The Great Memorial Day Dogfish Hunt

Earlier I posted on a population of spiny dogfish that seem to be hanging out south of Cape Hatteras long after they are supposed to have migrated north.  As of this past weekend stories of spiny dogfish stealing bait and chasing fish continued from the waters between Morehead City and Cape Lookout.  On Monday a team comprised of Dr. Rulifson, Jen, Dan Z, and myself set out to the shallow, sandy waters on the inside of the Cape Lookout hook in search of these hungry stragglers.  Read on to see how the mission went...

Thoughts on North Carolina's Gill Net Issues

It's been a hot topic in this state for a while that gill nets are both important to the commercial fishing industry and highly controversial.  I personally know a couple people involved in this debate, and have been following it with some interest, though I haven't had a chance to really post anything on it until now.  Which is timely, because apparently management decisions have been made. 

Spiny Dogfish Where They're Not Supposed to Be

It's been brought to the attention of myself and others in my lab that spiny dogfish have been turning up in North Carolina waters south of Cape Hatteras in the past couple weeks.  According to the conventional wisdom they should all have been heading north to summer off of New England about a month ago.  I was fishing down at Atlantic Beach just a week or so ago and saw no spinies, but plenty of people were pulling up smooth dogfish.  However, call-ins and the fishing reports have been mentioning spiny dogfish showing up in apparently considerable numbers. 

If any intrepid readers happen to catch any spiny dogfish in the Beaufort/Morehead City/Atlantic Beach area please let me know as a comment in this post.  Photographic evidence would be appreciated, and can be sent to cbangley@gmail.com.  Just as a refresher, here's how you identify a spiny dogfish:

Image from Maryland DNR

Spiny dogfish can be easily told from other small sharks by the spines present on both dorsal fins.  Other helpful features include the lack of an anal fin and the generally dusky coloration with scattered white spots.  

Smooth dogfish will be much lighter colored, have an anal fin, and lack dorsal fin spines.  Sharpnose sharks can be very similarly-colored, but again will have an anal fin and lack dorsal spines.  These are really the only species in the area that might get visually confused with spiny dogfish.

It'll be another couple days before I can get back down there and try to catch any dogfish for myself, so any sightings would be appreciated.