Stuart Carlton 0:00
Can releasing lake sturgeon into sacking all Bay help the species recover. What good fishing is coming up this fall, and is there a fish that can see with its skin? Really? To find out, let's ask Dr fish,

that's right. It is ask Dr fish. Our every other month show in which we ask our doctors Fish, fish questions, science questions and life questions. If you have a question for a doctor's fish, just do the hashtag, ask Dr fish. Or you can comment in the chat right now, right just if you're watching put in the chat. We'll answer your question. But first, let's introduce our doctors. Fish. Today. We're joined by Katie O'Reilly. Dr Katie O'Reilly, she's the aquatic invasive species specialist with Illinois, Indiana Sea Grant, and you can find her on Twitter. She's Twitter famous. Dr catfish, a catfish with a K. Katie's little joke there, little pun. We're also joined by Titus seilheimer, also a doctor fish, a fishery specialist at Wisconsin Sea, Grant Titus, what's on the fish shirt today? Is it a fish shirt?

Titus Seilheimer 1:07
It is a fish shirt. I am celebrating my favorite movie, and that movie, of course, is jaws. So we've got a large great white shark. Fantastic.

Stuart Carlton 1:16
65 to 75% of fisheries biologists are there because of jaws and Shark Week, I think conservatively, and the other 25 or 35% got eaten by shark. And we're also drawn by Carolyn Foley, not a DR fish, but she's Research Coordinator with Illinois, Indiana Sea Grant. We're so happy to have her on. Carolyn, how's it going? I

Carolyn Foley 1:35
am doing well. Thanks.

Stuart Carlton 1:36
Are you a jaws? Are you a jaws? Are you?

Carolyn Foley 1:38
I'm more of a sea world, so black fish messed with my head, kind of thing. So, yeah,

Stuart Carlton 1:45
you can't go watching the black fish. No, it's like reading about JK Rowling. You just can't do it. All right. The point is this, we have some fish questions, and we're going to start off with Topic number one, Carolyn. Take it away.

Carolyn Foley 1:56
All right. So this is kind of a cuckoo, crazy one in my opinion. But there was a story that came out this week about fish that can see with their skin. So it was a Science Alert article. So it was kind of like a, you know, a journal article that was coming out and things like that. So maybe Katie, can you tell us a little bit about this fish that can see with its skin.

Katie O'Reilly 2:23
Yeah, absolutely. So this is a fish known as the hog fish. So this is not one that we got here in the Great Lakes, but it's a marine fish. And what's really cool about this is it's actually not a phenomenon that's like brand new to us, this idea that some species of fish, mollusks, so things like octopi, they can change colors, like we knew that. But what this study was really cool and did kind of a deeper dive into is like, why and sort of more of the processes of that changing color. And so when we say that, you know that the hogfish sees with its skin, it's not the same necessarily, as its eyes. You know, our eyes absorb like kind of the light around us, and then they actually process it to give us an image that, you know, kind of goes together in our brain, not a neuroscience so

Stuart Carlton 3:20
just start saying cones and rods, and you'll be fine. Just cones, rods,

Katie O'Reilly 3:23
light, etc. But what's what this study found was that the hog fish in its cells that change color things that are called chromatophores, it actually is used to detect, like the the color of the fish's skin. So the best way I can describe it without getting too too technical, is like, it's almost like having a mirror for the fish. The fish can't really tell what its skin looks like, so the sensory apparatus that's in these cells kind of gives feedback to the fish's nervous system about, like, what color am I? And then it can make shifts as needed, to, you know, better fit in with its surroundings. So if you don't have a mirror underwater, the next, next best thing is to have your cells tell you what you look like,

Titus Seilheimer 4:13
you know. And to quote the story, it's like taking a snapshot from the inside of the fish. So it is, you know, yeah, it is like, if you could imagine what you look like on the outside without a mirror, but from the inside, that's what the fish is doing. So, yeah, it's pretty cool.

Stuart Carlton 4:30
It's trippy stuff I'm thinking about, like the zoom, you know, you have to decide whether or not to turn on or off the self view. And for mental health, you should turn off the self view. But I of course, turn it on myself out. But so hogfish don't really have a choice. I guess. Is this common? Do you know of other fish that change? I know about the I know about the octopus and some sort of squid. I think maybe are there other fish you've heard of that change color?

Titus Seilheimer 4:53
You know color. Color is a weird thing in fish too. I mean, like, it is very variable to begin with. I. And, you know, you can see a lot of sort of different variation in just the color, even of the same species in the same place, you might see a lot of differences in color. And it looks like, you know, maybe the the Nile Tilapia is that, I think that has also the ability to kind of detect what what colors it is.

Katie O'Reilly 5:21
And what's also kind of interesting is this is a process called as like dynamic color changing, which means it happens sort of on the order of seconds to minutes, so very quick paced. But there's also color changes that can happen over longer periods of time too. So this is, this is more like what you think about. If you see like an octopus moving along the ocean bottom, and you see it like take on all those crazy colors to match with their surroundings, that's this dynamic process, which, as Titus said, is seen in other fish, like the Nile Tilapia. And probably, I mean, honestly, I think if we start looking for some things. You know, we might be surprised by the fish that have the ability to do that. But color is just a very, very much a Pandora's box of getting into cool and nerdy physiology of fish. Yeah. But

Stuart Carlton 6:15
even just like what colors are where I know, I mean, like in marine environments, where it gets really deep, at different depths, you'll see different colors of fish because the light light kicks out right? Like very deep. I think all the red light is filtered out, maybe. And so that's why you'll see a lot of red fish deep, because it's essentially the same as it's black,

Katie O'Reilly 6:32
Yep, exactly. And so that's a way that deep sea fish, especially, you know, are often red because it makes them essentially invisible, because that red light has been filtered out. And if

Titus Seilheimer 6:43
you think of, you know, just the general color, like, the bottom of a fish is usually white, so if and then the top is a darker color. So if you're, you know, a predator underneath, looking up, you're not going to see that white, because it's going to disappear into the silhouette of the, you know, the sky above. Or if you're looking from above, looking down, a darker color on top, it's gonna, gonna help so, you know. And if you think about changing color too, it's not like, you know, these animals that change color like, you know, if I set my hand down on this desk and looked at it and then, you know, made it change color, like, they're, you know, they're, they are just kind of automatically changing color to match their background. You know, I don't think it's a conscious thought necessarily. So they're, you know, just, you know that that's why it makes sense to have this kind of vision, this, you know, through your skin, because your if your skin can kind of see what the background is, it can match that a lot better. Otherwise I would just disappear into my messy office background,

Stuart Carlton 7:42
and we'll put a link to this story and also a cool octopus video. We'll find a cool octopus video if you're listening to this in on podcast form. Or you can go to ask Doctor fish.com/six the number six, or just look down to your little pod reader and tap on.

