| NEFSC Apex Predators Longline Survey (DE0407, EK500) |
| The fishery independent survey of Atlantic large and small coastal sharks is conducted
bi-annually in U.S. waters. Its primary objective is to conduct a standardized, systematic
survey of the shark populations off the U.S. Atlantic coast to provide unbiased indices
of relative abundance for species inhabiting the waters from Florida to the Mid-Atlantic.
This survey also provides an opportunity to tag sharks with conventional and electronic
tags as part of the NEFSC Cooperative Shark Tagging Program, inject with OTC for age
validation studies, and to collect biological samples and data used in analyses of
life history characteristics (age, growth, reproductive biology, trophic ecology,
etc.) and other research of sharks in U.S. coastal waters including the collection
of morphometric data for size conversions. The time series of abundance indices from
this survey is critical to the evaluation of coastal Atlantic shark species. |
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