Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 793: The Mysteries of Gar Fish

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Ep. 793: The Mysteries of Gar Fish · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: If this is the me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening podcast, you
• 0:18
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  Speaker 2: Anything brought to you by first Light. When I'm hunting,
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  Speaker 2: dot com. That's f I R S T L I
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  Speaker 2: T E dot com. All right, Join today by Solomon David,
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: the gar guy who has a Garassic Park sticker. See,
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: I was sitting here thinking you were a big Jurassic
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: Park fan.
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  Speaker 3: I mean that too as well, But.
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  Speaker 4: Then I realized it's Garassic Park.
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: Why not vote Steve.
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: We're gonna get into that. We're gonna get into That's
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  Speaker 2: gonna be my first quest, but I don't want to
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: ask it yet. Solomon David is an aquatic ecologist an
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  Speaker 2: assistant professor, works on fish biodiversity, conservation, science, communication, and
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  Speaker 2: runs the Garlab. It's like a colloquial term. Garlab focuses
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: on the ecology of migratory and ancient fishes and how
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  Speaker 2: that research can help us better understand and conserve aquatic ecosystems.
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  Speaker 2: Additional projects involve conservation of Great Lakes migratory fishes. I'm
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  Speaker 2: assuming you mean the native ones. Yeah, Yeah, ancient sport
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  Speaker 2: fish e g. Guards, bowfins. We're gonna talk about what
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  Speaker 2: that means. Insert We're gonna talk about terms rough fish,
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  Speaker 2: trash fish, how those terms aren't really doing the best.
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  Speaker 2: They're doing a little bit of a disservice to some
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  Speaker 2: fish species. I'm going to call for you know what,
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: you know what Brody does, the indefensible law thing. I'm
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: going to call for a new law, and I'm gonna
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: tell you why people think it's a bad idea, and
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: then I'm going to refute that and explain why it's
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  Speaker 2: actually not, why it's good. It'll be how could people
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  Speaker 2: tell the difference? And I'll say between a game and
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: that's what will happen. And I'll say, I don't know,
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: how can we How can they tell the difference on ducks?
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  Speaker 2: Why is that? Okay, That's what I'm going to use
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  Speaker 2: on them. People. No one knows what I'm talking about.
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  Speaker 5: Ex I know exactly what you're talking about.
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  Speaker 2: You know where I'm going with this. So I'm going
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  Speaker 2: with this. Oh, here's a good one. A gar. A
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  Speaker 2: gar comes into a bar. Bartender says, why the long
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: face classic? I didn't make that up. It's in my note.
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  Speaker 2: Is that your joke?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I kind of you made that up. Yeah, for
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  Speaker 3: the moviet.
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  Speaker 6: Other people of its crowdsourcing too, so you know, people
• 2:57
  Speaker 6: do the punts for me these days.
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  Speaker 3: But started off artisanal.
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  Speaker 2: I'm holding in my hand an alligator guard. We're gonna
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  Speaker 2: talk about alligator guards too. And I read the thing
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  Speaker 2: that Krinn put down. I had no idea about. Don't
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  Speaker 2: answer this yet, you can answer like a little.
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  Speaker 5: Bit, all right.
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  Speaker 2: I had no idea that alligator guys were uping louis
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  Speaker 2: or up in Illinois.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, they're trying to bring them back they used to be.
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  Speaker 2: Had no idea. I think of that as like strictly
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  Speaker 2: like East Texas, Louisiana, no idea.
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  Speaker 7: That's almost an ice fishing state.
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  Speaker 8: And they even go further than Illinois.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, we're gonna talk about that. I didn't know any
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: of that. We're gonna talk a little bit about buffalo,
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  Speaker 2: not the animal, the fish. We're gonna talk about the fish. Buffalo.
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  Speaker 2: Here's what, here's what, here's how this whole thing came
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  Speaker 2: to be. There was an article like, I can't you know,
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  Speaker 2: I can't police everything that happens. I can't police everything.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: Now a little bit, I'm gonna complain about you fair enough.
