Outdoors

Fish survey to slow down during move

By RODNEY PAGE
Published February 20, 2005

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission's Stock Enhancement Research Facility in Port Manatee has released more than 400-million redfish fingerlings into Tampa Bay since January 2000, when the redfish enhancement project began.

During that time, researchers have gathered valuable information about survival rates and habits of redfish in Tampa Bay.

The program recently suffered a setback, however, when Manatee County Port Authority officials said that it must move its 54-acre facility from its site on the north end of the port. Port Manatee is expanding to harbor cruise ships, so it must dredge the waters from its north side.

The commission has been offered a tract of land on the south side of the port and it likely will accept that offer. For now, what was supposed to be a five-year research project is going to take longer.

"It's going to delay the project by about two years," research administrator Bill Halstead said. "We have to move the hatchery and we're working rapidly on figuring out how to do that. We can move the equipment, but we have to build new ponds. The next hurdle is to raise money to do that."

The research facility is funded mainly by state tax dollars. But it will take some private funds to build 12 new 1 acre ponds and six quarter-acre ponds that hold thousands of redfish fingerlings.

The facility opened in 1988 as the only state run marine fish hatchery. Since then it has applied research and developed technology to rear finfish such as snook and redfish as well as invertebrates such as bay scallops and queen conch.

Today, the facility is devoted solely to redfish.

"We discovered back in the '70s that fish reproduce according to change in water temperature and sunlight," Halstead said. "Those are things we can control in our lab, and redfish were the first fish to respond to those cues."

The goal is to study how hatchery-raised redfish fare against redfish born in the wild. When the eggs are hatched, which can sometimes reach 100,000 at a time, researchers take a DNA sample from some of the fingerlings. Each fingerling from the same egg group will have the basically same DNA, and that information is put into a computer file.

When the fingerlings reach between 1 and 7 inches they are released into the bay. When a grown redfish is caught by researchers or local fishermen, they provide a fin sample. If it is a DNA match, researchers can determine how long the fish has been in the bay and how healthy the fish is.

"We're trying to determine if the smaller fish can survive along with the larger ones," Halstead said. "It takes more time and money to raise the larger fish, so if the smaller can survive that would be best."

The research will slow down until the move to a new facility. "We're not doing it because redfish are in trouble in Tampa Bay," Halstead said. "We're just anticipating having problems managing fish in the future. Obviously, Florida is experiencing large growth, especially along the waterfronts. Over time the fish population has decreased, and with more people on the water it's going to decrease in the future. We have to take care of the habitat now."

If you are interested in helping the FWCC with this project, call its tag hotline at 1-800-367-4461.

[Last modified February 20, 2005, 00:53:18]