Carolyn Foley 7:58
Let's go to the next story. It's about everybody's favorite, or some people's favorite smallmouth bass. So in the in the Great Lakes, you know, like and like the Midwest, smallmouth bass fishing is something that people really like to do. But we found a story about the Colorado River where smallmouth bass are less desired. Shall we say? So, um, that's

Stuart Carlton 8:24
not a smallmouth pass. Look at that ugly thing.

Unknown Speaker 8:26
What is that? Hey, humpback

Carolyn Foley 8:28
chub, so I don't know, Titus, do you want to talk, talk about this story a little bit for us? I

Titus Seilheimer 8:35
think it's a magnificent looking, uh, it's adorable there, yeah. So this, you know, it is a, it's a story. And there's our smallmouth bass, some little ones, juvenile smallmouth bass, you know. So this is, it's a story of species out of place, causing problems with the native species. And, yeah, so smallmouth bass is, you know, a popular sport fish around, kind of the middle of the country, but once you get out of the range, it's kind of, you know, along the Atlantic coast, really west of, kind of west of Nebraska. It's non native as well. So it can cause problems. You've got your federally recognized kind of threatened species, the horny horn. Wait, what a humpback chub. Chub, humpback chub, which is, is that a set in the sucker family? Katie, you're our taxonomy expert. It

Katie O'Reilly 9:33
is. It is a proud member of the sucker family,

Stuart Carlton 9:36
fully catastrophic that humpback chub? Yes,

Titus Seilheimer 9:39
yes. So we throw in the weird names of common names where chub which, you know, for us, Chubs generally, are minnows in the minnow family. But why not name something also in the sucker family for fun? So, yeah, so they're causing some all of that are causing problems. They're eating these three. And species, the just incredibly shaped, horny handed Chubs and yeah, so the Park Service will be removing them, removing these smallmouth bass using rotenone, which is a fish poison, ah,

Stuart Carlton 10:16
rotone. So I have done rotone sampling before. This was back in graduate school, when I was a master's student at the University of Georgia, and so we wrote on sampled a cove. And I don't fully get how it works, but what we do is, we're in a big lake, or this was a reservoir, and you sort of, we cordoned off this cove, released the rotenone, and sat there for a little while, and then the fish started floating up. And that was day number one. Day number two, a few more fish floated up. Day number three, the professors were no longer there. They sent out the technicians and the undergraduates because it started to get a little foul. But so Rodman's a poison they used to sampling. I have a couple questions about it. One, like, how does it work exactly, and why does it only kill fish? Or does it only kill fish? And then, I guess two, why is this okay to do?

Katie O'Reilly 11:05
Yeah, so I can jump in there. So rote known is, I would say, probably one of the more, if not, most commonly used compounds for controlling, you know, what we call undesirable fish, and whatever you consider undesirable fish, whether that's a non native species or just species that you're not ideally wanting in your water body. Rodent is actually a naturally occurring substance. It's derived from the roots of tropical plants. So I mean, it goes with the thing that, yes, it is a chemical, but all chemicals come from somewhere, and, you know, so this is a naturally occurring substance that we've, you know, utilized for this, this purpose of controlling fish. It really started to get into use in North America by fisheries managers. I'd say, like, you know, early, mid 20th century, like the 1930s and what it does is it actually inhibits the transfer of oxygen in fish, and, like cellular cellular respiration. So it's not removing oxygen from the water column. It's actually going into the cells of the fish and making it so they're not getting oxygen. And so rot known is kind of, I think of it as almost the nuclear option, sometimes, because it is going to affect all fish. It some species are more susceptible to others, so or than others. So things like carp are a little bit more susceptible than, you know, some other species, such as bass, but essentially, at a high enough concentration, you're going to wipe out the fish community. And then the idea sometimes is that by starting fresh, you can stock whatever fish community you're ideally trying to manage for so it's, it can be somewhat of a drastic option, like, you know, you said Stuart, you know, it results in kind of a crime scene for the fish, fish PD department. But it is, again, if you're dealing with an undesirable fish population. It is a way that you can kind of start fresh,

Titus Seilheimer 13:26
yeah. So kind of a blunt, a blunt tool, but it is effective, you know, removing everything. And you see it a lot, you know, out west, a lot with, like, these different strains of trout where, you know, you've got a stock trout, that's just kind of a generic rainbow trout. But then you want to, if you want to restore a native strain, you need to kind of get rid of those generally bossier kind of bullies that are rainbow trout, General, yeah, or, you know, in areas like with the invasive carps around Illinois, you know, removing those, those carp, especially from things like locks and dams, might be a tool you could use. So it's a tool that we use in fisheries. I've, I, you know Stuart, you're not a doctor fish, but you've got more experience with rodinone than I do. I've never, ever used it. So,

Stuart Carlton 14:23
back to the smallmouth bass then. So in the Great Lakes, we had a sport fish that was really common and causing issues with the salmon. Why don't they just make a smallmouth bass fishery out there? What are the trade offs there? Oh,

Katie O'Reilly 14:38
you want to take that one? Titus, yeah,

Titus Seilheimer 14:41
I can, I can address, I mean, this is the problem with a lot of these species that we have here. You know, same story with lake trout and Yellowstone Lake with perch, yellow perch and walleye in the Pacific Northwest. You know, it's, it's just the same thing. They're out of their range. They are, you know. You could create a sport fishery for them. But, you know, the the price of that would be kind of, you know, losing native, native fish species. So, you know, generally, I think it would be bad ecologically to support that. But, yeah, it's, it's a management decision. And you know how a lot of these species will get out, you know, out of the range, or, you know, invade these new areas, is generally because of people moving them around. And, you know, sometimes it's a management agency that wants to, oh, we'll create a new fishery stock, a new fish. Or, you know, it can just be anglers who, Hey, I like catching this fish back home. I'm going to take it to this place that I also like to fish and catch it there. And it could just be big problems that cost a lot of money to manage, right?

