A scientific study is
underway in an effort to help take some of the guesswork out of
managing Lake Erie's yellow perch stocks.
Participating in the
endeavor for now are Ohio and Ontario, Lake Erie's two largest
fisheries stake-holders. Also cooperating is the U.S. Geological
Survey's Lake Erie Biological station in Sandusky.
Ohio's cost for this
three-year perch-tagging project is $86,000, almost all of which will
come from the federal government's Dingell-Johnson Fund, paid for
through excise taxes on fishing tackle.
The state's fisheries
biologists say it will become money well spent if the effort results
in providing answers to a number of current unknowns regarding Lake
Erie and its yellow perch population.
Carey Knight, the Ohio
Division of Wildlife fisheries biologist in charge of administering
the project in the state, says his crew has outfitted 6,737 yellow
perch with Passive Integrated Transponder tags, or “PITs” for
short.
Each PIT tag is a tad
larger than a grain of rice.
These highly evolved
micro-sized scientific devices are read only via a special scanner
and are implanted in the tagged fish in a place not utilized by
either sport anglers or commercial fishermen, Knight says.
Such placement was an
initial concern, especially expressed by the lake's commercial
fishermen, said Knight, who works out of the Wildlife Division's
Fairport Harbor Fisheries Research Station.
“The tags were inserted
in the belly between the pelvic fin and the head, sort of in the
fish's throat,” Knight said. “They're well out of fillet range
and will be all but impossible for the angler to see.”
Knight says also the tags
are similar to the ones used by the state to study the lake's walleye
stocks.
Online material suggests
as well that PIT tags are used worldwide in fisheries research with
at least one product being made from FDA-approved surgical plastic.
A four-point interest led
Ohio and Ontario to embark on the project. These points include:
* Tracking the movement of
the lake's yellow perch.
* Whether the perch return
to their nursery waters to spawn or simply move on elsewhere to
breed.
* Help determine if the
fishes move across the state's perch-management zones as well as
whether they travel from Ohio's waters into those under Ontario's
jurisdiction and vice-versa.
* Help establish the
degree of mortality via sport-caught and commercial-caught
activities.
To better understand the
dynamics associated with achieving these goals the Wildlife Division
went about capturing the fish and then inserting the tags.
Fishes caught, tagged, and
released ranged in size from 7 inches to 14 inches. More than 95
percent of these fish likewise were males, the reason being the
Wildlife Division visited perch-fishing grounds during the part of
the year when males dominate the species' spawning grounds, Kight
said.
And though 6,737 fish may
appear to be a large number, Lake Erie is obviously so much bigger.
Which helps explain why
the Wildlife Division anticipates its staff will “scan” more than
one million perch.
Such an operation calls
for trained creel survey clerks and others to sweep tag-sensitive
wands across fish. Each wand will not just detect the tag but also
will record the vital data the agency intends to assemble, Knight
says as well.
“Obviously we're
expecting to scan more commercially caught perch, but our creel
clerks will have wands too and they'll be asking sport anglers for
their cooperation with this important project,” Knight says.
Knight said also that
because both Ohio and Ontario use “the same everything” in the
way of equipment. Thus each stake-holder will have the ability to
scan fish and collect the data.
Left out of the picture –
at least for now – are Pennsylvania, New York and Michigan, each of
which is also a Lake Erie fisheries stake-holder.
It wasn't a bias or a flip
of the coin that determined which entity would perform the tagging
duties, however.
The reason for Ohio and
Ontario being selected first is because they manage the lion's share
of Lake Erie. That, and also because of limited availability of the
equipment, Knight said.
Knight says as well the
agency will place posters at various locations frequented by Lake
Erie yellow perch anglers as well as include project information on
the Wildlife Division's web site at www.dnr.state.oh.us.
Follow the link to the Wildlife Division, then to fishing and then to
fisheries management.
“We want everyone to
know about this project and its implications for helping us to better
manage Lake Erie's yellow perch,” Knight says.
- Jeffrey L. Frischkorn
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