MPBN reports on James Sulikowski's study on spiny dogfish movement patterns
The latest research by James Sulikowski, Ph.D., UNE professor of marine science, was the subject of a story on the Maine Public Broadcasting Network's show on August 5.
The story referenced a new study by Sulikowski, published in the (PLOS), that suggests the spiny dogfish may be more prevalent in the Gulf of Maine than previously believed.
The report details how Sulikowski used satellite tagging technology to track 40 dogfish from the Gulf of Maine to the mid-Atlantic, in the process learning that conventional understandings of their movement patterns may not be accurate.
As Sulikowski explains in the report, "The old paradigm on their moving patterns was that essentially they would spend the summers and fall up here in the Gulf of Maine and then travel like snowbirds down to North Carolina and then back up here in the spring, and so that was the old paradigm, sort of this big long packlike movement of these moving on the bottom."
According to Sulikowski's research, though, there are two distinct groups of dogfish – one based in the Gulf of Maine and one off the coast of North Carolina – and rather than migrating up and down the coast, they move vertically in the water column as seasonal temperatures fluctuate. As a consequence, bottom trawler surveys may be failing to account for a great many dogfish in Gulf of Maine waters.