Tracking Sharks in the Space Age

In Wes Anderson’s hit film The Life Aquatic, Captain Steve Zissou attached a “homing dart” to a Jaguar Shark so he could later track it down and kill it in an effort to avenge the death of his friend. Continuous yellow blips on their ship’s instruments allowed Team Zissou to track the shark across the ocean leading to their climactic confrontation.  While the Jaguar Shark was pure fantasy, the shark tracking equipment actually was not far off the mark.  Recent advances in fish tagging technology have now made it possible to follow the movements of large pelagic species wherever they may travel.

Hurricane Impacts on Fish

By Steve Midway

As the Northeast US continues to recover from Hurricane Sandy, we are all reminded of the danger that hurricanes (now in some cases "superstorms") pose. And with the admonishment that such storms might be stronger and/or more frequent in the future, we will all need to increasingly consider the negative impacts of these events on our own lives. However, rarely do we consider how these natural disasters impact other species, such as fish.

Satellite image of Hurricane Sandy. (source:http://media.komonews.com)

Dam trout: How do trout populations respond to altered flow?

By: Aaron Bunch

The basic premise of adaptive management is to learn from previous actions and adjust accordingly with the ultimate goal of reducing uncertainty over time.  The goal of the Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Program is to minimize impacts to ecological and cultural resources downstream from Glen Canyon Dam as the Colorado River runs through Glen, Marble, and Grand Canyons.  The program is highly structured with many stakeholder groups represented including various state and federal agencies, tribal entities, and non-governmental organizations.

Glen Canyon Dam (Photo: Mitch Tobin)

There are documented changes in physical habitat, water quality conditions, flow regime, and sediment transport in the Colorado River which can contribute to changes in fish populations in various ways—but we don’t always know or understand the extent of these changes.  However, through the adaptive management framework we can try to learn how the system is changing, and in turn, how fish populations respond.

Electrofishing: How to be effective

By Patrick Cooney

While hook and line fishing is the most popular method of catching fish by freshwater anglers, electrofishing is one of the most popular methods used by fisheries biologists.  But what exactly is electrofishing, and how is it done properly?

Boat electrofishing (Photo: Josh Raabe)