Smooth-hound research

Hi lads,
I’m new to this site but blaker suggested that I put up a post (hope you don’t mind me using your name blake!). Anyway I’m looking for some information on smooth-hounds (both starry and common). I have just started a research project on them in UCD and am basically gathering up as much info as I can.

As I’m sure any of you that have caught them are aware they are great fun and you can get a real fight out of them on light tackle especially from the shore. They also seem to be increasingly abundant along the east coast. Unfortunately I’m learning that huge numbers are taken as bycatch and discarded dead or kept as pot bait and also a huge amount is caught by French trawlers who sell them in France and Spain where they are highly prized. Lots of those caught are in fact females and some of them are pregnant. So this could have a serious impact on them.

At the moment very little is known about their life history or about their movements. So we don’t know if there is one big population of them or if there are many separate population or even how long they take to mature or grow. This lack of info makes it nearly impossible to plan their conservation and nobody will take notice of them without it. It would be a great loss both to angling and in general if they went the same way as the spurdog and were completely wiped out of some areas.

The central fisheries board tagged some of them last year and I hope to get involved with this if they resume it this year. Unfortunately to claim a specimen you currently need to provide the smooth-hound body so they can determine which species it is. Hopefully some of the info I gather will change this too as I am doing a genetic study on them too. So in the future a small fin clip or even photos will hopefully do. The CFB has made some great progress recently with regards to doing this for other species.

What I’m looking for now is just any info you want to provide about when and where you have caught them. What is the earliest time of year? Which species was it (starry or common). I want to see what kind of interest level there is in smoothies too. Anything you can offer would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers
Ed

you have a pm

Lads,
I'll vouch for this born again layabout!
Hes been pursuing this research for a long time, really ramping up the research and testing over the last 12 months. The effort and research put in are bearing fruit.
We regularly discuss his work and most recent findings and every time we do I'm amazed by the potential insights the work he and his team are doing will provide to the marine community and anglers in particular.
Any help, guidance or insights you can provide him will be gratefully received.

Hi Ed,

Are you looking for information now, or do you want us to log catches and pass the information on to you?

--Jonathan

I'll move this and sticky it

Hi Ed,

Please PM Seanibo. Firstly he catches pleant of smooth-hounds ( :twisted: he keeps forgetting to invite me)

He has also been involved in some of the tagging you mentioned.

When you publish your info, would it be possible to have a copy on this site for people to read and get involved in the preservation of this species. As you see with Bass, the more people that are involved the greater the push for conservation.

Good luck,

Kev

Cheers for the response,
At The moment I am looking for some basic information of your past catches just to help establish where I need to be sampling.

1. What time of year you caught them? I'd like to see how early they move inshore.

2. Where you caught them (just general area, you don't need to give away your favourite marks. but if you want to pm them to me I won't say no!!)

3. What species you think it was (any photos would be great because we are trying to find some definite and easy way of telling the difference between them. The 'star' are so faint on some that its easy to mistake them for a common)

4. What sex and size it was. (especially any really small ones that you've caught)

5. The rig you used

and any information like that. If you don't want to post on the forum or want to send any photos you can pm me or email them to; smoothhoundstudy@gmail.com

When the season starts I will hopefully be able to get some anglers involved with the sampling. So maybe if people are interested in documenting their catches I will send out some report forms for them to fill in and we could possibly organise some smooth-hound fishing weekends. The Central Fisheries Boards are doing great work at the moment with regards to the tagging so hopefully that will be ready to resume soon.

The best way to make the project successful and worthwhile is to get anglers involved so when I do eventually publish results I would be happy to share them with you all.

cheers

Hello there Ed.
Usually find tons of juvenile pup smoothies (~ 20 - 25cm TL) from April onwards on the north wexford beaches on worm baits. Both Starry and common. Personally dont start catching the larger specimens until June and they can be caught in good numbers right through til September. After this they tend to be less and less frequent but often those that are caught are of a better size. Personally have been getting a lot more starry smoothies than common in the last couple of years.
As MAC mentioned I guided the CFB for their tagging program last year and your welcome along this year if its going ahead again.
Best of luck with the research.

Hi lads,
Thanks again for the good response and for those of you that sent me a pm. I'll get back to you asap. Just a quick update.

I have set a webpage for the project. I'll try to keep it updated with news, progress and some photos of the catches. If you're interested in conservation and fish research then you should check out some of the work some of my colleagues are doing, bass and sea bream to name a couple.

anyway here is the link to my page;
http://www.ucd.ie/zoology/marbee/edward_farrell.html

I'll be in touch soon with those of you who would like to be involved. I have some catch report forms to give out.

Cheers
Ed

Hi,
Just wanted to post up a couple of pictures that highlight the problems facing smooth-hounds. I've been getting to study and dissect some of the smoothies taken as bycatch in the inshore fisheries and some of the findings are pretty disturbing.

In case some of you don't know, smoothies give birth to free swimming young. So basically the embryos develop internally in the mother for about a year. The starry smoothies are nourished by a large yolk sac which is used up during development but the common smoothies are actually attached to the mother via a placenta. When the young are fully developed the mother gives birth presumably in shallow sandy bays which offer a safe environments for the young to grow up but also makes them susceptible to human disturbances.

The pictures are of the uterus of a large female starry taken close to shore off the south-east coast. She was 14 pounds and over a metre long so a pretty big specimen. Unfortunately she was heavily pregnant with 18 full term embryos. So by killing just this one female 18 future smoothies were killed with her. We as of yet don't know how long she took to get to this size or even how often they are capable of reproducing so the consequences of this one death are pretty bad. It highlights the need for research into these and other similar fish to locate and protect these pupping grounds, which is hopefully something we can achieve in the future.

