Monitoring for the blackbelly rosefish, john dory, trigger fish, tilefish fish, dusky shark and others was included in the DFO summer trawl survey along the Scotian Shelf and Bay of Fundy for the first time last year.

It was done at the request of the commercial fishing industry, which is capturing them accidentally — called bycatch — but cannot land them because they are not included in any Canadian commercial fish licence conditions.