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  Speaker 2: I'm gonna praise you and complain about it.
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  Speaker 3: Sounds about right.
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  Speaker 4: There was an article on.
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  Speaker 2: Our website on the meeater dot com and it was
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  Speaker 2: a bowfishing article and it use terms like rough fish
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  Speaker 2: as a catch all, which as a catch all like,
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  Speaker 2: and we were using that like. We didn't say trash
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  Speaker 2: fish as a kid. We used rough fish meaning non
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  Speaker 2: game fish, unregulated fish. So if you had if I
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  Speaker 2: was going to categorize and I think most people in
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  Speaker 2: the country would understand I'm tom about here. If I
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  Speaker 2: was going to categorize fish like in the most basic
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  Speaker 2: general terms would be uh, someone might be familiar with
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  Speaker 2: this lingo game fish okay, which would be like regulated
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  Speaker 2: fish that people sport fish for. Then there'd be a
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  Speaker 2: fish that they don't really have a word for, but
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  Speaker 2: it's like the no touch fish in my area stir okay,
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  Speaker 2: grown up Michigan and be like, no one would call
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  Speaker 2: a sturgeon a rough fish, but they're not a game fish.
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  Speaker 2: They're like no touch fish. And then rough fish would
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  Speaker 2: mean any fish that there's no regulatory structure in place,
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  Speaker 2: no close season, no bag limit, and method of take
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  Speaker 2: would be least regulated. And that's kind of what you
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  Speaker 2: would use the term for. It didn't mean you didn't
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  Speaker 2: want it, It didn't mean you didn't eat it.
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  Speaker 4: It just meant like.
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  Speaker 2: Wide open shad.
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  Speaker 7: Cart, you want to hear the orders.
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  Speaker 2: One of the rough fish term hell yes man.
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  Speaker 9: Originated in mid to late eighth nineteenth century commercial fishing
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  Speaker 9: practices to describe less valuable fish that were rough dressed,
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  Speaker 9: gutted but non flayed, and often discarded from river boats
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  Speaker 9: to reduce weight and prevent spoilage.
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  Speaker 4: Go back to the rough dress that's great.
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  Speaker 7: Yeah, gutted but not filaid.
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  Speaker 2: That's whe that comes from.
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  Speaker 7: And then it I'll buy that.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I was thinking about that this morning. Well, it
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  Speaker 2: wasn't showering.
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  Speaker 7: I thought it was like I thought it was a
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  Speaker 7: term that came from like English.
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  Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean they've got a term over there. I
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  Speaker 6: mean they used rough fish in a different context. It's
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  Speaker 6: not as negative as it here.
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  Speaker 3: What's that?
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  Speaker 2: Oh, they use they use it, Yeah, but they fish
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  Speaker 2: for they like name their cart Yeah yeah, yeah, well
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  Speaker 2: carper native departs of Europe too, so you know.
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  Speaker 6: But yeah, it's like with the here when they had
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  Speaker 6: the river boats, and they had the fully dressed fish,
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  Speaker 6: so that was full aid, the fish that had higher value,
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  Speaker 6: and then you've got the rough dressed fish, which I said,
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  Speaker 6: the guts taken out.
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  Speaker 3: And then when they had to make it, you know,
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  Speaker 3: to market in time.
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  Speaker 6: And navigate shallow waters and hot summers, they had to
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  Speaker 6: discard some of the catch and so they ditched the
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  Speaker 6: rough dressed fish first and they kept the you know,
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  Speaker 6: the fully dressed fish.
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  Speaker 2: Where was that?
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  Speaker 7: Oh?
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  Speaker 4: So we had this article.
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  Speaker 2: Come out and and and uh Solomon uh took a front.
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  Speaker 2: He wrote a mean email.
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  Speaker 3: The email.
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  Speaker 2: He wrote a mean email, being like, you're just contributing
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  Speaker 2: to the negativity. You're taking away from fish conservation, not
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  Speaker 2: respecting fish right your email.
