Fish E's, With regard to the stress of shocking vs. other techniques on fish: I work at a facility with drainable research ponds (much like hatchery ponds) and we have worked with crappie in them before --using seining to sample and found them to be very fragile fish. They seem to do better when we drain the pond, but still they definitely suffered from handling/sampling stress. Jim Triplett at Pittsburgh State University, Kansas, said that they see a lot of handling stress in crappie, but that it is much alleviated (> 95% survival) if fish are collected by shocking. He said that they see high mortality if crappie are collected by seine and transported elsewhere--that the high mortality isn't seen sometimes until a couple weeks later, but that if fish are shocked prior to transportation, survival is great.
Cindy Kolar Sam Parr Biological Station Illinois Natural History Survey 6401 Meacham Road Kinmundy, IL 62854 618-245-6348 [log in to unmask]
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