Last week, a team of researchers and nature enthusiasts joined together at Salter Grove in Warwick to hunt for a high-tech satellite tracking tag that had fallen off a striped bass—a fish important not only to local anglers but also to scientists studying their migratory behavior.

So important, in fact, that one of the scientists traveled from Chicago to Warwick for the search.

Led by Dr. Brian Prendergast, a professor at the University of Chicago and Lead Investigator of the Striped Bass Initiative, the group met on the morning of May 27 and searched the causeway, breakwater, and reedy shoreline of Salter Grove for the electronic tag. Prendergast knew it had to be somewhere in the area. It had been sending a steady—if a little wobbly—location signal to a satellite for several days.

Also on site were Peter Becker and Marina Wong from Friends of Salter Grove, a neighborhood advocacy group for the park; Scott Bennett, a researcher from the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA; Heather Kinney, a coastal restoration scientist with The Nature Conservancy (TNC) in Rhode Island, and Madison Rogers, a Moses Brown senior volunteering with TNC.

Equipped with a satellite antenna attached to a handheld monitor, Prendergast and Kinney first scanned along Salter Grove’s ebbing tide-covered causeway and up along the breakwater separating the cove from the Providence River. Constructed in the 1960s by the Army Corps of Engineers, the rocky breakwater has long been a popular site for anglers.

Receiving no signals, they rejoined the rest of the group at the head of the causeway where everyone began to ponder the possibility of the tag having fallen silent or gotten lost. Considering this was the first time a striped bass tracking tag had been identified in Rhode Island—not to mention the transmitter’s $5,000 cost—it was a potentially discouraging thought.

That was when Prendergast suddenly glanced at the monitor, his face lighting up with an exuberant grin. A positive signal! The tag was close by…and transmitting.

The group waited patiently for a couple more confirmed signals before moving in the general direction indicated.

The Striped Bass Initiative is a multi-institutional research program based at the University of Chicago’s Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA, a well-known location for many oceanographic facilities. Begun in 2019, the Initiative seeks to learn more about the migratory patterns and behaviors of Striped Bass, a widely-popular game fish and important species within the estuarine ecosystems along the US east coast.

Striped Bass migrate annually north and south along the coast like many other species of fish, both to feed and to spawn. But some have been found to find ‘safe havens’ such as Eel Pond in Woods Hole where they do neither, choosing to reduce their activity and caloric intake over the warm summer months before striking back to sea in the fall. Which fish decide to do this—and when and why—isn’t exactly known, and that’s part of what Prendergast and the Striped Bass Initiative are trying to find out with the use of sophisticated satellite tags.

“Over 70 percent of the fish tagged return to the same spot every summer,” Prendergast said. “It raises a lot of questions about how they find their way there—and, if they’re caught, what’s going to replace them?”

Surgically attached to the fish, the tracking tags are packed with sensors that record date and time, water temperature, depth, and fish movement, and can communicate with satellites several hundred miles in orbit. They’re designed to detach automatically if conditions aren’t right or by a certain date.

“The individual fish this tag came from left Woods Hole in October,” said Prendergast. “We know it spent some time at the mouth of the Chesapeake and Delaware rivers…it was most likely on its way back to Woods Hole before the tag detached on May 21.”

Gathering hard data on Striped Bass behavior also helps to determine how increasing human activity is affecting the fish and their environment, from recreational and commercial fishing to habitat loss, pollution, and anthropogenic global warming.

“The Striped Bass fishery is in decline,” said Prendergast. “We need to generate better data to conserve the species. Accurately managing them is critical and we only have one chance to get it right.”

After a considerable bit of wet mucking through the stands of invasive Phragmites that line the shore of Salter Grove west of the boat ramp, Kinney found the tag. About the size of a narrow light bulb with an 8-inch cord sticking out of the top, the dark grey device was fully covered by flattened reeds.

“We knew it was in that 100-foot area…at that point we had to stay and find it,” Kinney said. “I reached down and pulled back some reeds and there it was. It was a team effort—we had a bunch of different hands looking for it. It was really fun.”

Originally from Connecticut, Kinney has lived in Rhode Island for 15 years and is currently a Cranston resident. Her work with TNC focuses on conserving and restoring rocky shorelines, wetlands, and shellfish habitats along the Providence River. 

Learn more about the Striped Bass Initiative at https://stripedbassmagic.org.

Jason Major of Warwick, is a freelance designer for Beacon Media and a Friends of Salter Grove member (friendsofsaltergrove.org)