Katie O'Reilly 15:50
And like Titus said, you know, by creating these non native fisheries, we're not just like harming other fish in these ecosystems. It's, it can harm things like amphibians. It can, you know, kind of alter the food web in sort of these unexpected, cascading domino type ways. And so, you know, in the case of the smallmouth bass and Humpback Chub, like, you know, okay, you know, who? Who cares about the Humpback Chub, other than me, because I think it is an adorable fish, but you know, that is it? It really is about kind of the management focus and what figuring out what we value. And I use the royal we there, but like, you know, lots of different stakeholder groups are going to value different aspects of an ecosystem. And so, you know, a fishery that has non native species may be really good for tourism, supporting businesses, but it may have negative effects on other species that may have like cultural, cultural value to different groups. So it fisheries management is very much a game of trade offs, of course, and

Stuart Carlton 17:05
sometimes the royal we is just the royal. Me like, I mean, we don't have to get this far field, but when you look at the salmon in Lake Michigan, was this one dude. It was Howard Tanner. And, I mean, obviously, more than just the one guy, but essentially, who was one fisheries biologist in one state who said, Let's do it. Let's just go do it and be heroes. We'll do it and be heroes and and in some ways, I guess in other ways, it's complicated.

Carolyn Foley 17:28
The smallmouth bass. Part of why I brought up this story was from my life as a bug person who had to help sample fish, smallmouth bass. If these, I'm like, I can identify that one, because I always remember that I don't know this chub, humpback chub, but the smallmouth bass. I was like, seeing it there. I was like, Oh, I remember you. But anyway, okay, so just for those of you who have joined us online, just a reminder, this is Ask Dr fish a show where our two Dr fishes answer your fish questions, science questions and life questions. If you have a question for our doctors, you can put it into the chat right now and we'll try to answer it live on the air. Or you can use the Twitter hashtag artist formerly known as Twitter hashtag, ask Dr fish. You can also email us at ask doctorfish@gmail.com

Stuart Carlton 18:24
Yeah, we want your questions about or comments, questions or comments about fish you've seen in unusual places. That's something we want tell our tell us about that, or ask us about that. So smallmouth bass into Colorado, a humpback chub in the Yukon, other fish and unusual place

Titus Seilheimer 18:39
you know, and I think another, like, as of watching that video, you know, another thing that pops out, like, where are they treating it? It's below this, NASA dam. I mean, these are, like, these are systems that are already very altered. So, you know, you're a humpback chub, and you know that's what we call Stewart most of the time when he's not here. And you know the so, you know, they're already having to deal with these huge alterations to their natural habitat. And, you know, so then you bring a new species in where, you know, those smallmouth bass and actually also green sunfish, another, you know, they're hoping to kill both of those, because those are both a problem in this area for the Humpback Chub. So, you know, it's it's doing what we have to do to preserve these species. So

Carolyn Foley 19:28
that gives us a great segue into the next topic. So everybody who's listening online, feel free to add comments or questions, and we'll try to address those live on the air. But we did want to talk a little bit about a story that is near and dear to my heart. So in terms of trying to help native species out, and referring there have recently been some lake sturgeon releases in the Saginaw Bay watershed and Katie, I wonder if you can tell us a little bit about. Know what's going on there and what's been happening for several years? Oh,

Katie O'Reilly 20:03
I would love to, because a lake sturgeon are very near and dear to my heart as well. So to kind of set the stage before all of this, you know, Lake Sturgeon were once incredibly abundant in the Great Lakes region, kind of pre European settlement of the basin, and we still have a, you know, of all the remaining lake sturgeon in the world. We still have a big population of them, relatively speaking. But when we look at historical numbers of lake sturgeon, it's really a tiny fraction of what it used to be. And this is from a variety of reasons. Like we, we over fish them. They were considered a nuisance. At one point, they we've cut off access to their spawning habitat by building dams. So we, you know, we hurt them in a variety of different ways, but in recent ish decades, there's really been this push to help restore lake sturgeon populations to the Great Lakes. One of the challenges with this is it's not as easy as just raising a couple fish, releasing them. They, you know, become adults and spawn in a couple years. Lake Sturgeon take a long, a long time, relative to other fish species, to become reproductively mature, so that is in order for them to have babies. So a lot of the efforts that we've made and investments that have been made in the last 1020, years are, you know, we're still waiting to see some of the results of that, with the goal of reestablishing some populations. So with that context, the story that we wanted to talk about focuses on the Saginaw Bay watershed of Michigan. So if you're looking at, I don't have the hand the wrong way, it's kind of in the thumb region of of the mitten state. And this particular watershed has undergone a lot of restoration, you know, trying to restore connectivity of the various tributaries. But it's also been the site of several releases of baby sturgeon. I want to say I I actually personally participated in one back in 2018 but I know there was one that happened in 2017 as well. So a lot of agencies working together, have, you know, really tried to involve the public in these releases of baby sturgeon into the rivers of the Saginaw Bay watershed. To, you know, get a sense of investment, like you're sending this little baby sturgeon off and you're hoping in 1520, years, yeah, cute little baby surgeon, tiny, with the hope that, you know, 20 years from now, they'll come back to the stream and have babies of their own and continue the cuteness for the future. So I think it's a really cool way to get people involved and invested in a species that really is one of the charismatic kind of megafauna we have in the Great Lakes. So

