Ever wonder why you don’t see schools of tiny bonefish on the flats?

                                     Can you see me now?

Recent research by Christopher Haak, a PhD student in Andy Danylchuk's Fish Ecology Lab at UMass Amherst (and funded by Bonefish and Tarpon Trust), may have finally answered this question. 

Juvenile bonefish (as small as an inch long!) may in fact be “hiding in plain sight”, mixing in among schools of similar-sized mojarras, whom they closely resemble when young.  With roughly 1 bonefish for every 50 mojarras, the odds are you won’t see the bonefish, and neither will their predators!  In the photo above, a 2-inch long bonefish (about 4 months old) feeds among mojarras.

Adopt a Bonefish!

THE PROJECT

Culebra, a small island to the east of Puerto Rico, is notorious among seasoned anglers for its unusually large bonefish.  However anecdotal evidence suggests that bonefish populations inhabiting relatively small, isolated, reef flats such as those found on Culebra may be particularly vulnerable to human-induced disturbances such as illegal gill netting and habitat loss.

To learn about their potential vulnerability, an international team of researchers launched a multi-year study examining the movement patterns of bonefish in Culebra.  In the summer of 2012 we began by creating a research infrastructure in Culebra, and deployed an array of nearly 50 acoustic receivers (listening stations) encompassing the entire island, allowing us to detect tagged bonefish and follow their movements at scales as small as a few yards!  

After months of testing and fine-tuning, we deployed an initial batch of tagged bonefish and the preliminary data is amazing.  Based on this test of the array, we planned to surgically implant transmitter tags into 30 bonefish in the spring of 2013, collecting data on their movements well into 2015!

THE PROBLEM

Due to spending cutbacks by the U.S. federal government, the grant that made this work possible has been cut by half.  This means we can barely afford to maintain our infrastructure and network of listening stations, and most importantly, that we can no longer afford to purchase and deploy 30 transmitter tags this spring as planned.  In other words, 30 bonefish will be swimming around our extensive array of listening stations in Culebra without any transmitter tags in them, providing us with NO DATA!

HOW YOU CAN HELP

Adopt a Culebra Bonefish!  We need to raise $19,500 for 30 transmitters to implant in bonefish, with purchase and deployment of each tag costing $650.  Please consider Adopting a Bonefish as part of this project.  As a thank-you, we will name the bonefish tagged in your honor, and you’ll receive a thank-you packet, including a photograph of the bonefish and its personal details, (length, weight, sex when known), as well as bi-yearly updates on their fish’s status! 

Don’t let Culebra’s bonefish go another season without providing us with valuable information about how to conserve them!  Adopt a Culebra bonefish now! 

Time is of the essence! 

Contact Dr. Andy Danylchuk (danylchuk@eco.umass.edu) to adopt your bonefish today.

There is 8 percent hooking mortality rate for striped bass caught and released by recreational anglers in the marine environment

John Tiedemann & Andy Danylchuk cover the proper care and handling of striped bass in the latest issue of On the Water  Given the vast amount of striped bass that are released every year (NY anglers released close to 1.5 million in 2011) proper handling is a critical component of the striped bass conservation effort.

LINK (via: On the Water)

A Permit First

                             

                                        In the post op recovery pen

An exclusive update from Dr. Andy Danychuk.

My project on Culebra hit a new high.

On Aug 2nd, my PhD student, Jake Brownscombe, hooked up, landed, and surgically implanted an acoustic transmitter in a permit - to our knowledge, the first permit implanted with a telemetry tag EVER! 

Since then we've been tracking the permit using an array of fixed receivers and already have amassed some cool data. Given that the transmitters have a battery life of over 2 yrs, we'll hopefully be able to learn quite a bit about their seasonal movement patterns and habitat use - information that is critical to their conservation and management. 

We'll be sure to post further updates as they come in, in the meantime we have two questions.

Is this a male or female?

Can we give it a name?

Fish Meat: Choose Your Farm Wisely

The age of fish meat is here.

A new documentary, "Fish Meat: Choose Your Farm Wisely," by eco-filmmaker Ted Caplow and featuring our friend University of Massachusetts Amherst fish ecologist Andy Danylchuk, debuts this week at the Idyllwild International Festival of Cinema near Palm Springs, Calif. It exposes some pitfalls of modern aquaculture and the plight of the world’s wild fish stocks, to help consumers think more holistically about where their seafood comes from.

LINK (Via: UMass Office of News and Media Realtions)

Andy Danylchuk and Colleagues Discover Previously Unknown Bonefish Spawning Location

Though bonefish are one of the most sought-after tropical sport fish in the world, drawing thousands of anglers to Caribbean waters every season, until recently the only information scientists had about their spawning habits were anecdotes and fish tales.

Now, University of Massachusetts Amherst researcher Andy Danylchuk and colleagues from several other institutions know far more about bonefish spawning habits after using ultrasonic transmitters to tag and track bonefish movements off Eleuthera in the Bahamas. Their results appear in an early online issue of the journal Marine Biology.

LINK (Via: U Mass)

Our Amazing Planet calls it a bonefish sex party.