"Catch and Release to Die" - Star Tribune Article

This post is in response to Bill Klein's (of the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune) post on his blog (http://www.startribune.com/sports/outdoors/blogs/96226054.html). I'd like to share a few things with the public that Mr. Klein did not address in his post, and address some things that perhaps the public may not be aware of regarding the study he discusses.

The article was written in 1992 by R. Ferguson and Bruce Tufts of Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, and is titled "Physiological effects of brief air exposure in exhaustively exercised rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss): implications for catch-and-release fisheries." Dr. Tufts is a leader in the field of fish physiology, and has done extensive research involving recreational angling (including helping to develop, along with my co-advisor Dr. Cory Suski, the water weigh-in system). His interests are most certainly with the fish, which is exactly the crux of this paper. The study has implications for informing managers that perhaps fish handling plays a more important role in successfully managing recreational fisheries than previously thought, particularly as C&R fishing and the field of C&R research (like my Master's thesis) continues to grow.

Part of the blood sampling process used in the paper was to cannulate the dorsal aorta to obtain samples. Cannulation, in a nutshell, involves sticking a tube (picture an IV) straight into the target area, in this case the heart. This procedure can be extremely stressful for a fish, particularly after exhaustive exercise and confinement in an unnatural environment. Ferguson and Tufts acknowledge these procedures may have affected their results, something Klein did not mention in his blog post. You can see in the previous post on this blog that we use a very non-invasive blood sampling protocol that involves a small needle and vacutainer to pierce the caudle vasculature. Long gone are the days of invasive cannulation...

Obviously, sticking a tube into a fish's heart is going to require surgery. The use of anesthetic in human surgeries may be the most stressful part of a procedure, and the same holds true for fish. Again, the fact that surgical procedures and anesthesia were involved could have skewed results, as noted by the authors (but not Mr. Klein).

The study is an interesting one, and has important implications for proper fish handling. However, it is not the be-all-end-all (not much is) of recreational fishing research. Release rates are affected by lots of things, and vary widely from fishery to fishery. Something that needs to be considered when we discuss C&R fishing in general.

Will Don Mercerau's fish survive? I guess we'll find out!