Fishy Fridays

Today’s paper caught my attention for a couple of reasons. One, I read a separate blue crab/Blue Catfish article a couple weeks ago. Two, one of my staff was at a family gathering recently, and indicated they were asked if the Chesapeake Bay blue crab fishery was going to be shut down – they apparently were supposed to know the answer because they are involved in fisheries! 

Today’s paper caught my eye because I have read a few items regarding the introduction of salmon to the Great Lakes. I was aware of the variety of issues that caused the decline of the Lake Trout, including the thiamine issue due to the Alewife diet.  I was unaware that similar issues were prevalent in other salmonids, or of the high offspring mortality due to thiamine deficiency in Chinook Salmon eggs.

I recall sitting in the audience at the AFS-TWS Joint Meeting in Reno, when Tom Annear was given the Carl R. Sullivan Fishery Conservation Award. I got a brief introduction to his life’s work then, and afterwards invited him to come back home to Iowa to talk at our Iowa AFS meeting. Through a number of conversations, I came to understand much more deeply the importance of his work connecting science, law, policy, people, water and ecosystems to fisheries management.

Today’s paper is about lake sturgeon culture methods, but the thing that struck me most about today’s paper is collaboration. The adult lake sturgeon brood stock were collected by USFWS field staff in Michigan, the fish were hatched at the USFWS hatchery at Genoa, Wisconsin, the final part of the project occurred at the Freshwater Restoration Ecology Center in Ontario, and the project was funded by NSERC (Canada). In this time of international relationship challenges, this project highlights the importance of our professional interactions and cooperation.

Today’s paper reminded me of some of the sturgeon sampling I assisted with in my former role with the Iowa DNR. We would go out electrofishing (and trammel netting) for Shovelnose Sturgeon during their spring spawning run, and we would tag the captured fish with PIT tags and monel tags.  I believe it was more interesting to see a big paddlefish swirl in front of me, than to see an alligator on a video screen….