YOY Striped Bass Survey and Ocean Bay Program

Type: Chesapeake
Region: Upper Bay
Location:

On July 17th Eric Durell took me out with his crew to conduct a Young of Year (YOY) striped bass survey. We drove to the upper Bay and seined five different sites with a regular 100 foot beach seine in up to four feet of water. Two sites, we could drive and seine from the shore, and the other three sites we needed a boat to get to the shore. The first site was seined only one time, while every other site was seined two times with a thirty minute interval from the start of the first to the start of the second seine. Sometimes there are many fish and it takes thirty minutes or a lot longer to count and measure, and then there are sometimes that can take ten minutes, giving you twenty minutes of waiting.

Our catch mainly included fifteen different species; striped bass, spot, croaker, menhaden, Atlantic silverside, inland silverside, rough silverside, white perch, yellow perch and more. Once the seine was brought in all the fish and crabs were put in a bin with water, then counted and thrown into a cooler. The YOY fish or young from last year of certain species would be put in separate buckets to be measured and possibly scale samples could be taken.

The data from this survey will be analyzed and released in the fall, for now if you want to know anything more about YOY striped bass go to Juvenile Index

Then on July 19th I went back out with the Ocean Bays program for round two. Last time we seined and trolled but this time all we did was troll five different sites. I was happy about this because I didn’t have to wear a wet suit and water shoes. On this day we caught the usual species, such as spot, crabs, bay anchovies, killifish, summer flounder (a few big ones) and more. To my surprise we caught a few species I have never seen in person before which were, black sea bass, spider crabs, gobies and some type of spiked blow fish. For these trolls a huge net was tossed behind the boat and dragged for six minutes, then a crew member had to pull the troll in by hand. Everything caught was put on a table, measured and counted, and different types of macro algae were recorded and measured. Every time I go out with the Ocean Bays program I have a good time and learn something new that helps me when I conduct other field work.

Tags: striped bass, spot, croaker, menhaden, Atlantic silverside, inland silverside, rough silverside, white perch, yellow perch, crab, bay anchovies, killifish, summer flounder, black sea bass, spider crabs, gobies, spiked blow fish