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NOAA Fisheries is looking for a few good boats.

The federal fishing regulator’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole seeks one to three commercial fishing boats to participate in the agency’s bottom trawl survey in the waters of the mid-Atlantic and New England regions of the Atlantic Ocean.

The use of the commercial vessels to help supplement — or in some cases, supplant — the work of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s survey vessel, the FSV Henry B. Bigelow, is one of the first steps in NOAA’s recently announced plan to incorporate more commercial boats in the trawl survey.

NOAA announced on Aug. 3 that it plans to shift “part or all” of its spring and fall trawl surveys to fishing industry boats over the next five years in an attempt to get more consistent and expansive coverage and to bridge the current gap between what fishermen say they are seeing on the water and what NOAA is reporting from its trawl surveys.

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