Help finding Black Sea Bass

[Wreck(ed)Diver]

Hello all!

I am a research diver for UMass and one of the projects our lab is working on involves juvenile Black Sea bass. Now the issue is, we don't have any. We are working on reaching out to local fisherman to help us round up some but the process has been slow. We have been toying with the idea of diving down and trying to catch some but we aren't sure exactly where to look. If any of you see juvenile Black Sea bass on any of your dives in the New England area, it would be a huge help to know what sites you're seeing them at that way we can narrow in our search.

Thanks for the help!

 

[tkaelin]

Ft Wetherill. Usually in abundance in the coves while diving 15’ to 30’.

 

[DanSinks]

Sorry for the late reply, you must have all you need by now, but if you don't and can afford an eel trap you can easily catch an unlimited supply of small black sea bass and numerous other small fish. You can stand on the rocks somewhere at Ft Wetherill or any other place and toss the trap in(get the trap in at least 10' of water, attach a rope first).
(you can purchase various types of traps at Ketchup Supply New Bedford)

I have even managed to catch a few eels with my traps!

 

[DanSinks]

Did you ever find the juvenile black sea bass that your research program needed?
Are you willing to share some details of what the research program is about?

 

[Wreck(ed)Diver]

Did you ever find the juvenile black sea bass that your research program needed?
Are you willing to share some details of what the research program is about?

Yes of course!
So funny story about finding the Black Sea bass. A month or so into the summer, after we failed to find them at Folly Cove, Plum Cove, or any of the other sites where they had been spotted, we turned to fishing. Some of the people working on that project directly tried fishing off the marine station sea wall with no luck. Eventually they decided that the best course of action would be to drive the boat down to Buzzards Bay where they knew they would find them. They left at 3am to get down there for the tide. My coworker and I decided this would be the perfect time to go dive at the station to search for a locals lost lobster trap.

You’ll never guess what we found…

I bet you can also guess how the team that woke up at 3am responded when they pulled up to the station that afternoon to see us catch a Black Sea bass with the first cast of our dollar store rods.

We ended up catching a bunch more with rods and even one on scuba by drugging it with clove oil.

I can’t speak in too much detail about the work that was done with them after since I was working on a different project but the majority of the work done was metabolic rate stuff. The goal (to my understanding) is that black sea bass are moving north faster than the water is warming and we want to know why.

I’d be happy to share more details, I’ll ask my coworker to give me a better rundown on it.