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.