In a matter of 2 days, we managed to tag, measure and record data for 5,331 pallid yearlings. There is no doubt that this was only made possible by the 28 sets of extra hands we had on station Aug 1-2. That's right, 28 people from 5 different stations and 4 different state or federal agencies showed up to help us get our sturgeon stocked. This included field and hatchery staff from Columbia Fish and Wildlife Conservation Office, Missouri Department of Conservation's Chillicothe Field Station, MDC's Blind Pony State Fish Hatchery, Nebraska Game and Parks Commission from Lincoln, NE, and Columbia US Geological Survey.
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| First a PIT tag is injected into the side of the fish just below the dorsal fin. |
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| The PIT tag is about the size of a grain of rice. |
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| Next, the PIT tag is read by a PIT tag reader and the 10-digit alphanumeric code is recorded by one of our computers. |
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The length and weight of each fish is measured and recorded into our tagging program.
We set up four stations, each with a laptop and all the equipment necessary to complete the above tasks. |
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| Some of the staff from the Columbia Fish and Wildlife Conservation Office (excluding Rod, our Assistant Manager, 2nd from left) |
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| Missouri Department of Conservation Staff (Other than Bruce Drecktrah, hatchery manager of Blind Pony State Fish Hatchery, the MDC staff in this picture are from the Chillicothe Field Office) |
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| Some of the crew from the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission |
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| US Geological Survey and Fish and Wildlife Conservation Office staff work together. Both groups drove down from their respective Columbia, MO offices. |
The group helped our hatchery complete what would have taken our small staff weeks if not months to do. Thanks to them we already have all 5,331 of these fish stocked in the river. Our last group of sturgeon from this tagging session went out today! We hope to see the sturgeon again soon in future mark-recapture studies.