Carolyn Foley 23:08
I participated in one of the events a couple years ago too, with my kids. And my daughter was just like, she was super interested, but she was they are so and they look like dinosaurs. It's so cool. And then they've got, yeah, I mean, there's, there's a lot of, if you ever, you know, if you happen to see an opportunity, there may be another release this fall. It's so cool. They have so many that you get a chance to hold them and let them out. And, yeah, it's really, really awesome,

Titus Seilheimer 23:41
yeah. And I will, I will take this opportunity to plug an opportunity in Wisconsin, because, you know, not just a Saginaw Bay thing going on, but also through, throughout the Great Lakes, people are raising and stocking these so harbor Fest in Milwaukee at the School of Freshwater Science. September 24 2023 you can come on down. These are going to be juvenile sturgeon that were raised by the River Edge Nature Center in a stream side rearing facility, all by volunteers. So they, they, you know, get the they have this little trailer that's like a mini hatchery. They take care of them every day, and then in September, they bring them all down, and you get to, like, kind of adopt a sturgeon, basically, and release it right into the harbor there. So, you know, fun, fun opportunities to to see these. And I also took my kids one year to a different release event, and they actually had this big slide that they had to install because the it was hard to you couldn't safely walk to the river's edge because of the river bank. So they built this like slide with running water, and so you would put the sturgeon on top, and they'd just be like, kind of. Wiggling all the way down into the water. So it seems like a, oh,

Stuart Carlton 25:03
come on. There's gotta be video of that.

Katie O'Reilly 25:05
Where's the video? Oh, I yeah, I have video of that from the mommy River. Salmon cannon. Yeah, it's basically like, salmon cannon, but just like, like water slide for baby surgeon. It's adorable.

Titus Seilheimer 25:16
Yes, it's Yeah, water slide, slip and slide.

Stuart Carlton 25:19
And the way they yell out we as they slide. It's just so cute. Like, yeah, dude, it's like that one jaws. Remember the one jaws were Jaws roars at the end. It's not the first jaws. It's well into when jaws were maybe less good, the little baby sturgeon. It's just that our,

Titus Seilheimer 25:36
our next topic is actually reviewing, or maybe our next episode where we we just shift to reviewing sharp movies

Stuart Carlton 25:43
that'll be for our members only special All right. We don't actually have a membership program. What do we know about log perch?

Carolyn Foley 25:51
Okay, so, first off, first off, before we get into the story about log perch, we talk about common names and stuff like that. What? Where the heck did log perch come from? Do either of you know that?

Katie O'Reilly 26:03
I do not know. That's actually a really good question. But there, I mean, there's so many fish that we refer to as perch, beyond just like the yellow perch, which is an official common name I know in some places, sunfish, like, things like bluegill, pumpkin seed, like those are collectively referred to as perch as well. So perch is just like a super common, common name for fish. But I don't know exactly where

Carolyn Foley 26:32
bluegill and pumpkin seed are referred to as perch. Well,

Katie O'Reilly 26:36
yeah, kind of those panfish and referred to as perch. Oh, I think it's southern thing. Oh, it's

Stuart Carlton 26:43
southern Yeah. I think it's my dad's from South Central Florida, not the fun part, the hot part. And he calls them all brim,

Katie O'Reilly 26:49
yeah, we

Stuart Carlton 26:50
got brim, yeah. But I, I thought it was all fancy. I was like, Oh, Dad, those aren't brim.

Carolyn Foley 26:55
Those are perch. Okay, so gonna

Katie O'Reilly 26:58
say Titus. Titus went to his bookshelf, so I'm seeing that some, some on the ground. Research is happening here.

Titus Seilheimer 27:03
Yeah, I'm doing my go to here is for going to Scott and Crossman, the freshwater fishes of Canadian of Canada, generally. And they, they like to list the other common names. So I'm looking for log perch. I know one of the so we have just log perch in the Great Lakes, and that if you go through the dichotomous key and you look at the description for log perch, the term they use is for their snout. It's a conical protuberance. So I introduced my students this summer to that when we caught a bunch of log perch which were not these Chesapeake log birch, but sort of a cousin to them, but comical. Protuber is a great, a great term. I think

Katie O'Reilly 27:48
that's almost as good as caudal peduncle.

Carolyn Foley 27:49
So that that's another future show is just all the strange, like, we'll just show a

Katie O'Reilly 27:57
anatomical Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah, I do like that. It's a battle the books, because Stuart has also consulted his his bookshelf. So sorry, podcast listeners, it's just us

Titus Seilheimer 28:11
looking at books, trying to find the answer. All

Stuart Carlton 28:13
right, who's got a bigger book? I got freshwater fishes of Virginia.

Carolyn Foley 28:16
Crossman's going to be bigger, right? Like Scott and Crossman? No, this is,

Stuart Carlton 28:20
this is Bob Jenkins, Okay, excellent. Well, while we're doing this, tell us about log perch. Chesapeake

Carolyn Foley 28:30
log perch, and why are they in the news right now? Yeah,

Katie O'Reilly 28:33
so, the Chesapeake log perch is actually kind of an interesting story, because for most of our knowledge of its existence. It was considered synonymous with the common log perch, the one that's that Titus mentioned, you know, seeing we see all over the Great Lakes. But it wasn't until relatively recently, I think, about 2008 when some genetic testing and studies came out that confirmed that the Chesapeake log perch was this unique species. So it's it's separate than the common log perch, but that is also kind of put it at a bit of a risk, because where we thought it was more abundant, now we've realized that this unique species is limited to a really small area, kind of the susque Susquehanna River, Potomac River area of sort of Maryland, Virginia, the DC area. And it's not its population numbers aren't doing hot right now, so that's kind of why it's in the news. Of, you know, is this a species that's going to be listed as, you know, like a federally endangered or threatened species? But I think it's, it's actually kind of a unique story, because it was only you know, relatively recently that we figured out it was a completely separate species. And. And there's a lot to be said for you know when, when we're thinking about common fish species, like, are they actually made up of different, sort of unique species within this a sort of cryptic biodiversity that's not readily apparent, but becomes apparent when we look at sort of the genetic side of things. I think that's a really cool story. All