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  Speaker 6: It's a I mean, that's all go to hell and die.
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  Speaker 6: That was in the post script that was in PS.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, that's how he ended it. I hope you
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  Speaker 4: go to Helen die. And he offered to.
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  Speaker 2: He said, sometime we should get together and talk about
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  Speaker 2: some of these issues. Now I trust I haven't looked
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  Speaker 2: by trust. You wrote very flattering nice emails when we
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: publish things like gar recipes. Yeah yeah, okay, we didn't
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  Speaker 2: dig those up. But no, And in all fairness, uh,
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  Speaker 2: in all fairness, Solomon David, the guard guy, wrote in
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  Speaker 2: saying talking about a lot of his work doing with
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  Speaker 2: native fish that get from from the perspective of like
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  Speaker 2: guys that grow up bowfish and guys that grow up
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  Speaker 2: whatever they get, a lot of these fragile native fish
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  Speaker 2: get kind of rolled into this category of trash fish
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  Speaker 2: or this category of rough fish. And we have these
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  Speaker 2: very loose regulatory structures, and people think they're out doing
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  Speaker 2: the world of favor by getting carp like non native
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  Speaker 2: carp out of a system or whatever. They think they're
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  Speaker 2: doing the world of favor. And meanwhile they are also
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  Speaker 2: unknowingly or knowingly laying waste to like pretty sensitive native
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  Speaker 2: fish and throwing them up on the bank and thinking
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  Speaker 2: that they're somehow helping it the world out. And it's like, uh, people,
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  Speaker 2: it's time for people to get a little more of
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  Speaker 2: a nuanced perspective of what fish are in their waterways.
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  Speaker 2: And I would argue it's time to get a little
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  Speaker 2: smarter about how we regulate these things. Let's start out.
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  Speaker 2: There's a lot of folks here, so we're gonna take
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  Speaker 2: turns asking questions. Let's start out by what what help
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  Speaker 2: tell people what the gar lab is?
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  Speaker 5: Right?
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  Speaker 2: And within that I got that, there's a second question.
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  Speaker 2: Aren't you making the same mistake because you're saying gar lab,
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  Speaker 2: but you're talking about stuff besides gar right, so you're
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  Speaker 2: lumping everybody into a GAR.
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  Speaker 6: Well, Steve, if you look at the Big ten conference,
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  Speaker 6: are we more than ten teams?
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  Speaker 2: Now?
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  Speaker 3: It's more of a name? You know, Well, you're a Michigan, right,
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  Speaker 3: you know we're.
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  Speaker 6: Now like, yeah, yeah, it's not ten, it's like eighteen
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  Speaker 6: teams now, so stupid, you know.
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  Speaker 2: It's more than we were straight honest, Yeah, you knew that.
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  Speaker 5: I knew that ten years. I didn't know how many
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  Speaker 5: exactly I knew the Big ten was.
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  Speaker 9: I went to Penn State, which was the first school
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  Speaker 9: that made the Big ten more than ten teams.
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  Speaker 8: There's also a conference called the Big twelve. That's not
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  Speaker 8: twelve types.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll look it up.
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  Speaker 6: Yeah, sure, So Big ten started with ten. Gar Labs
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  Speaker 6: started with guard But you know, now we're expanding there's
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  Speaker 6: a lot of non game native fish that you know,
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  Speaker 6: we want to work on, but.
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  Speaker 4: It started out working on guard.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's still the flagship group.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. So talk about the scope of the Gar.
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  Speaker 6: Lab, right, So we want to use these sort of native,
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  Speaker 6: non game fish, these underappreciated fish to answer questions about ecology, evolution,
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  Speaker 6: sustainable managements, just informing our understanding of conservation of aquatic
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  Speaker 6: ecosystems and also increasing our knowledge and also sort of
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  Speaker 6: sharing the value of freshwater biodiversity. So it's kind of
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  Speaker 6: a multifaceted thing. We use a small group of fish.
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  Speaker 6: I mean, there's only seven species of Gars, which is
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  Speaker 6: why we figured we had.
