The Eighth Continent . Com

Feel free to email me at jordanthomas@yahoo.com

I'm currently conducting my masters research in the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences at the University of Washington, Seattle (UW). I'm working with Tim Essington (UW) and with the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission to reduce the number of sharks and rays that are killed accidentally every year while fishing for tuna. For years this fishery was responsible for a large incidental mortality of dolphins so the fishing techniques changed drastically and now catch lots of other fishes, in addition to tunas (this is called 'bycatch'). But lucky for us, there is an observer program that sends someone on every fishing vessel to keep track of the mortality of this non-tuna catch. So I am using this observer data to analyze time and space to determine if there are specific locations and/or times where larger aggregations of these different animals are found. If it turns out that there are, it will be easier to focus conservation efforts on a specific location or season to try to ameliorate this bycatch.

In other words, I take numbers of fish, do a bunch of math, and come up with points on a map where lots of sharks are caught accidentally.