~click on the pics for a larger view
Yesterday, I volunteered to help out with a snook survey. It involved a canoe ride through a mangrove choked tidal creek. Tarzanlike- pretty wild. This was located in the Charlotte Harbor State Park. This study was from a state grant awarded to the Mote Marine Lab in Sarasota under the direction of Dr.Arron Adams.
(he is director of the Tarpon and Bonefish Trust and advises on the new ESPN program Pirates of the Flats)
The study will be more relavant now due to the recent record cold that took some toll on the snook population.
Anyways, headed out with Andrew a grad student from UF (a flyfisher and Caps fans- we never ran out of things to talk about) and another volunteer from Mote. We lugged a canoe to the beginnings of the creek and paddled about to area to begin the use of the 100 foot net. The netting they refer to as pulls. The first pull yielded no snook. Very laborous. The net gets heavy with all the weights on the bottom- not to mention slogging through foot deep muck. Now know why they call them pinfish- hehe.
Loaded up and paddled on to the next spot. The second pull was very successful- as we netted 115 fish (6 months to 1 and half year old snook). Hard to beleive that many fish were located in such a small area. The speed at which the net can be manipulated by the two pullers is such where any larger fish would not be netted- they would move too swiftly and for the most part large fish do not inhabit these shallow mangrove areas.
Learned there are many different varities of mangroves- the life blood of many marine creatures. Creates the habitat for small creatures on which they snook can forage and also protects them from larger preadors. Mostly in Florida there are two main types of mangroves. Red and Black. In the picures are mostly red mangroves.
Once the pull was done the fish had to be carefully removed from the nets. Some fish were swimming freely but most were stuck in the nets- headfirst. If the fishes gills (and gill plates) were past or through the net then you wriggled the net over them and then placed them in the holding net-smaller diameter holes and softer material. If the fish was caught not passed the gill plate you carefully pulled them out backward. The plates on the snook are very sharp and this was the most back breaking- leaning over pulling all these fish out of the net. agghhh This went on for 20 minutes. Felt bad for the little guys. Most of the fish were 6-10 inches in length.
Next with all the fish removed and placed in the holding nets they were ready to be tagged. This is the the most time consuming part of the day. The fish are laid out fish and wanded with a receiver first to see if the fish had been tagged before. There have been previous taggings in this area just months before. I cannot beleive of the 115 fish there were only 2 previously tagged. Andrew would scrap off a couple scales and make a small cut and insert a transmitter. The transmitter number was written down along with some fish measurements and then released. You could image doing this 115 times is going to take awhile.
Andrew the grad student, had placed several info retrival stations throughout the region earlier in the year to collect the data from any fish that crossed over the copper wire that was laid across the creek. The wire would send a signal to the info station located a few yards back into the mangroves- there are powered by a solar panel located on top of the pole or tower. Andrew indicated that erecting the towers in the inpenatrable mangroves was the toughest part of the project. He was also dishearted when one of his towers was destroyed by vandalism. Andrew mentioned that the wire worked much like the indicators we see at intersections telling the traffic signal a car is there. The signal could tell which fish was there and what date,time,tide,tempature. The information has to be manually downloaded from each tower.
We did'nt get to see a tower due to a persistent rain storm and actually had to scramble a half hour back to the vehicles due to lighting. That was really fun let me tell you- paddeling in a canoe with lighting is very unsettling. After the storm had passed we headed back out for one last pull. We only netted 5 more fish- thankfully for my back.
Got a tour of a mangrove tidal creek and earned about some habits of snook. Although I must say 2 snook did not survive the netting. Andrew says that less than 1% mortality is good. In the end, I am not sure of my feeling on this project. There areas that snook inhabit are so vast I am not sure what this data will mean and to who or how this can be used. Hopefully not just to a couple people published to further their street cred as it were. Who can know?
excuse any typos
