamond Jim Tagging

Round Three of the Diamond Jim tagging went great last Thursday! This time around, I was on the Miss Linda, with Capt. Jim Gasch and a group of US war veterans. At first the fish didn't seem to be hungry, until about 11:00 when we really started to get on them. I have never witnessed breaking fish as much as we saw on Thursday. It seemed to be that everywhere you looked, fish were breaking. We got our 20 fish tagged before lunchtime, so that left the rest of the day to catch fish for keeps. The law is that everyone on the boat is allowed 2 fish a piece, we reached that quota as well. Our biologist Don Cosden did a fantastic job tagging, and handling the fish, as well as Capt. Jim putting us on the fish. Great day for the vets and everyone on onboard!

Oyster Exposure

Friday I accompanied Chris Judy who works with the shellfish program(Oysters). The goal for the day was to pick up oyster cages from the inmates at the Correction Facility, and deliver them to the UMD Environmental Science Research Center. We delivered about 200 or so. The purpose of these cages is for the Marylanders Grow Oysters(MGO), where hundreds of waterfront property owners are growing millions of young oysters in cages suspended from private piers. They load the cages up with oyster shells that have spat on them and grow them for a period of time. This project was initiated by Governor Martin O'Malley in 2008, and since then this project continues to grow. Currently, there are 5,265 oyster cages in Maryland Waters.

The three pictures below right show some of the equipment involved, including the settling tanks where the spat settle onto the shell before being deployed