{"id":2966,"date":"2023-03-06T02:02:30","date_gmt":"2023-03-06T07:02:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ncseagrant.ncsu.edu\/hooklinescience\/?p=2966"},"modified":"2023-07-25T13:07:45","modified_gmt":"2023-07-25T17:07:45","slug":"reeling-in-the-past-what-can-we-learn-from-historic-fishing-photos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ncseagrant.ncsu.edu\/hooklinescience\/reeling-in-the-past-what-can-we-learn-from-historic-fishing-photos\/","title":{"rendered":"Reeling in the Past: What Can We Learn from Historic Fishing Photos?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Volunteers helped to describe historic fisheries through FISHstory, a pilot project developed through the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Much of the finfish harvest in the South Atlantic is dominated by recreational fisheries. There were few recreational monitoring programs in the region prior to the mid-1970s. However, we all know from the stories of Hemingway\u2019s catches and other fishermen (e.g., Zane Gray) that recreational fisheries were operating well before then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Having catch and size information could improve our understanding of these historic fisheries, better inform historic recreational information used in stock assessments, and help us better understand our current fisheries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n FISHstory analyzed historic photos from the 1940s to 1970s from a for-hire fleet based in Daytona Beach, Florida. These photos captured diverse species, from reef fish to mackerels and cobia to blue water species like dolphinfish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The project had three primary components: digitizing and archiving historic fishing photos; analyzing historic photos to estimate for-hire catch; and developing a method to estimate fish length in historic photos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Through Zooniverse, an online platform, the project trained people to identify and count the fish and people in historic photos. When there was substantial disagreement, a “Validation Team” of fish ID experts, comprised of fishermen and scientists, verified the information in the photos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Outside of Zooniverse, FISHstory developed a method to measure the size of fish in historic photos using the lumber in the leaderboards for scale. Analysts with fish identification expertise then tested the method on king mackerel.<\/p>\n\n\n\nResearch Need<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
What did they study?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n