Titus Seilheimer 30:22
right, I sorry to report that I cannot find any actual reasons for this. However, let's just assume that it's a, it's, I mean, it's obviously perch. Maybe they found them under logs, in association with logs. However, going to fishes of Wisconsin, by George Becker, I will read this passage when fried log perch are just are just as desirable a food fish as perch and some fish. However, individual log perch of sufficient size for human consumption are caught, but rarely and larger fish are often highly encrusted with parasitic nematode black spot, which renders them unpalatable to most people. So another thing I love about some of these older fish books is when they throw in a preparation food. Food. Way to eat them. So, yeah, don't eat the Chesapeake log perch. I would not recommend that what percentage

Stuart Carlton 31:24
of time is the way to eat them? You fried them, but

Titus Seilheimer 31:28
absolutely like being what's our other go to? We can't get smelt we can eat stone rollers.

Carolyn Foley 31:35
So okay, so question from the audience, and I'm going to send this one to Titus. Number one, I'm going to say my kids have already started playing Halloween music, so I'm hearing Ghostbusters every day. But there's a question, as we were showing the video there, which I think we're going to show the video again. Now there's a question, why is that dude wearing a Ghostbusters backpack? So, Titus,

Titus Seilheimer 31:59
alright. Excellent question. So this is a backpack electrofishing unit. So you know, one of the we've talked about Rome already. Well, a another method that might sound kind of crazy, but is is not as fatal to fish, is electro fishing. So this is creating an electrical field. And, you know, basically he's got a net in one hand, I think anode in the other, cathode on a pole with a ring. So you can see that yellow hand is the connected to the backpack. It's got that ring on it. You can see him lifting up that metal ring. So, and then off the back of the pack there is another wire hanging off, so it completes the circuit. This electrical circuit, circuit, the backpack, creates an electrical field. It stuns the fish, and then you can net them and pick them up so and then once the current is turned off, they are are not stunned anymore, and they could swim away. So there's lots of different ways to use electro fishing. And so a backpack is a specific type. You know, you're obviously wearing it on your back. This is for weightable small streams. As the streams get larger, you might need more power so you have you can use a a barge type or a raft type electro fishing unit. So think just a larger unit floating on a little barge. And if you you know, you get into more open waters, you'll have a whole electro fishing boat where you've got, actually, a generator that you turn on to create the the electrical field. You've got a big arrays hanging off the front of the boat, and then people up front, netting them. So it's just a good way to catch, to catch fish. You can see in the picture now they're also using a sane as well. So you could use a scene to catch the fish, but it's not going to be as as efficient they're going to escape from that. This is probably very rocky habitat, I would guess as well. So, yeah, so electro fishing, so does another question? Does this use high voltage, low amperage, like a stun gun that we're going to kick over to Katie?

Katie O'Reilly 34:13
Yeah. So there is one way to think of it as kind of a stun gun. Generally, you also can adjust the voltage and amperage to make sure that, essentially, you don't want to stun them too high, because you want them to recover. We want this to be as minimally traumatic for fish as possible to ideally, you know, release them out, you know, after you're done sampling, and it also the voltage and amperage depends a lot on the chemistry of the water you're working with. So in some systems, you may have to adjust it higher if depending on the connectivity or conductivity of the water, so things like salts and minerals that are in it. So. Definitely does require a little bit of fine tuning for environmental factors. Yeah,

Titus Seilheimer 35:06
yeah. Definitely training. You want to be trained ahead of time too. It

Stuart Carlton 35:09
doesn't work at all the salt water, right?

Katie O'Reilly 35:11
I Yeah. I mean, I don't know of cases where it's been used in salt water. I

Stuart Carlton 35:16
think there's a conductivity,

Katie O'Reilly 35:18
I don't I think it's a connectivity

Titus Seilheimer 35:20
thing, yeah, yeah, it would be too high. It would just go. So

Stuart Carlton 35:23
why aren't the people getting electrocuted? So

Katie O'Reilly 35:26
if you look at those images, most of them have waders on, and the waiters generally have things like rubber boots. In some cases they might have, like, rubber gloves on to kind of help. I think I might speak for a lot of fisheries scientists, and that sometimes we do have, you know, instances where you reach into the water and you're like, Oh crap, and you get a little bit of a, like, stinging feeling. I mean, so generally the voltage isn't that high that it will electrocute you. As a scientist, I think we generally try and avoid that kind of level of voltage, but you can sometimes have a little bit of a unpleasant shock if you reach in without rubber gloves on. Well,

Stuart Carlton 36:07
the little fish is going by you, and you get excited and you want to grab it. And if there's this is what happens to me anyway, I get excited to want to grab it

Katie O'Reilly 36:15
exactly. You're just like, oh, the water is electric.

Carolyn Foley 36:20
And for me, so I used to drive again in not a fish person, but I used to drive the boat. And there was this turtle one night who just kept going to the front of the boat. And I told my, my partner at the time, now husband about it, and he was like, he's an

Unknown Speaker 36:36
extreme.

