Otter Trawling

Ichthyology lab last week, we went on the Centennial and otter trawled. We went north and south of the San Juan Channel. The trawl was dragged in the water for about 10 minutes, but I'm not too sure how far it was dragged.

We caught a spotted ratfish, lots and lots of spot prawns, flatfishes, snailfish, walleye pollock, pacific tomcod, a nudibranch, a squid (but we couldn't keep it), seastars, kelp/algae, and poachers.

During the trip on the Centennial, we saw a stellar sea lion, dalls porpoises, and harbor seals!

I've gone bottom trawling before for my FISH 312 class, we caught a bunch of spotted ratfish, flatfishes, saw stellar sea lions, dalls porpoises and harbor seals in the Puget Sound near Ballard Locks. With bottom trawling we dragged up everything and was more destructive, but we got to see a lot of cool things that lived at the bottom.

Posted on November 4, 2012 07:46 PM by huangt3