http://www.heraldandnews.com/articles/2003/10/28/news/top_stories/top02.txt


Saving suckers with a shock


Dan Bennetts, a fishery biologist with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, releases endangered suckers into Upper Klamath Lake Monday. Bennetts and a co-worker retrieved 15 suckers from the C Canal near Henley.

published Oct. 28, 2003

By DYLAN DARLING

Endangered suckers still lingering in the A Canal are in for a shock.

An electric shock.

Fishery biologists with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation last week began to "salvage" suckers trapped in the receding waters of the A Canal, which was shut off for the season on Oct. 15.

The operation involves sending an electric current through a pool of water, which harmlessly stuns the fish and sends them floating to the top.

The fish are then gathered up and carted by pickup to Upper Klamath Lake so they don't dry up with the canal, stay trapped in isolated pools or become lunch for a gull, said Rich Piaskowski, a fishery biologist with the Bureau.

The Bureau has been salvaging suckers in canals and ditches of the Klamath Reclamation Project since 1991.

There has been a big drop in the number of fish they have scooped up this year, mostly because of the new fish screen at the A Canal's headgates, Piaskowski said.

"What we have seen so far suggests that the screen has performed very well," Piaskowski said.

From 1996 through 2002, Bureau workers would find thousands of suckers per year stuck in the A canal. The highest catch was 5,908 suckers, most of which were young, he said.

This year is a different story.

"We are in the hundreds at the most," he said.

To get the suckers out of the remaining water in the canals, the scientists use a 24-volt battery backpack and metal rod that looks like something straight out of "Ghostbusters."

Dan Bennetts, another Bureau fishery biologist, said the pack puts a gentle current of electricity through the water and stuns any nearby fish. The scientists capture any suckers and put them in tanks of oxygenated tanks in the back of a pickup.

The current lightly stuns the fish, making them temporarily immobile. After the current is cut off, the fish can move again.

"Anything we don't net will swim away," he said.

Outnumbering the suckers by far are Tui chubs and fathead minnows, small fish that are left behind and which will probably become food for the flocks of gulls hanging around the canals, Piaskowski said.

The suckers are taken to Moore Park, where they are plopped into the lake.

Salvaging the suckers makes for a few weeks of work for two to four people, Piaskowski said.

Monday, Bennetts and a co-worker were out looking for suckers near the Sixth Street bridge over the A Canal. They got skunked.

"There were no suckers," he said.

Earlier in the day they had better luck, netting 15 suckers from the C Canal out by Henley.

He said most of those suckers were older ones that had probably been living in the canal system since before the headgates were screened.

Piaskowski, said the scientists have been finding some suckers greater than 200 millimeters in length, which means they could be a couple of years old. He said these probably have been in the canals for a while, living though the winter in scant pools scattered around the canals, or came into the canals this year though a pumping station.

"Its an unknown at this point," he said.

But he is confident they didn't come through the new fish screen, which was designed to block all but the tiniest larval suckers from getting into the canal.

Reporter Dylan Darling covers natural resources. He can be reached at 885-4471, (800) 275-0982, or by e-mail at ddarling@heraldandnews.com.





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