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Ph.D. student Graham Raby attends WKMEDS II meeting in Copenhagen

The week before his recent (and successful) Ph.D. defense, Graham Raby represented the Cooke Lab at a meeting at ICES headquarters in Copenhagen, Denmark. The meeting (Nov. 24-28, 2014) was titled “Workshop on Methods for Estimating Discard Survival II”. The purpose of this series of meetings (of which this was the second) is to develop guidelines and best practices for estimating survival rates of fish released to the sea from commercial vessels (i.e., discards). The meeting consisted of a group of ~20 researchers from across Europe, Canada, and the United States. Graham and Dr. Cooke are actively contributing to writing the guidelines that will arise from the meeting. A recently passed legislative ban on discarding (i.e., “The Landing Obligation”) is coming into effect in Europe, which threatens the economic sustainability of a number of fisheries – particularly those with significant amounts of bycatch (e.g., trawlers). Fisheries can obtain an “exemption” from the ban and therefore continue to discard bycatch if data show that discard survival is “high”, driving a sudden increase in interest in discard survival studies in Europe. Many of the techniques that were of interest to the group at WKMEDS (and which are now being used by its participants) include some which our lab has helped develop and validate, including reflex action mortality predictors (RAMP) and the use of biotelemetry.