Carolyn Foley 36:40
Like, you so and there was a there was a comment that said, thank you that that was good information. So let's do our reset. Just a reminder. We did just have a really nice back and forth. This is asked Dr fish, a show where our two Dr fishes answer your fish questions, science questions and life questions. If you have a question for our doctors. You can put it into the chat right now. Use the X Twitter hashtag, hashtag, ask Dr fish. Or you can email us at ask doctorfish@gmail.com

Stuart Carlton 37:11
things start to cool off in the fall, so it becomes a little harder to catch fish. But what should people be looking for if they want to go fishing? Like, what are the big fall fisheries coming up? Well,

Titus Seilheimer 37:20
I mean, if we can start Great Lakes fall fishing. And although the image we're looking at is from Idaho, really the same kind of fall run fish in the Great Lakes, these are all actually the same same fish stocked into the Great Lakes. So things like steelhead, you might start seeing those. Although I think generally our seal head are more spring run, so we might not see those, but definitely it is going to be Chinook salmon, coho salmon run season right now. So these, of course, in their native range, are an agribus fish, so they spend most of their time out in the big water, like the ocean for us, the Great Lakes. And then when it comes to spawning time, they head inland, into the tributaries, into fresh water. And that is where anglers in the Great Lakes, especially in the fall, can really access fish in a lot of different ways. And I think it, you know, a lot of the summer fishing season you really need a boat. You've got to go offshore. It can be expensive, but this is the time of year when you can, you know, all you need is a fishing pole. You don't you can walk to a pier at one of the rivers. You can walk upstream. And some of the rivers where the the fish are returning to, and you get, you can pull out this, you know, some, some pretty big salmon right now, Lake Michigan salmon after, you know, some some years of stocking number reductions, plus maybe a little rebound of of alewife populations are pretty big right now. So you know, people are catching a 30 pound Chinook salmon, which is pretty exciting. So yeah,

Katie O'Reilly 38:59
and I'll just add that, you know, this is definitely, you know, spawning time for the salmon. And so oftentimes, you know, the salmon are very single track minded. They are coming into the streams because it is time to make the new generation of salmon. So, you know, similar techniques to how people fish for spawning salmon on like the West Coast apply here in the Great Lakes, our tributaries really serve kind of the same function. But sometimes you will catch a fish that is getting near the end of the spawning run. We sometimes refer to them as zombie fish, because they've started to, you know, their bodies start to break down a little bit near the end of the spawning run, um. So sometimes they're not always the best for eating, but they do put up, you know, a good fight for for anglers who want to get out there and catch some, some like Titus said, some really big salmon this fall.

Stuart Carlton 39:55
Send us your zombie. Sam, you pick zombie. Zombies. Salmon. We're all professionals here. Send us your zombie salmon pictures at soccer fish@gmail.com

Katie O'Reilly 40:04
I was going to say that would be a good Halloween episode. Exactly,

Stuart Carlton 40:08
the grosser the better. Yeah,

Titus Seilheimer 40:10
it's definitely, if you want to, if you if you know, if you can get them early enough, like if you can, you know, they generally take start the stage Off, off the tributaries, before they start their spawning run, you can still, you know, still get out there and maybe eat them, but yeah, that you don't want to eat a zombie salmon because they're, they're pretty gross.

Carolyn Foley 40:31
And I will say there was another question. Back to the electro fishing comment. There's how many settings can you control and how much voltage is generally used. And I want to say that, like, sometimes people that just the voltage, not just based on the characteristics of the water body, but the fish that they're targeting, is that right?

Katie O'Reilly 40:52
Yes. So depending on like, if you are targeting specific species, or like size classes, you may want to adjust the settings there as well. It also the ability to which you have that you can adjust settings depends on the type of electrophising you're doing. Like Titus said, There's everything from the backpack all the way up to the boat with the generator. So you may have the ability to adjust things differently depending on what your setup looks like,

Titus Seilheimer 41:20
yeah, and that backpack shocker. I mean, all of them now are pretty much battery powered. They're used to have, like, you had to carry basically a generator on your back and fire it up with pull cord, and then you got this loud generator running on your back. And now they're, they're battery powered, so that, yeah, you start at the least powered ones with the backpacks, and then you move your way up to more power. And that's generally the kind of thing you can the way I learned it in a electro fishing class was you can standardize the power so you can, you know, adjust the the amps and the lots to get a standardized power so that you're getting consistent, consistent sampling, because you really want to, you know, sample the same way at different places, because conditions are going to be different in different places as well. And then

Stuart Carlton 42:09
I think we're going to put a link in the show notes right now about salmon fishing in Lake Michigan as well.

Carolyn Foley 42:14
Yeah. So there's a story about 2023 and how the salmon fishing has been Salmon Fishing. Fishing has been free.

Stuart Carlton 42:21
There you go. No, now you're starting to get there.

Carolyn Foley 42:23
That's been really awesome in Lake Michigan. And something that I find kind of interesting, I don't fully understand it is, like, how people decide, like, what to stock and when and how many. It's like a, it's a interesting math. So alright. So for those who haven't joined us before, at the end of each show, we do a game, do we want zombie salmon? We do not want some

Stuart Carlton 42:56
Tammy has this if she's got a zoo? Oh, my

Katie O'Reilly 43:00
goodness, heck yes. Oh,

Stuart Carlton 43:03
that is wicked, perfect. So if you're tuned in live we're seeing, I'll try to describe it so it's, it's like on a beach with a little bit of water, and there's the salmon. There is no eye in the eye hole. There appears to be blood. It might be human blood. It's not clear, and it's got these vicious looking teeth. This flesh is rotting, and it is genuinely terrifying. You won't want to eat a zombie salmon if you see one. Oh, they're all there. Oh, this is bad.

Carolyn Foley 43:34
This is some next episode, I think is supposed to be the

Stuart Carlton 43:39
worms. Oh, click on the one with the worms right there in the middle bottom, yeah.

Katie O'Reilly 43:44
Oh my, oh, yes. Actually, we could talk about, I know there's been some studies in Michigan about what's called the necrobiome, which essentially is, like all the organisms that colonize a dead salmon app, and like how that creates its own little ecosystem. But that we are going to save for Halloween.

Stuart Carlton 44:02
Yeah, so, but there you go. So, listeners or viewers, you've got to send us something grosser than that, salmon with the worms on it, or scarier than the one with the human blood in its eye hole.

