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Summer/Fall 2001 Table
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Profile
Richard Taylor
"You
have a lot of time to think when you're out at sea. You can think
about how things ought to be," says Richard Taylor. Taylor started
fishing in 1968 and has spent about half of the past thirty-some
years working the seas, pondering, and working to improve fisheries
and the marine environment. As a crew man, he fished in Virginia
for scallops, went off-shore trawling and lobstering in Gloucester,
and shrimped in Kodiak, Alaska. A resident of Gloucester since 1970,
he estimates that eight of his first eleven years there were spent
out on Georges Bank. And many free nights were spent in an MIT library
that stocked marine literature and helped feed a keen curiosity
in math and science.
Taylor bought
his first boat in the late 1980s and recalls, "I moved around and
got to look at a number of different fisheries. I watched them wax
and wane." Taylor last worked as a fisherman in 1997, when his vessel
sank at the dock in Gloucester. More recently, he has participated
in the scallop biomass surveys of three of the closed areas as a
scientist/data collector and is active on advisory panels and the
Research Steering Committee that funds projects to improve Northeast
fisheries management. He has worked with MIT Sea Grant on a number
of efforts, the most recent of which explored the convergence of
GIS technologies and fisheries vessel electronics to map what's
where in the oceans. "With these technologies we can now store and
display our own information, thereby making it much more accessible,"
he says.
Taylor is particularly
interested in the impact of fisheries on ecosystems, and in light
of the growing population, the need to develop aquaculture for increased
marine protein production. "I've watched the population double and
the fisheries are not enough to sustain us. Aquaculture is absolutely
critical," he explains.
As a member
of the Sea Scallop Working Group, Taylor has worked for several
years with state and federal officials, environmentalists, financial
supporters, and scientists to support the development of sea scallop
aquaculture in New England. The list of his collaborations is long,
and currently includes three federally funded scallop projects,
including a Gloucester-based grow-out program. Taylor's also handy
on the web. To learn more about what he's doing, check out http://www.seascallop.com/
Andrea
Cohen, MIT Sea Grant
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