Shark Longlining

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In the two photos above, a shark is being brought aboard, then held down to be measured and tagged. Afterwards, the shark is released overboard. At the beginning of a Shark Longline Survey, a number of stations is allocated according to fishable area (coastal depths between 9 and 55 meters) in a given coastal region. Each station begins with the deployment from the stern of one nautical mile of monofilament line with 100 hooks baited with Atlantic mackerel. A radar hi-flyer buoy is anchored to mark each end of the bottom longline, with an anchor attached in the middle. Following deployment, a CTD cast is conducted to sample environmental data. Next, after an hour of "soak" time, the longline is recovered on the starboard side of the forward well deck. Sharks or other specimens caught are tagged or kept aboard for dissection and sampling. This routine is repeated for each station. An alternative method for deploying the longline is to exclude the anchors and to include floats every tenth of a mile. This floating method is called pelagic longlining as opposed to bottom longlining, which is the anchored version.