Titus Seilheimer 44:13
That's, yeah, what grossest scariest zombie salmon? Yep,

Stuart Carlton 44:16
ask Doctor fish@gmail.com post a link in the comments right now, if you're listening live. Challenge is out, and I'm going to put this in the next teaching about the Great Lakes newsletter as well. All right. But Carolyn, being a professional and less of a goofball than I am, wants us to pivot into our game. We like to end every episode of Ask Dr fish with a game. We rotate the game sometimes, but today we're going back to the classic 20 questions. And so what it's going to work is this Titus seilheimer, Dr fish, as she has thought up a fish, or, if not, he's about to think up a fish. And so with that, what he's going to do is he's going to send it to us. We're going to ask 20 questions. I'm going to track the number of questions with my fingers. I will lose. Around because I do, and we will rotate around, and we each get a question, and then we guess, and if we guess it right, whoever guesses it right wins. If nobody guesses it right, Titus wins. And what you get, if you win, is soapbox time. You get 30 seconds to rant about whatever you want, fish related or otherwise, if you're listening live, and you paste it in the comments at YouTube or Facebook if you have a question or if you have a guess. I don't know what we're going to do if you have a guess and win, because we're not going to give randos on YouTube or Facebook soapbox time, but we'll figure something out. So yeah, paste your questions in the chat and we're going to go, Titus, do you have a fish?

Titus Seilheimer 45:39
I have a fish. Alright, he's

Stuart Carlton 45:41
got a fish. And the other thing is, I want the team to remember that we have a whole procedure for when we're ready. To guess, just keep that in mind. Okay, Katie O'Reilly, you're a doctor fish. Why don't you start us off Question number one,

Katie O'Reilly 45:54
does this fish live on the bottom, the benthos or in the water column?

Stuart Carlton 45:59
It's the one question I have the one question I have. Sorry, no,

Titus Seilheimer 46:03
it's fine. Yes, it is. It is a benthic species?

Carolyn Foley 46:07
Is it a freshwater fish? Yes,

Katie O'Reilly 46:13
does this fish generally eat other fish? Is it piscivorous?

Titus Seilheimer 46:17
Not generally, okay,

Stuart Carlton 46:20
generally, so it's probably smaller. Oh, wait, we don't know for a fact. Does this fish live in the Great Lakes?

Titus Seilheimer 46:26
Yes, it can be found. In the Great Lakes, can

Stuart Carlton 46:29
be found. Oh, look at this. He's giving us more information. Titus is trying to be kind. It can be found, which means it's also elsewhere. Alright, so we're five questions in. I'm no closer to guessing this fish. But maybe you are listeners. If you have a question for our 20 questions, pop that in the comments, is

Carolyn Foley 46:46
it generally larger than a pop tart?

Titus Seilheimer 46:51
Yes, it is larger than a pop tart. Does

Katie O'Reilly 46:55
this species generally migrate?

Titus Seilheimer 46:59
Maybe it's not, not A, not a species that is, you would say, Oh, this is a migratory Okay,

Katie O'Reilly 47:08
not, like, obvious migrate grading. Okay,

Titus Seilheimer 47:13
it's hard when I don't really know the answers to anything, okay,

Stuart Carlton 47:15
yeah, I realize we need, like, a sound bit on this. This is where we're going wrong. You know, like, because all the, like, The Millionaire show, they have, like, that dramatic music I'm looking through, I don't think I have that, yeah, like, it's a, sorry, something to work on for next time

Katie O'Reilly 47:31
we got a question in the chat that might help. All

Stuart Carlton 47:34
right, question number eight,

Katie O'Reilly 47:37
does it taste like chicken?

Stuart Carlton 47:40
Thank you for that. Chris Hogan,

Titus Seilheimer 47:44
yes,

Unknown Speaker 47:45
yes, no,

Titus Seilheimer 47:45
how about no.

Stuart Carlton 47:47
Let's say, Well,

Carolyn Foley 47:48
have you eaten it before?

Titus Seilheimer 47:49
I have not, but people do eat it,

Unknown Speaker 47:52
okay,

Stuart Carlton 47:54
all right, thank you for that. So people do eat it, but not enough that we know it tastes like chicken. All right, is this fish I'm gonna go family. I'm gonna go family. Is this fish a catastomid, which means they suck. It is,

Titus Seilheimer 48:12
it is you've never done well,

Carolyn Foley 48:17
that was not gonna be my question, too. So I defer to

Unknown Speaker 48:19
Katie. That's not true.

Unknown Speaker 48:21
It really was.

Carolyn Foley 48:24
There was a question about So Katie, go ahead. Oh,

Katie O'Reilly 48:27
is this species found in all five of the Great Lakes, or only in part of the basin?

Titus Seilheimer 48:35
Not all five. It is. And the Great Lakes aren't really its primary habit, okay,

Stuart Carlton 48:41
okay, so some kind of a red horse is this? Is this some kind of a red horse? That's my question. Number two, no, it's not a red horse, not a red horse, not a red horse. We're halfway

Titus Seilheimer 48:54
home. Yeah, we're, you're in the home stretch.

Stuart Carlton 48:56
Now we're the homestretch. We are halfway home.

Katie O'Reilly 49:01
Okay, so let's just recap. So it doesn't have barbels. It's a catastomid lives on the benthos Great Lakes, aren't it's, well, doesn't live maybe in the Great Lakes proper, but Great Lakes region is part of its range. People do eat it

Carolyn Foley 49:21
and it's bigger than a pop tart, it's bigger than a pop tart, and it's not a red horse,

Titus Seilheimer 49:26
not a red horse.

Stuart Carlton 49:28
Alright? Guess 11 is yours, Carolyn.

Carolyn Foley 49:32
Um, Carolyn is not a fish person. Um, so

Stuart Carlton 49:39
has Carolyn heard of it? That's question 11. There you

Carolyn Foley 49:41
go. As Carolyn, is it likely that Caroline's heard of it?

Titus Seilheimer 49:44
It's possible.

Stuart Carlton 49:49
Everything is possible. I feel

Titus Seilheimer 49:50
like it has been in the news, maybe not this specific species, but one of its in these science news, we'll say, I. For a very interesting, surprising finding about this group of species.

Katie O'Reilly 50:07
No, I'm now, I'm interested.

