Welcome to 2010!

Well, it's a new decade! And, after a deep freeze around here, the brief warm-up we've had is bringing on some reproductive interests around the hatchery (with the fish...that is...).

Our rush darters are spawning. The slackwater darters are coloring up and even the ashy darters are looking like it won't be long until they start spawning! We're expecting a cool-down later this week. Maybe that will slow things down a bit! In any case, it's an exciting time around here....and a busy time! We had hoped to get out into the field this week. Once again, we may need an ark to do so! We're hoping for maybe just a LITTLE bit less rain this year. And, yes, we know we have to careful what we wish for!

We are finally going to have a complete professional web site make-over! We're very excited about this. It should be much easier to navigate, much more interactive and we hope much more informative! The newsletter format will also change. Hopefully, along with these changes, I'll be inspired to do a better job of keeping up with newsletter writing. We'll see!

The new site will contain, among other things, links to our Youtube site. Once we have this updated, we'll want to encourage everyone to become a member to receive updates letting you know when new videos have been posted. We want to continue posting new underwater video as well as hatchery spawning and rearing sequences. I think this will be something everyone will be interested in.

So, hopefully, in the near future, we'll have a whole new look! I'll be sure to inform everyone on the list when the new site is up.

Have a great spring!

J.R.

Autumn Update 2009

To say we're behind on our Newsletter writing is a bit of an understatement! It has been a busy and, to some extent, frustrating field season! Again, an understatement! Any of you trying to do field work in any rivers and streams in our area certainly know what I mean. We've gone from two years of extreme drought to a year of well above average rainfall! I'm sure the water is good for our regional fishes, but it certainly makes it tough on us.

It was a wet spring. For those fishes where we collect wild nests, well.....some we were simply not able to collect. Summer was not much better, resulting in much of our snorkel survey work being pushed further into the fall (almost always our driest couple months....right?). Well, not this fall!

But, despite this, we did manage to get a good deal of work done in between the high water events. There is, in fact, alot to summarize. I just want to touch on a couple of the highlights.

The fishes we have been working on for so long in Abrams Creek and the Tellico River continue to do well. Tennessee Tech students working primarily under the direction of Dr. Brad Cook have conducted considerably more surveys than we have in Abrams Cr. this year. They continue to see good numbers of both smoky and yellowfin madtoms and duskytail (now Citico) darters in several reaches of the stream. In other reaches, they are essentially absent. They are currently tracking dispersal of tagged individuals propagated at CFI and released this fall. The information they collect will help direct future stocking efforts in Abrams Creek (and perhaps Tellico as well).

We have made perhaps fewer trips into the Tellico River as we would have liked this year, but have seen all of the above fish plus spotfin chubs in several reaches of the river. It's still very early in this project, but initial findings are encouraging!

We have continued the reintroduction of boulder darters and spotfin chubs into Shoal Creek in south-central Tennessee. This was a difficult year to try to survey for the spotfins! We encountered water a little too high to allow us to search some of the areas where we have seen spotfin chubs in the past. We were, however, able to make two reasonably effective snorkels for boulder darters in the vicinity where most have been released in the past. We saw good numbers on both occasions. This last trip, a couple weeks ago, produced a record number of sightings....17 fish! These consisted of several age classes, some that had obviously been spawned in the stream (as opposed to propagated fish). We hope to be able to document dispersal outside of the general stocking sites over the next couple years. Again, high water prevented us from making a planned float trip downstream. Maybe next year!

We were particularly excited to obtain two more diamond darters from the Elk River in West Virginia. That brings our total to five individuals. Of the three we have had for about a year, at least one was an obvious female. She became gravid last spring, but neither of the smaller fish housed with her showed any interest in spawning. These were either immature fish or were also females. Crystal assures us that one of these new fish was obviously a male. We have a difficult time observing them at the hatchery. They spend much of the time buried in the substrate and are extremely high strung! We have a small underwater camera mounted in the tank (which is blacked out on all sides) to allow us to observe them if/when they venture out of the substrate. We do catch glimpses from time to time!

