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At 09:50 22/05/97 -0500, Mike Eggleton wrote:
>Dear List:
>
>Earlier this spring, a commercial fisherman on the lower Mississippi River
>mentioned that he had collected some sturgeons (around 20-24 inches TL) in
>his nets. These fish had "rubber bands" wrapped around their body
>which was cutting into the gills and skin behind the dorsal fin. He
>thought that someone was haphazardly stocking them thinking the rubber
>band would break off in time. .... Are these fish be swimming
>through rubber bands laying on the river bottom (as juveniles?) or is it
>some other mechanism altogether. If anyone out there has had similar
>experiences, I'd like to hear from them.
>
Here in France we also had that kind of problem with european atlantic
sturgeon Acipenser sturio and even more recently with some siberian sturgeon
Acipenser baeri escaped from fish farm. We already found some sturgeons with
a piece of plastic pipe around the head, rubber band, nylon mesh from a net
etc.. We also had the experience in aquarium were a rubber band was used to
attach an air diffuser to a cobble and after four days the rubber band was
around the waist of the sturgeon. I don't know how but it had done it itself.
Like Guy Verrault said in a previous answer, sturgeons seems to be very
vulnerable to different circular material that can make a collar and that
could lay on the bottom.
Mario
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Mario Lepage, biologiste
ASSOCIATION GIRONDINE POUR
L'EXPERIMENTATION ET DE DEVELOPPEMENT
DES RESSOURCES AQUATIQUES (AGEDRA)
50 av. de Verdun, B.P. 53
33612 CESTAS cedex
FRANCE
Tel: (33) 05 57.89.08.10
Fax: (33) 05 57.89.08.01
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
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