18 replies to this topic

[mattknepley]

Out with the trout; in with the shiners...

http://www.fws.gov/m...ekashiners.html

[Michael Wolfe]

It's kinda funny that they say they are intolerant of turbid water but then they are a nest associate with o-spots?

[Matt DeLaVega]

That is odd. OSS are hand in hand with turbid water. One of the few fish that pops into my mind when I think of muddy water.

[Michael Wolfe]

oh and anyone interested should definitely google or look up this shiner... great looking fish... sucks they are endangered

[Evan P]

Considering the ideal habitat for them is sloughs and oxbow lakes of the Mississippi, it's total bull to say they cannot tolerate turbidity. In fact, they prefer it! Sedimentation and pollution, however, are quite harmful. They are a major indicator species.

[mattknepley]

They may have needed to go over this a little better. I certainly needed to. I don't know enough about either species to pick up the turbidity issue. But on second perusal, I am pretty sure this isn't March 3015.

[mattknepley]

Here's more info from FWS which indicates the similar needs of O-spots and Topeka Shiners.
http://www.fws.gov/m...er13Story13.htm

It seems as if somebody quite unfamiliar with the species was tasked with writing the release in the op up, but nobody who was familiar with the fish proofed it. It reminds me of the back cover for an Animal Farm video I used to have. Henson (of Muppets fame) did the animal effects for it. But somebody who NEVER read the book, or saw the film they were doing the packaging/marketing for, must have written the description of the film. The parts I remember include; "Hilarity ensues when animals take over their farm..." and "...is sure to leave the whole family squealing with delight." If the people producing that packaging weren't clueless, they were sadists to an extreme degree looking to cause sleepless nights on end for any tyke unlucky enough to pop it in the vcr...

[Matt DeLaVega]

Gosh, maybe they should leave this business up to the pros and partner with CFI. Their crystal clear springfed raceways may just not work too well, and cost the taxpayer anyway.

[Michael Wolfe]

I actually like the idea of repurposing unused facilities for creating non-native to help out a native in need.  But it does seem like they need some help.  Who are the NANFAns that are closest to them?  Lets send them Bob Muller and Ken Glakin and Brian Zimmerman between the three of them they can breed anything!

[Matt DeLaVega]

Oh I love the idea, but only if it well researched, staffed by the right people, and successful. If FWS does not realize that turbidity cannot possibly be the cause of their decline, then obviously it is not staffed by the right people or well researched.

 

 Or maybe the problem is that these shiners do like clear water and are only successful in the few places that there happen to be good populations of OSS in clear water. In which case FWS may have the right idea.

[gerald]

In streams degraded by erosion from land clearing and farming, elevated turbidity (SUSPENDED particles that dont settle easily) may not be a big deal, but it's often a symptom of elevated sedimentation (fine SETTLED particles clogging up the interstitial space in gravel) which can be devastating to gravel-spawners and the bugs they depend on.   Turbidity and sediment load are often lumped together for discussion, since both result from land clearing, but their ecological effects can be quite different.  Streams with natural high turbidity (from low-moderate erosion on clayey soils) dont necessarily have a high bedload of fine sediment. They may still have good patches of relatively clean gravel/coarse sand suitable for fish spawning.  The whole bed doesnt need to be free of fine sediment -- just enough area to provide sufficient breeding sites to keep the population going. 

[Evan P]

Gerald, you are absolutely right. Topeka Shiners are a huge topic where I live, and this seems to be the general idea. It's hard to find where populations could persist due to the fact that waters are often defined as simply turbid or clear, with little emphasis on sedimentation as being a seperate issue.

[gerald]

State water quality monitoring programs are designed based on the Federal Clean Water Act, which (not surprisingly) focuses on water, not substrate.  Most agencies typically measure turbidity, which is easy, cheap, repeatable, and is a parameter that statisticians and lawyers can deal with.  Substrate embeddedness is a lot more work to measure, patchy (statistically troublesome), and less relevant for public water supply intakes, so it gets a lot less attention, especially in waters that don't support trout & salmon spawning.  

[centrarchid]

As far as the OSS and likely the Topeka Shiners are concerned, the habitats that support them well may have high turbidity but they are also shallow with good light penetration.  OSS I find on nest and otherwise are consistently in shallower water than other sunfishes.  They also do not avoid clear water when it is present so long as it is shallow.

[smbass]

I was not familiar with the Topeka Shiner so I looked them up and found an old report of a NANFA outing on our own site where some were caught in 1997. They also caught longear sunfish. Longears certainly prefer clearer water than orangespotted so maybe it is not so much the requirements of the shiner poorly understood but just the wrong host sunfish species... In all likelihood either sunfish species will work under the appropriate conditions. 

 

As a side note that old trip report from 97 had a funny doctored photo of a rainbow darter and a bluntnose minnow using a seine to catch the people on the collecting trip. Also a giant crayfish in the background, maybe coming down the stream to decide which person was pretty enough to keep and which should be thrown back... http://www.nanfa.org...ks/kanscoll.htm

[olaf]

Look for lots of Topeka Shiner action in the next issue of AC in a few weeks.

[Josh Blaylock]

As a side note that old trip report from 97 had a funny doctored photo of a rainbow darter and a bluntnose minnow using a seine to catch the people on the collecting trip. Also a giant crayfish in the background, maybe coming down the stream to decide which person was pretty enough to keep and which should be thrown back... http://www.nanfa.org...ks/kanscoll.htm

 

That's a great photo, perhaps should be the NANFA logo, lol.

 

I do question your ID, I'd say that's E. spectabile. 

[BenCantrell]

I do question your ID, I'd say that's E. spectabile. 

 

Think so?  The dark saddles at the front and back of the first dorsal fin look like rainbow to me.  The red dots on the scales on the side toward the rear look like rainbow as well.

[Josh Blaylock]

 

Think so?  The dark saddles at the front and back of the first dorsal fin look like rainbow to me.  The red dots on the scales on the side toward the rear look like rainbow as well.

 

I do.  Also the trip report doesn't show any rainbows being caught, only Orangethroats.