Cameron's Week 8

Type: All
Region: Tidal
Location: Coatal Bays

This past week I spent the first two days in Ocean City, trawling in the coastal bays. On the first day we trawled in the southern part of the coastal bays, and we found some species I hadn’t seen before. On the first trawl we brought up a decent sized diamondback terrapin, which was very cool to see. Among the hundreds of blue crabs that we caught, we also found: weakfish, northern puffer fish, naked gobies, northern pipe fish, blennies, oyster toad fish, silver perch, summer flounder, small mouth flounder, and brown shrimp. The most interesting species that we found were: a bur fish, a southern stingray, and mantis shrimp. One thing I learned about the mantis shrimp is that they have one of the fastest reflexes of any animals. They can whip their tail so hard that it can break glass!

Following my adventures in Ocean City, I traveled to Hoopers Island to go to a pound net check station. Here, we measured, weighed, and collected scale samples for every striped bass that the fishermen brought in from their pound nets. It was my job to record all the information in the data book. There is a video below that shows how fishermen collect the fish from their pound nets.

Tags: Coastal Bays, Pound Nets