![]() ![]() As they expand, injuries occur, minor ones at first, but if the cells expand too much, the injuries can be fatal. As the fish is reeled in from the depths, the pressure decreases and those living cells begin to expand. The pressure that surrounds a fish in deep water has the affect of packing all of it's vital organs tightly. It’s a process called decompression and it occurs when any living thing undergoes a rapid transition from an environment of high ambient pressure relative to one where the ambient pressure is lower. It can be a big problem, especially when the fish are hungry and the angler believes that they're fishing for sport or when they’re “high-grading”, the practice of being super selective about which fish they harvest and which ones they won't.īoth of those practices can lead to the untimely demise of many fish and often times’ number far greater than the angler ever intended or expected to harvest. In fact you could say that catching fish in deep water isn’t a problem at all.īut releasing fish that are reeled in from the depths is a whole new ballgame. As long as we capture what we need put ‘em in the cooler and head home for the fish fry, it doesn’t matter whether we catch them shallow or deep. Panfish move into deep water and anglers, including me, move out there to catch them.įor many, gathering fish for a meal is the primary goal and when it is, catching them in deep water really isn’t a problem. It happens every fall and winter in my neck of the woods. Additional research is needed to determine the seasonal variation in incidence and consequences of barotrauma as well as the effectiveness of different depressurization techniques in the field that could be used during fishing tournaments.How Barotrauma Affects Released Fish - What We Don’t Know Might Kill Them - Jeff Sundin October 2019 This study revealed that the incidence of barotrauma in tournaments can be high moreover, outside of a laboratory environment, a significant proportion of fish with severe barotrauma may die after release. However, stress indices were higher in fish with barotrauma and tended to be highest among fish with barotrauma that died after release. All tournament fish had elevated levels of blood glucose and lactate. Conversely, we failed to observe any mortality in fish with negligible signs of barotrauma. ![]() At the end of the monitoring period, 20% of fish with severe barotrauma had died two additional individuals (20%) that were still at the release site were moribund (failed to respond to diver stimuli). Some fish with barotrauma floundered at the surface when released, and one of these fish was subsequently hit and killed by a boat. When telemetered fish were released at a common site, we determined that fish with negligible signs of barotrauma evacuated the release site more rapidly than fish with severe barotrauma did. Overall, 76% of fish had at least one sign of barotrauma (either hemorrhaging or swim bladder distention), but only 32% of fish had two or more indicators and were thus deemed to have severe barotrauma. At a fall competitive angling event on Rainy Lake in northwestern Ontario, we evaluated the incidence of barotrauma among tournament-caught smallmouth bass Micropterus dolomieu we then tagged and released a subset of fish that had severe barotrauma indicators and compared physiology, postrelease behavior, and fate between these fish and those with negligible signs of barotrauma. However, one aspect of tournaments that has received little attention is barotrauma. Much research on the fish physiological consequences of tournaments has been conducted to date and has provided anglers and tournament organizers with strategies for reducing stress and mortality. ![]()
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