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  Speaker 3: To expand now.
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  Speaker 6: But in order to show that, you know, you can
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  Speaker 6: look at things like fisheries management, conservation, uh, native fish
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  Speaker 6: angling and consumption from just looking at some of these species.
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  Speaker 3: People who working on trout and walleye for ages. That
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  Speaker 3: stuff is being done. It's been done.
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  Speaker 2: So this is kind of a lot of money there. Yeah.
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  Speaker 6: Yeah, there's there's a lot more money there than there
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  Speaker 6: isn't Garn Boffen.
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  Speaker 2: Funding funding on Gar and Boff and work's got to
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: be a bit oh for sure, for sure.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, trying to get by.
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  Speaker 2: There's no like gar fishermen of of Michigan. Yeah.
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  Speaker 9: Yeah, but I feel like alligator gar have a good
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  Speaker 9: thing going.
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  Speaker 2: Now.
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  Speaker 3: That's that's one of that's kind of been improving for sure.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a that's become a destination fish. Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, all over the world, Texas and Louisiana.
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  Speaker 2: Oh seven gar. Let's play a game, all right, you
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  Speaker 2: can't play Okay, all right?
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  Speaker 8: Alligator gar spot like short nose, long nose.
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  Speaker 4: Oh, we got alligator spotted.
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  Speaker 8: Short long nose. I just ran out Florida Cuba. I
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  Speaker 8: can't think of what the last.
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  Speaker 2: I don't know about.
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  Speaker 8: Florida and Cuba are Florida and Cuba one.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, Florida gar and Cuban gar.
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  Speaker 8: Yeah, I don't know what the last one.
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  Speaker 6: There's one that runs from Mexico all the way down
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  Speaker 6: to Costa Rica. So you might call that range. What
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  Speaker 6: kind of range?
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  Speaker 3: Got temporary trol you got?
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  Speaker 7: You got tropical?
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  Speaker 3: Tropical? Yeah, tropical, yep, tropical gar.
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  Speaker 9: Do any of the none of the other ones get
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  Speaker 9: close to the size of this.
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  Speaker 2: No, yep.
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  Speaker 6: Even as far as what we know in the fossils,
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  Speaker 6: alligator gar a is still the.
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  Speaker 10: Biggest and then short nose compared to long nose, Like
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  Speaker 10: how many inches off are away from the max?
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  Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean short noses they max out around maybe
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  Speaker 6: thirty six inches. Long noses can get up to sixty
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  Speaker 6: inches sixty Yeah.
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  Speaker 4: That's our gar.
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  Speaker 9: What percentage of that long noses is?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, the long nose.
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  Speaker 6: The nose makes up you know, quite a significant amount that,
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  Speaker 6: So i'd say, you know, it's it's not twenty five percent,
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  Speaker 6: but it might be like ten or fifteen percent. Yeah,
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  Speaker 6: decent size. But even a short nose gar has a
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  Speaker 6: long nose, So it's all relative.
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  Speaker 5: Right.
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  Speaker 2: I want to get into what makes gar garden, why
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  Speaker 2: they're why they're special in what they do. But let's
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: let's just pasture this whole. Let's let's talk about some
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: terminology for me. Trash fish, rough fish, non game fish. Right,
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  Speaker 2: like in the sort of do you do you have
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  Speaker 2: any idea and it doesn't matter what state you draw
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: from in the regulatory structure, like.
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  Speaker 4: How did that come to be? Do you understand?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah?
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  Speaker 2: Like like like take Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, whatever, Like how
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: did it come to be that they that they create
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  Speaker 2: the categorization?
