A 415-pound sting ray is something most people only see in old movies like the “Blob,” but some Mississippi State University students saw one in reality. This interesting discovery was one of hundreds of species of fish that eight MSU students encountered aboard a 300-foot vessel in the Gulf of Mexico as part of their core curriculum in the department of wildlife and fisheries.
“One time we caught so many fish that our net tore apart,” Randall Kidwell, a graduate student in fisheries, said.
The students were part of a week long collaborative project between the university and the National Marine Fisheries Service. Aboard Gordon Gunter, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research vessel, they conducted trawl surveys off the Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana coasts to determine the status of marine fisheries resources and environments.
The surveys being conducted are critical to the well-being of everyday people who make their living as fishermen.
“Lots of people’s lives depend on the fisheries,” said Donald Jackson, the department of wildlife and fisheries professor who directs the program. “We can’t overfish our resource. Commercial fishermen depend on us to take care of fishery resources.”
According to Jackson, the positive impact that commercial fishing has on Mississippi’s economy is impressive. The coasts of Pascagoula and Moss Point rank second, behind Kodiak, Alaska, year after year in the total weight of fish brought into the United States.
“That’s why we have a fisheries program at MSU,” he said.
But the fisheries program at MSU is oriented toward freshwater fish. As a result, the students don’t apply much of what they learn in the classroom on the trip.
“Since we deal totally with freshwater fish, it is good to see how saltwater fish are gathered,” Kidwell said. “It was a privilege to be able to be out there with scientists.”
According to Kidwell, the scenery was far from beautiful.
“With all the oil rigs around, it wasn’t aesthetically pleasing,” Kidwell said. “They don’t have them in Florida, and there is a big controversy going on right now of whether they should.”
Sam Shephard, a graduate student getting his doctorate in fisheries, said he found the trip to be relaxing and academically rewarding. In Shephard’s birthplace of Ireland, he did a lot of commercial fishing.
“It’s very spilling for the mind to get away from the day-to-day issues,” Shephard said. “From an academic perspective it was good because the focus wasn’t catfish; the trip gave a new vision of what fisheries are.”
Technology plays a vital role in the future of fisheries. Jackson explained about the excellent computer equipment and the much improved lab where the fish are weighed, measured and identified.
The fishery resources are stable in the Gulf of Mexico, according to Jackson, who has taken this trip for the past 15 years.
For the students, working at sea was a new and different experience.
“Working out at sea is all right, but I like old rivers, like the ones I grew up by in the Ozarks,” Jackson said. “I guess if I grew up on the ocean I would like to live there.”
Other students that went on the trip are William Cupit, Ben Davis, Rohasliney Hashim, Jason Olive, Jason Palmisano and Matt Thomas.
After the students left Pensacola, they were gone for six days. The operation they worked with ran 24 hours a day with the students pairing up and working eight-hour shifts.