The New Jersey Sea Grant Consortium recently funded four new research projects on issues of high priority to New Jersey’s coast. Recreational and commercial fishermen will be most interested in the results of the project that Dr. Kenneth Able and Dr. Thomas Grothues, from the Rutgers University Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences, plan to conduct on winter flounder. The goal is to better understand winter flounder connectivity between estuarine and continental shelf habitats and address issues related to the decline of winter flounder and management of its habitats.
Past research efforts indicate that winter flounder spawning movements are variable and spawning may take place not only in estuaries but also on the continental shelf. Drs. Able and Grothues plan to conduct a reevaluation of the seasonal movements of adults and determine the spawning sites for winter flounder (estuary and/or ocean) in New Jersey with electronic sensored tags that collect and store data. The tags need to be returned by fishers who catch these (Reward!) to allow data extraction.Tagging will begin offshore in early summer and estuaries in the late fall. Information on what the tags look like and how to return them will be provided at a later date.
Information on previous research efforts can be found at
http://njseagrant.org/jersey-shoreline/vol26_no1/regulatory_solutions.html