Another exciting recent acquisition was three Conasauga logperch! Anna George and crew from Tennessee Aquarium Conservation Institute collected two of the for us. We found the third. We have not seen any in our surveys in the Conasauga for several years. We hope that the appearance of these is an indication that the population in the river might be rebounding. All three have settled nicely into a 300 gallon vat, also equipped with video cameras. We frequently catch them flipping rocks within range of the cameras. Our experience with other logperch species suggests that most of them spawn somewhat better in larger groups, but we're keeping our fingers crossed that we have both sexes now!

We have numerous other projects underway and I will try to report on some of these in the near future! Before we know it, spring will be here!

CFI Summer Fundraiser

Hi Folks!


CFI is going to have a Fundraiser! Come join us on July 11th, 2009 between Noon and 6:00 at the Shady Grove Meadery near Lake City, TN (about 20 minutes North of Knoxville) for an afternoon of music, food and mead. The mead is produced on site and is wonderful stuff! We have some fantastic music already lined up.......The Hackensaw Boys, Jay Clark, the Livvid Privies and more to be announced soon!


The Meadery is a beautiful place adjacent to Norris Dam State Park. The music will take place on their front porch. There's a nice green lawn in front, so bring your lawn chair or blanket!


Proceeds from the event will go to help offset facility improvement costs to enable us to better care for our imperiled fishes!


A suggested minimum donation for this event is $10. We have means of accepting on-line donations and there are a variety of donation levels to choose from, some of which include premiums!


Please visit our website for much more information about the performers, the venue (including directions) etc.: http://www.conservationfisheries.org/


I'll follow this up with another Newsletter very soon with any additions. Performance times and other activities will be detailed. We will also be listing our sponsors and those that have generously donated time, money, auction items (oh yes, did I mention an auction?), and musical talents! If you or your business would be willing to help sponsor this event, please get in contact with us through the CFI website.


Thanks and hope to see you in July!


Best wishes!


J.R.

CFI Spring Update

Our hatchery has been a busy place over the past month. I'll give you some of the more important updates in just a bit. Something we are very proud of are the awards and recognition we have recieved from various agencies over the years. Earlier this month, we were very honored to receive a 2008 Recovery Champion Award from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service National Office. CFI was nominated by two different USFWS Regional offices for this award. This is the first time this award has been given between two Regions! This was a big honor for us! We'd certainly like to thank all of those that have continued to support us and would especially like to thank our staff! They make us look good! The award was presented to us in Knoxville by representatives from the Cookeville, TN field office, the Asheville, NC field office and the Atlanta Regional office of the USFWS.

In addition to a nice plaque for our hatchery, we received a letter from Acting USFWS Director,Rowan Gould. The last paragraph of this letter is quoted here: "The contributions of Conservation Fisheries, Inc. extend beyond individual species, habitats, and ecosystems and inspire others to promote species recovery, now and into the future. My best wishes for continuing success as a Recovery Champion!"

Pat (left) and J. R. in the CFI hatchery.
(photo: Miles Cary)

Now, on to the hatchery! Our sculpins finally hatched! Some took a month or more! And, now we have many, many babies! As we reported in the last Newsletter, these sculpins will be used as host fish for mussel propagation in Virginia. We have produced several species of non-endangered fish for this purpose. It is hoped that these fish, in addition to not having to be collected from the wild, will make better hosts for the larval mussels. We will provide updates as they are available to us.



Other updates from last month.... we have larvae from the rush darters, slackwater darters and (a few!) ashy darters. The ashy darters continue to be a challenge to rear. We will continue to update on these.


One of the more exciting fish we've worked with in a while are the Kentucky arrow darters, Etheostoma sagitta spilotum. These large, impressive darters have been spawning regularly over the past couple weeks. We are now collecting and rearing larvae. The goal with these fish is to develop propagation techniques so captively reared fishes can be used to restore recovered streams within the historic range in Kentucky.







Also in conjunction with the Kentucky Dept. of Fish and Game, we are working with the Cumberland darter, E. susanae. The fish we have are conditioning well, but have yet to spawn. We expect spawning to occur sometime in the next couple weeks.