Carolyn Foley 50:11
Does it have a long nose?

Titus Seilheimer 50:12
It does not have a long nose.

Stuart Carlton 50:17
Let's see. So now I'm now googling sucker fish Science News. Does it use physics to surf on their on its whale host?

Titus Seilheimer 50:27
How did you you got it right? That's exactly, oh, that's a reward. That's exactly, it exactly what I was

Stuart Carlton 50:32
doing. There's a lot of articles on how remoras. I guess that must have been a new thing. All right, fantastic. Here's an article at Great Lakes. Now, dot you know what? We just need to roll Katie. Do you have any guesses This is getting Yeah, let me just apologize. Like Titus has got us totally stumped. There's 100 million types of sucker out there. It's not a bright horse, which is the only type of sucker I know anything about. And so we're relying on the grace and knowledge of Katie O'Reilly. But she isn't primed on this one,

Katie O'Reilly 51:01
so I apologize. I'm gonna take a guess anyway.

Stuart Carlton 51:05
Take a guess. You're gonna take a guess. Hold on, hold on, yep. There's a guess procedure. Katie, I wasn't prepared for this. Okay, now we're gonna take the guess, and then we're gonna do the drum roll, and Titus is gonna say yes or no, and then we're gonna have the either the womp, womp or the Woo. Okay, so here we go. Let's hear the guess. Okay,

Katie O'Reilly 51:25
is it the northern hog sucker?

Titus Seilheimer 51:33
Wah, wah, wah. No, you're wrong. No,

Stuart Carlton 51:40
it is not, oh, it is the black buffalo.

Unknown Speaker 51:43
Ah,

Stuart Carlton 51:44
all right. Well, Titus wins again, as is shocking, so before Titus goes,

Carolyn Foley 51:51
more happy. Good job, Titus. Way to go. Wait,

Stuart Carlton 51:56
that was a stump. Oh, my goodness, Kitty, just we have that recording. You too. You both make the same noises every time. That is adorable. That is just fantastic. We've got Titus womp and Katie's woo before we go to Titus. 30 seconds of soapbox time. There's a little bit of show oriented news this week that I just want to point out for a second. We have two people leaving our production team on for greener pastures, hopefully not greener lakes. And that is, first of all, our live broadcast guru, Tammy winsel. She's the parent of everything that we do, right? I think she has taken another job, a huge promotion, I assume, and so she has run every one of these live broadcasts she does, done all the switching so that, like when you see just Katie's face pop up, or just my face pop up. God forbid, that's all been her. And if she doesn't do that, I have to do it, which means I I'm even worse at hosting the show than I would be otherwise. So thank you so much to Tammy, and we're welcoming Dean Underwood. He's our new producer. Live broadcast guru, is what we call it, because producer sounds like it should be paid. And then if you listen to the podcast version that's always edited by Quinn rose, and we've been warning everybody for months that Quinn is leaving to go to graduate school in library and information science, and Quinn is leaving us, this is going to be, actually, the last episode in the Gobi dog media empire that Quinn edits. And so we thank Quinn for everything that they've done for us. It's hard with an editor, like, it's weird. I don't need, I don't need to go into this much, but I've been talking with the team. It's a weirdly intimate relationship in a strange way, because I've never actually spoken with Quinn, literally never exchanged a verbal word, but I've spoken at Quinn, you know, just hours and hours and hours. And so it's this weird, and it's asymmetric anyway, and so it's kind of this unique, weird, intimate relationship. And so I'm I strangely emotional about it, but it'll all be fine, and we appreciate everything that both Tammy and Quinn have done. But that is not the reason that we are here today. The reason we're here today is for Titus to go on a 32nd rant. So take it away, Titus,

Titus Seilheimer 54:06
all right. So why did I pick buffalo? Of course, I picked buffalo because I was just at the American Fisheries Society meeting in Grand Rapids, participating in the non game symposium, and learned a lot about non game fish like buffalo. Buffalo are these suckers. They can live a long time. Recently, Alec Lachman and others, Alex up at you University of Minnesota, Duluth, and he is the guru of aging, these non game fish, and found a big mouth buffalo related to the black buffalo that was 212 years old, and black buffalo can live 50 plus years. So really kind of unappreciated fish that live a long time have seen a lot and apparently can also eat them. So all great things in my book, I. Illinois,

Carolyn Foley 55:05
ask. Dr fish is brought to you by the fine people at Illinois, Indiana Sea Grant, Wisconsin Sea Grant and go be dog media. The show is produced and hosted by Stuart Carlton, Carolyn Foley, Dr fish, Katie O'Reilly and Dr fish Titus, Illinois. Hammer.

Stuart Carlton 55:21
The live broadcast gurus are Tammy Wensel and Dean Underwood, and the live broadcast itself is produced by our pals at Great Lakes. Now, science about the lakes you love. Go check out Great Lakes. Now, news about the lakes you love. Science News, everything about the lakes you love. Great Lakes. Now has got them. Podcast versions. Show is edited for one last time by the awesome Quinn rose, thank you, Quinn, good luck. Library sciencing, I know you'll be awesome at that and the podcast. Artwork is by Ethan kosack, and you can view his portfolio at Ethan cosack.com that's k, O, C, A, K.

Carolyn Foley 55:55
If you have questions for doctors fish, which really makes my job easier, if you give us the questions, um, please send an email to ask Doctor fish@gmail.com use the Twitter hashtag Ask Doctor fish or call our hotline at 765-496-4474, thanks for listening, and we'll see You live on to YouTube and Facebook at 11am Eastern on, usually the second Monday of every even month. So October, I think, is the next one we're aiming for October Halloween special in between now and with zombies, that's actually I'm pretty excited. Okay, ask

Stuart Carlton 56:36
doctors gmail.com Give us your zombie salmon, or mail a zombie salmon Titus, university, Wisconsin,

Carolyn Foley 56:41
oh no, no, no, no, no, don't send that. Don't do that to the Postal Service in between now and then, if you have fist questions, science questions or life questions, just ask Dr fish. I

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