Hello Folks,
I am a local angler and grad student in the Fisheries Ecology and Marine Conservation Group at UVic. A couple of us were chatting recently about the lack of adult salmon diet information for Southern BC in recent years. In particular there is a near total lack of winter information. We were discussing whether it might be feasible to set up a long term collaboration with the sport fishing community to monitor stomach contents year round. This would aim to develop into an ongoing place-based monitoring program rather than a short-term research project. Since there are many engaged, informed and conservation minded people on this forum I thought this would be a good place to informally float the idea.
The goal would be to develop a feasible program that would entail relatively modest commitment of resources and effort for everyone involved. We would start out running it off the sides of our desks and if it seemed to have momentum we would use evidence of initial success to try to find some funding to support it in the future.
The plan would be something like this:
1. Interested anglers would set aside the entire stomach and contents when cleaning fish, this would be bagged and frozen with a tag indicating (at a minimum) species, fork length, angling location, capture date, hatchery/wild, contact info. We would make up some waterproof tags to distribute and/or anglers could simply write the information in pencil on scrap paper.
2. Anglers would store stomachs in their freezers, potentially we would also arrange with a couple of stores/marinas to share drop-off freezer space. Our lab manager would coordinate to pick-up stomachs every few months from anglers homes or coordinate drop-offs at the university.
3. We would process stomachs and produce annual data summaries of prey species, sizes etc…. These data summaries would be emailed to anglers participating in the program.
In an ideal world we would get a couple of the guides on board; however, as a former guide myself I know packaging stomachs and doing extra paperwork between trips or at the end of the day is the last thing that appeals. More likely if some of the regular local non-pro anglers were keen to be involved this would be a great start. I think we would plan to give this a try on the South Island and think of expanding if the trial was successful.
If you have comments please PM me or weigh in here. If you are interested in being involved fire me a PM with your email address and I will put together an email list and try to coordinate something.
Tight Lines. Will.
I am a local angler and grad student in the Fisheries Ecology and Marine Conservation Group at UVic. A couple of us were chatting recently about the lack of adult salmon diet information for Southern BC in recent years. In particular there is a near total lack of winter information. We were discussing whether it might be feasible to set up a long term collaboration with the sport fishing community to monitor stomach contents year round. This would aim to develop into an ongoing place-based monitoring program rather than a short-term research project. Since there are many engaged, informed and conservation minded people on this forum I thought this would be a good place to informally float the idea.
The goal would be to develop a feasible program that would entail relatively modest commitment of resources and effort for everyone involved. We would start out running it off the sides of our desks and if it seemed to have momentum we would use evidence of initial success to try to find some funding to support it in the future.
The plan would be something like this:
1. Interested anglers would set aside the entire stomach and contents when cleaning fish, this would be bagged and frozen with a tag indicating (at a minimum) species, fork length, angling location, capture date, hatchery/wild, contact info. We would make up some waterproof tags to distribute and/or anglers could simply write the information in pencil on scrap paper.
2. Anglers would store stomachs in their freezers, potentially we would also arrange with a couple of stores/marinas to share drop-off freezer space. Our lab manager would coordinate to pick-up stomachs every few months from anglers homes or coordinate drop-offs at the university.
3. We would process stomachs and produce annual data summaries of prey species, sizes etc…. These data summaries would be emailed to anglers participating in the program.
In an ideal world we would get a couple of the guides on board; however, as a former guide myself I know packaging stomachs and doing extra paperwork between trips or at the end of the day is the last thing that appeals. More likely if some of the regular local non-pro anglers were keen to be involved this would be a great start. I think we would plan to give this a try on the South Island and think of expanding if the trial was successful.
If you have comments please PM me or weigh in here. If you are interested in being involved fire me a PM with your email address and I will put together an email list and try to coordinate something.
Tight Lines. Will.