We are also trying to exploit one of the web's many features and have started posting some videos to Youtube. We have a handful of videos up at this point and encourage you to go for a visit. One of the more popular is the one of the arrow darters spawning. I'm still working on the quality of the videos. I know better quality can be achieved and I'd be happy to hear any suggestions! Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/user/jrcfivideos

Also, please visit our web site: http://www.conservationfisheries.org/ to see how you can help!

Until next time, have a great spring!

J.R.

Conservation Fisheries, Inc.

Winter 2009 Newsletter

The calendar may say it’s still winter around here, but love is in the air for some of our fishes! Several of the earliest spawners are busily going about the business of making little ones.

For the first time, we are working with sculpins! These fish came from the South Fork Holston River in Virginia. That makes for a fun time assigning species names with confidence (to living ones at any rate). Three species of Cottus could be present there, and the differences are subtle. Probably, the larger ones spawning right now are Cottus carolinae. Normally, knowing exactly what we are working with is a much greater issue. Not necessarily so in this case. These guys are going to be used as host fish for mussel propagation and any of these fish that might end up back in the wild would be returning to their place of origin. So, that aside, we do have a number of them spawning! The one tank where we have made most of our observations (almost certainly C. carolinae) has four females and one male. It appears that he has spawned with all of the females….one at a time. The clutches of eggs are separate, but in very close proximity to one another. We have chosen to leave this male in the tank with his nests and we also left the females to see what would happen. He is vigilant, but not terribly aggressive. He dutifully fans the eggs, mostly with his anal and caudal fins. The females pay little or no attention to him or the eggs once they have spawned.

We also removed a nest from another tank to make developmental observations. During all of this, our hatchery water temperatures have ranged from mid-40s F to mid 50s F. That’s pretty chilly water to be spawning in! Egg development has been extremely slow. The first spawns were noticed on January 28th. At the time of this writing (February 18th) none of the eggs have yet hatched! For the nest we removed, it took more than two weeks for the eggs to begin to develop eyes. They all sat for nearly two weeks with little or no signs of development at all. This makes us wonder if this is a response to the colder water. Water temperatures affect development times in all fish we have worked with, but it was as if these eggs experienced something like delayed development. We should hopefully know more about this with some of the later spawns.

If we are successful with these, they may prove to be a better option than wild collected fish currently being used as hosts.

Our slackwater darters, Etheostoma boschungi, from various wild populations are now spawning. What beautiful fish! I’ll throw in a picture just because! This is a propagated fish pictured here from the Middle Cypress Creek population.

Another first time fish for us is the rush darter, E. phytophilum. These began spawning last week. We have collected eggs and are incubating these as I write this. We have had good success with a close relative, the goldstripe darter (E. parvipinne).

We also have ashy darters, E. cinereum, spawning. We had limited success with these last year, but this year we have two very robust pairs and they seem to be producing viable eggs at this point.
This is one we will have to update you on in a later newsletter!

Aside from all of this we have been our usually busy selves! Thanks to a generous donation by one of our individual supporters, we have been able to have a 12’ x 12’ storage building installed on our deck. Having this will allow us to move much of our dry equipment out there….wetsuits, nets, masks etc. This will free up enough room to install three more racks to help expand our propagation efforts. Then we’ll have to expand outdoors and/or build a new building, because the back room will be full!

Finally, we now have more of our staff t-shirts in stock. This batch is a pale green (bamboo is what the shirt company calls them!). As with the others, these are 100% cotton and wear very well! One can be yours for a contribution of $25! We also have a new way of contributing. On our home page, there’s a blue button that says “Donate Now”. This will take you to a site called Change.org, specifically to the CFI page of Change.org. If you make a donation here of $25 or more, just be sure to fill in what size shirt you’d like and where to mail it to in the “Comments” section. If you prefer to donate through PayPal, the link above this button will take you there! We try to make this easy and painless. These donations really help us with the purchase of everyday items we need around here. Things that help us keep this work going! We really appreciate it!