Commercial Fisheries News highlights signifcance of James Sulikowski's research on movement patterns of spiny dogfish

UNE Associate Professor James Sulikowski’s research on movement patterns of the spiny dogfish, a small shark, was featured in the February 2013 issue of Commercial Fisheries News. The article cites his  recent research studies that counter the long-held belief that spiny dogfish migrate south for the winter and return to New England each spring.

Using a combination of data on water temperature, depth, and geolocation estimates obtained  from 43 dogfish that were tracked with satellite tags, Sulikowski  found that 70 percent of these sharks stayed in the region where they were tagged over the course of a year, moving east-to-west in the water column – to cooler waters in the summer and warmer inshore waters in winter – rather than migrating up and down the U.S. coast.

The study has significant potential impacts on fisheries, catch quotas, and the ecosystem as Sulikowski's research into the trophic impacts of the movement data  suggests that the  pack-like  schooling behavior (tens of thousands of individuals) and overall  increasing population size, may  result in  this shark negatively affecting cod and other commercially important groundfish  populations, further exacerbating the plight of the New England  fishing industry and the ecosytem in which these fish live.