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Polar Vortex, Redux

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by Jerry Vovcsko

Just when we thought the January thaw was upon us, here came another Polar Vortex bringing us piles of snow – up to 18 inches falling on parts of southeastern Massachusetts – and temperatures that plunged overnight into the sub-zero range. There won't be much opportunity just now to fish the salt water, even if there were lots of fish around – wind gusts up around 40-knots saw to that. And pretty much forget freshwater action for a while as it might take half a day to trek through these awesome snow drifts just to get near enough to fishable ponds to check for sufficiently solid ice cover.

Yeah, we might just want to pull the old rocking chair up close to the woodstove and sip a bit of Irish coffee while perusing the spring Bass Pro catalog or taking another spin around the literary block with Papa Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea. Myself, I'll be planted near the fireplace while shipping aboard caffeinated wet-goods in the form of a mug of dark French Roast coffee in one hand and a book of Tom McGuane's wildly entertaining fish tales in the other.

While we hole up waiting for Mother Nature to deliver more favorable weather our way, it helps to know that Gulf of Maine Cod swimming off Massachusetts shores have been tagged with acoustic tracking devices that will help scientists determine when and where the fish spawn.
Water Fin Underwater Organism Fish
Scientists, state and federal environmental officials and local fishermen are working together to attach the electronic tags to cod and return them to the water. Fishermen began taking scientists aboard their boats in September to find and tag fish.

The tags are detected by a series of underwater monitors that pick up the sounds and track the movements of the fish, according to state environmental officials. Each electronic tag emits a sound once every minute, for up to six years, and each tag has a unique sound that allows scientists to track individual fish. The signal is recorded whenever the fish pass within a network of receivers deployed on the sea floor by the Massachusetts Department of Fish and Game's Division of Marine Fisheries.

Department of Fish and Game Commissioner Mary Griffin described the tags as akin to an "E-Z Pass for fish," and said the tracking project will help scientists determine where cod spawn off the South Shore. Knowing where the spawning grounds are is important for recovery of the population as dwindling stocks of cod have led federal officials to institute fishing quotas.

Some fishermen report seeing cod only during their spawning season in the late fall and early winter, where in the past the fish were abundant most of the year, according to Frank Mirarchi, who has fished out of Scituate Harbor since 1962. Mirarchi was one of the local fishermen who pushed to research the spawning habits of cod.

"We hope to provide these fish with protection while they're vulnerable," Mirarchi said in a press release. "The expectation is that we can provide discrete, small protected areas which will not be disruptive to fishing, while helping the cod stock to recover."
The acoustic monitoring data will allow researchers to visualize the movement behavior of fish while they are on the spawning grounds, and when they leave the area – information that is needed to define seasonal closures and to better understand spawning behavior, according to environmentalists.

Meanwhile, some folks on the other side of the world got pretty excited when a fisherman in waters north of New Zealand came across an odd-looking, translucent sea creature swimming on the surface. Curious, he netted the creature to get a closer look and saw he had what he described as a see-through, shrimp-like creature.
Water Azure Liquid Fluid Organism


"It felt scaly and was quite firm, almost jelly like, and you couldn't see anything inside aside from this orange little blob inside it," said fisherman Stewart Fraser.

Later, scientists at the National Marine Aquarium in Plymouth, U.K., identified it as a Salpa maggiore (Salpa maxima). Paul Cox, director of conservation and communication at the aquarium, said that a salp is barrel-shaped, moves by pumping water through its gelatinous body, and that the life-cycle includes alternate generations of existing as solitary individuals or as a group forming long chains.

"In common with other defenseless animals that occupy open water—jellies and hydroids, for example—the translucence presumably provides some protection from predation," Cox said. "Being see-through is a pretty good camouflage in water."

And that brings me to the subject of my New England Patriots. They traveled to Denver last Sunday for the AFC championship game and got soundly trounced by the Broncos, far and away the better team that day. Can't fault the Pats too much, though, as they won a heck of a lot more games than most fans expected given the number of season-ending injuries to starters they suffered throughout year. Hats off to the Patriots for their next-man-up mentality and here's hoping Peyton Manning and his crew can grab a Super Bowl win in New York come February when they face the lads from Seattle. Oh, and spring training kicks off in mid-February, less than a month away now…think the Red Sox can repeat?
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