Well, some of you have probably been wondering when you would get to see some fish photos. Wait no longer. A big part of the ecology work going on related to this project is the mark recapture study. The team estimates that about 10% of the taimen (Hucho taimen) in the roughly 100 miles of river that make up the study area are tagged with a unique numeric visual identifier. In order to learn about the growth and movement of these approximately 500 tagged fish it is necessary to recapture them. Hence the fishing...
Char, the english teacher, found that she too would be called upon to fish.
While fishing for taimen we often caught lenok (Brachymystax lenok), a smaller species of salmonid also found in the study area. Brant is holding a particularly nice lenok in the photo above. Taimen fishing tends to be hit or miss. Sometimes the fish are really biting...
...but it's not always like that. You could spend a whole day fishing and get none, or maybe one small one...
...such as in the photo above.
Jon caught the biggest taimen of the fall research season (above). It was a recapture, and had been captured and radio-tagged 3 years earlier. You can just see the radio antennae sticking out of it's belly in the photo. Although radio-tracking showed that this monster had moved many tens of kilometers, it was recaptured in the exact same place it had been originally captured by Brant 3 years and one week earlier. This fish was about four feet long and weighed about 50 pounds.
Char has a fish story to tell too!
1 comment:
Congratulations you two!! I'm loving reading about all of your adventures! Great photos, too! Take care
Ramona
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