Recently, Robert Lennox and Shannon Bower of Carleton U’s Fish Ecology and Conservation Physiology Laboratory traveled to Lillehammer, Norway for the EIFAAC International Recreational Fisheries Symposium. The symposium was attended by over 180 recreational fisheries professionals from 22 countries across four continents.
Robert Lennox
Both graduate students gave two talks at the symposium. Bower was awarded the NASCO prize for Best PhD Presentation for her talk entitled Using stakeholder input to guide rapid assessment research in the mahseer (Tor spp.) recreational fishery of the Cauvery River, India.
Lennox talked about the behaviour of Atlantic salmon after their release. “We tagged salmon with radio transmitters in Norway so that we could follow them as they ascended their spawning rivers. This allowed us to calculate survival of salmon that are released and identify factors that may contribute to the mortality of salmon in the fishery. In addition, we could look at how the movement of salmon is affected by catch-and-release by comparing the spawning location of uncaught salmon to salmon that were released. We found that salmon released by anglers have high survival and that their upriver movement is not affected by catch-and-release. However, we also found that released salmon tend to migrate shorter absolute distances than uncaptured salmon.”
Lennox points out that this topic is important because Atlantic salmon are declining in most nations. He says that Norway’s salmon fishery is extremely culturally and economically important and understanding of how the fishery can affect individual salmon which can contribute to the better management of fisheries.
“Catch-and-release is a potentially important management tool but it needs to be better understood for it to be implemented successfully and with full support from stakeholders. Our findings provide evidence that catch-and-release has the potential to provide considerable conservation benefits that would contribute to sustainable recreational salmon fisheries in Norway.”
Friday, June 19, 2015 in Grad Student Research
Share: Twitter, Facebook
