I spent a good number of my evenings in April 2012 on the mighting Potomac River. the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries is working on a large scale effort to reintroduce and reestablish healthy populations of American Shad (Alosa sapidissima) into Virginia rivers, many of which have recently had large fish passage improvements, allowing this species to reach long-restricted spawning waters. In 2003, Embrey Dam was breached in Fredericksburg, opening over 100 miles of former spawning grounds in the Rappahannock River to these rather impressive herring. You may recall seeing in this most recent American Currents issue a blurb in the back about this species' recovery in Virginia. I was very fortunate to be able to be out with DGIF about 3 nights a week during the broodstock collection, which resulted in roughly 6 million fry being stocked into the Rappahannock River. It was an amazing experience to be a part of that.
Due to their crepuscular spawning habits, broodstock collection happens in the evening hours, so it was convenient with my work schedule to meet up with the biologists in the late afternoon after I got off work to hitch a ride up to northern Virginia to get out on the water. Depending on the tide schedule (this has a huge impact on when they run upstream, and as our collection method was drift netting, was of utmost importance) we would aim to be on the water anywhere from 4 or 5 pm to 8 or 9 pm to deploy nets. The nets were deployed at slack tide, and were left to drift for an hour or so before broodstock collection commenced.
A few local commercial fishermen were the ones running the nets. They would normally be fishing this way anyway to harvest striped bass, so they partnered with us and allow us to make use of their American Shad bycatch. Our boat recieved bucketfuls of ripe fish to be used to collect and fertilize eggs, once they had processed their catch. This was also an outreach opportunity. Jim Cummins, a local leader of shad conservation, was instrumental in arranging the whole project, and brought out teachers and small groups of middle/highschoolers to educate them on the plight of the river.
For someone who was not familiar with the process, I was very surprised that the female shad need not be alive to provide us with viable eggs. However, the males absolutely have to be alive in order to produce viable sperm, so any males that were ripe with milt were placed in tanks to be kept alive as long as possible (most of them already in somewhat bad shape from being in a gillnet). I will mention that these fish do not survive the process, but their contribution makes up for it, and they would not have survived being bycatch caught in gillnets anyway. Females that were "runners" (either leaking eggs, or producing eggs with a gentle squeeze) were placed in plastic baskets (dead or alive) until we had enough time to strip and fertilize a batch of eggs.
When we had enough to get a good batch of eggs, the females were stripped of eggs until we had a large mixing bowl full of eggs. The we then took a few males out of the livewell and dried them off with shop rags. Apparently, if water drips into the bowl, it prematurely activates the eggs/sperm and lowers the successful fertilization rate (which I think they said was in the 98-99% range). I quickly learned to hold the shad head-down and gently squeeze their cheeks, as the gill cavities hold a significant amount of water. The males were then squeezed to produce milt, which was mixed in thoroughly with the eggs. After that, water was added, the mixture of sperm, eggs, and water was swirled and debris floating at the top (stray scales, dead eggs, bits of blood/feces) were poured off and discarded.
The second livewell onboard had a few large rubbermaid tubs with the side panels cut out and replaced with screen. They also had buoys attached to keep them floating in the livewell. Once the eggs were fertilized and cleaned, they were poured into these tubs to water-harden. The eggs take an hour or two to fully swell up with water and harden enough to later be bagged and transported to the hatchery. Waiting for this process was the most time consuming part of the night, so while we waited, we took length/weight/sex data on the shad we had used (and I took the opportunity to bring home from roe from the females that weren't quite ready. It makes great fish food!).
When the eggs were ready (sometimes 9pm, sometimes midnight) we docked the boat, collected styrofoam coolers from the back of the truck, and bagged the eggs with enough water to cushion them from each other, gave the bags a shot of oxygen, and tied them off. The eggs were then transported south (I was dropped off in Fredericksburg on the way) to the Ashland office, outside of Richmond, Virginia, and one weary soul was then responsible for driving them another hour further to Williamsburg (a 3 hour trip!), where they spent a few days incubating (as well as being exposed to tetracycline, which makes their otoliths flouresce and later is used to identify wild fish vs. hatchery fish) and hatching, before being stocked as two or three-day-old fry. And it was done by the millions. Quite a week for the gametes and resulting offspring. Don't quote me on the numbers, but I believe I was told that from their calculations, roughly 1 of every 400 fry stocked seem to be returning to spawn (incredible, all predators considered). As a matter of fact, in 2011 Bernie Arnoldi and I caught the first American Shad either of us had seem from the Rappahannock. So hopefully in 4 or 5 years, the Rappahannock will have an additional 15,000 spawning adult shad to fuel the population recovery, and I am glad to have been a part of it.
And now, a few tastes of the action:
http://youtu.be/CPTVgXGEMLA
A good overview of the project.
http://youtu.be/yTq0cSuO8ew
Some video I took while the kids were being given a lesson
The fishermen, Jim Cummins, and the school kids getting ready to set the driftnet.
Katherine ready to bring a running female shad onboard...
Jim picking a shad out of the net...
One of the fishermen showing off the largest striper we saw. As a side note, while waiting for the nets to be deployed, we noticed a disturbance at the surface of the river nearby. Turns out (and no one had ever seen this before) we got luck enough to see striped bass spawning before sunset. We observed at lest two males alongside a large (probably the size of the one in the photo) female, along with splashing, and observed a cloud of milt after they had finished. Very cool.
The bucks were kept in the livewell until we stripped them of milt
A nice productive female...
That's me, doing naughty things to a fish...
"Is that applesauce?" Probably about 40,000 eggs there...
This bowl was hilariously narrated with "Mike, you should be a doctor, I can't read your writing at all"
The egg-bagging operation...
Sorry if that was a chore to read, but this was basically my entire month of April last spring, and I thought it was pretty cool stuff. If you've made it this far, thanks for sticking around!
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