An image from the new children's book, "Counting the Fish in… (courtesy George Miller…)
Taking head counts of fish isn't glamorous work, but it's made literary stars of sorts out of a team of researchers at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science.
A new non-fiction children's book called "Counting the Fish in the Sea" depicts the ongoing efforts of Jim Gartland, multispecies survey leader at VIMS, and his colleagues to gather wide samples of fish species in order to gauge the overall health of the ocean. The book is written for children ages 8 to 12.
"I hope they get a better appreciation of the ocean, and for all the sea life in it," Gartland said Friday from his office in Gloucester Point. "Particularly along the coast — Virginia, New Jersey, places like that — where a lot of kids are exposed to the ocean. There's a lot of life beneath the surface that needs to be explored."
The author is Carolyn Miller, a former teacher and now a reporter in Cape May, N.J., who cruised along with Gartland's team during one of their sampling surveys in 2008. Gartland said Miller approached them later about writing a children's book about their work, and he was immediately on board with the idea.
"Children are not strangers to the sea, but they don't really understand what's going on beneath it," Miller said in a statement. "They know the excitement that comes with catching a fish, but it's important for them to know there are rules and regulations to keep the sea healthy and the fisheries well-managed and secure for generations to come."
Originally from Philadelphia, Gartland said his own interest in the sea was piqued when he was about 11 while flounder fishing with his father off the New Jersey coast. A boat from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, pulled up next to them to begin their fish sampling work, and he was hooked.
"I realized when I was young that … I like science and I like fishing and I can make a living at it," Gartland said.
Now he and his team of VIMS scientists — Stephanie Dukes, Jameson Gregg, David Lange and Evan McOmber — conduct survey cruises every spring and summer as part of the Northeast Atlantic Monitoring and Assessment Program, or NEAMAP.
They collect random samples between Martha's Vineyard, Mass., and Cape Hatteras, N.C., Gartland said, not to get exact numbers but to gauge the general abundance of various species.
According to VIMS, since the NEAMAP trawl surveys began in 2006, more than 7.5 million fish have been counted, most of which were released alive back into the water. A small number are kept for diet and aging studies.
The research is used by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, the Mid-Atlantic Fisheries Management Council, the New England Fisheries Management Council and the Northeast Fisheries Science Center to help regulate commercial and recreational fisheries and track the health of the sea.
The book is available at the VIMS Gift Shop, and a portion of the proceeds goes to fund VIMS research.