It was this kind of day. A day at a hatchery, with a few co-workers, testing some equipment to look at how well it works and see if there are any standards that we can apply for fish of different species, at different stages of maturation. It was nice to be invited to get out of the office and away from the computer for a day and get back to touching some fish.
What’s going on here?
A pair of gloves that deliver a light electrical current when the circuit is closed with one hand on the tail and the other at the head and the effect is immobilization with immediate recovery on release. Breathing is not interrupted and the head can be held underwater so that the animal does not suffer; they are humane. A second person can touch the fish and deliver injections, take fin clips, insert PIT tags, or whatever needs to be done to the fish. No chemicals are used meaning that an animal can be released back tot he environment if they are used outside the hatchery, and there is no drug accumulation if fish need to be handled repeatedly.
I’d purchased two pair of these years ago and given them to one of the hatcheries I work with after watching a repeated attempt to knock out a steelhead using CO2 and feeling terribly sorry for the animal after it had been handled several times in an attempt to live spawn it. Their use has improved the welfare of the repeat spawners and I think they are of use in conservation work where small numbers of fish are available and extra care and consideration for each is high priority..
But I’d tried them on a Chinook stock once and had less success, and some researchers who used them successfully on coho at a hatchery later told me they’d had difficulty with recovery of migrating sockeye on the Fraser. And then I got busier and the topic fell off my radar until a few months ago. So when I bought another two pair recently, I sent them to my co-workers with the instructions to test them on multiple species, of different sizes, at different stages of adult maturation, and preferably at different temperatures. The goal is to see if there are conditions where they work well, and other where they are not a good choice.
In other words, it was a good day ☺️