You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.

very interesting pics ed. - there was a thread on here before about shark conservation and alluding to the fact that killed females can contain many well developed young

the instigating pic of this was a hamerhead containing 30+ fully formed pups that had been killed

very much an all the eggs in one basket scenario - some fish 14pounds - how old would she have been?

Yeah she was a pretty large one alright. The biggest i've seen so far. Generally ones this size would be exported to France or Belgium as soon as they are landed so its difficult to gather any information on them.

I need to section the vertebrae and count the layers (pretty much the same as counting the rings on a tree) to see what age she was. As far as I have found out there has never been an indepth study into them in the North-east Atlantic so their growth rates and age at size in this area is relatively unknown. Some provisional work a few years back suggests that she may be in the region of nine years old but this remains to be confirmed.

Whats more disturbing is that the number of young they produce may be directly related to the total length. Therefore larger females equals more pups but it is these larger females that are the most likely to be caught by gillnets in close to shore. So its really something that needs to be stopped.

the larger females are exported, what for, do people eat these fish?

Hi,
yeah they are actually highly prized in France, Belgium, Italy and Spain for their meat. In fact in Italy they are the most valuable shark species that are sold in the markets, more valuable than spurdog, dogfish and blues.

I have been trawling through some old catch records and landings data and the numbers are quite a surprise. They were heavily targetted in the Mediterranean for years and landings reached a peak in Italy in 1994 at something like 9,999 tonnes. Its crazy to think of this in terms of individual fish. The fishery there has since declined and the numbers have dropped dramatically. I don't have any current figure yet.

However the French have now taken over as the main catchers and consumers and up to 2004 they were landing roughly about 800 tonnes a year. The problem is that these fish are taken from the North-east Atlantic, which is a concern because they could be the very fish that we are seeing in Ireland each summer.

Shocking pics there Ed.

It really goes to show us that when we say theres no commercial fishery for a certain species in Ireland, thats not to say that theres not one next door.

10,000 tonnes
2240 lbs per ton
average fish size of 10lbs
2,240,000 fish!!!!! :shock:

Its important to clarify here, in case anybody is worried by the pics above, that the research being carried out does not require dead fish. These were available and used but no fish are killed for the purposes of Lanky's research.

that's alot of fish, will the reseach show if the smooth hound population can cope this pressure from the commerical sector, will it let us know if it has a fast or slow reproduction rate and if it will need to be protected?

Hi mc,
There is some old research on smoothies that was carried out in the mediterranean and off the coast of Africa. They looked at the reproductive cycle, fecundity and age at maturity. It is unclear how accurate this information is when applied to smoothies in the North-east atlantic.

Some other studies done on similar species in the pacific have revealed big differences in the growth and life-history parameters between different populations and different latitudes (possibly water temperature related). Therefore this may be the case with smoothies in the med i.e. they grow faster and mature quicker than those in the colder more northerly Atlantic.

Hopefully we'll be able to establish an accurate life-history and see what type of impact the commercial catch and bycatch is having. Some definitive data like this will help backup any future moves for their protection.

Hi lads,
Just a quick update on the smoothies. Thanks to everyone who has contacted me and offered help and advice on the project so far. The response has been great and its a credit to anglers that so many are interested and concerned with the conservation of the species.

Due to the numbers looking to get involved I have made a short registration form just so I can keep track of who is involved. Don't worry, you're not signing your life away and its not legally binding you to catch smoothies. I just need to quantify the interest level. It would be great if you could take a minute to fill in the details quickly and then return it to the email; smoothhoundstudy@gmail.com.

Once I have these forms I will then be able to send out some information packs with catch report cards to log your smooth-hound catches. It will also help in the planning of further sampling such as taking fin clips and tagging which will be initiated later in the year.

The form is linked to the project web page (http://www.ucd.ie/zoology/marbee/edward_farrell.html) and is downloadable as a word file.

Here it is [url]http://www.ucd.ie/zoology/marbee/graphics/Smooth-hound%20gallery/SHSregistrationform.doc[/url]

Thanks again for all your help. If you have any questions feel free to contact me.
Ed

Hi Lads,
It looks like the smoothies are moving back inshore so hopefully there will be plenty to catch in the coming months. Thanks again to those of you that sent back the registration forms. I have posted out information packs and catch reports to you so hopefully you'll get them by friday.

For anymore of you interested I have added a couple of links to the project website with some information about smoothies and also a down-loadable copy of the catch reports. There are 2 per A4 page so they can be cut after printing. I have more packs to send out so feel free to email me your address or fill out the registration form send it to me. I'll send out the packs then.

project website = [url]http://www.ucd.ie/zoology/marbee/edward_farrell.html[/url]


[url]http://www.ucd.ie/zoology/marbee/graphics/Smooth-hound%20gallery/Smooth%20Hound%20Identification.pdf[/url]

[url]http://www.ucd.ie/zoology/marbee/graphics/Smooth-hound%20gallery/Catch%20report%20instructions.pdf[/url]

[url]http://www.ucd.ie/zoology/marbee/graphics/Smooth-hound%20gallery/Catch%20report%20card.pdf[/url]

Thanks all and happy fishing. Myself and Blaker are heading for Ennereilly this saturday so if any of you are there say hi.

Cheers
Ed