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!
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!
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