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  Speaker 6: Yeah, well, you know, we just we value some fish
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  Speaker 6: more than other fish, And so I think, yeah, I
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  Speaker 6: got to look at when you think about historical perspective,
• 13:56
  Speaker 6: it depends on where you're starting your history, right, So
• 13:59
  Speaker 6: when you're thinking about maybe modern fisheries management, what's been
• 14:02
  Speaker 6: going on for the past I don't know, fifty hundred years,
• 14:05
  Speaker 6: we're looking at largemouth bass and trout and salmon. Those
• 14:09
  Speaker 6: fish are valued because those are considered sport fish. People
• 14:12
  Speaker 6: like to eat them, maybe a significant portion of the
• 14:15
  Speaker 6: population likes to eat them. But there are other fish
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  Speaker 6: like suckers and gars and bowfins that were eaten by
• 14:22
  Speaker 6: indigenous peoples for a long time before that.
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  Speaker 9: What about like colonial a Maria recons or you know,
• 14:28
  Speaker 9: not even that, did they have a different view of
• 14:31
  Speaker 9: those fish or like, yeah, what we'd call rough fish?
• 14:35
  Speaker 6: Yeah, for sure, I think it's it gets kind of foggy,
• 14:37
  Speaker 6: you know, it is more of a colonial perspective when
• 14:40
  Speaker 6: you think about the fish that we value now, especially
• 14:43
  Speaker 6: if you look at a European influence, like they've got
• 14:45
  Speaker 6: trout over there, they've got fish that are kind of
• 14:47
  Speaker 6: like perch, fish that are kind of like walleye and
• 14:49
  Speaker 6: even walley took a little bit of time before people
• 14:51
  Speaker 6: saw those as a game fish, so that definitely had
• 14:54
  Speaker 6: an influence, whereas these other fish, people hadn't seen a
• 14:57
  Speaker 6: gar before before they came to North America, and they're
• 14:59
  Speaker 6: looking this like what, we can't filly this like you
• 15:02
  Speaker 6: would a walleye or a trout. You got to use
• 15:04
  Speaker 6: some sort of hatchet or you know, ten snips now
• 15:07
  Speaker 6: to do that. So those other fish kind of fell
• 15:10
  Speaker 6: by the wayside, and we value these, you know, the bass,
• 15:13
  Speaker 6: the trout, the salmon more and that just kind of
• 15:15
  Speaker 6: got wrapped up into fisheries management. So it started, like
• 15:18
  Speaker 6: we talked about with let's, you know, fully address some
• 15:21
  Speaker 6: of these fish that are considered valuable and some of
• 15:24
  Speaker 6: these other fish might be less valuable. So we're just
• 15:26
  Speaker 6: gonna take the guts out and if we got to
• 15:27
  Speaker 6: get rid of some of them, then we will. And
• 15:29
  Speaker 6: you know, you kind of follow the money. That's where
• 15:32
  Speaker 6: you know, we valued them. We didn't value others. And
• 15:35
  Speaker 6: you know, we did research that looked at even the
• 15:39
  Speaker 6: science behind these We've got way more research on steelhead
• 15:42
  Speaker 6: and largemouth bass and chinook salmon than we do on
• 15:45
  Speaker 6: even some of the sturgeon or the suckers. So we
• 15:48
  Speaker 6: like to think that science can attempt to be objective,
• 15:51
  Speaker 6: but we got to follow where the money is. Right,
• 15:52
  Speaker 6: We've got way more money to look at these game fish,
• 15:55
  Speaker 6: and now we're trying to play some ketch up here.
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  Speaker 6: So that's been going on, you know, hundred years back,
• 16:00
  Speaker 6: two hundred years back, when you're thinking about what was
• 16:03
  Speaker 6: historically valued by different peoples and what is now being valued,
• 16:07
  Speaker 6: and now we're just trying to make it a little
• 16:09
  Speaker 6: bit more you know, inclusive as far as biodiversity is considered,
• 16:12
  Speaker 6: Like why not you know, take care of all the
• 16:14
  Speaker 6: fish from a holistic ecosystem perspective, because when you do that,
• 16:18
  Speaker 6: that's good for everybody when you think about waterways, water quality, habitat,
• 16:22
  Speaker 6: that sort of thing.
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: Do you see if you ever visited with any archaeologists
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: on this issue, do you see much evidence of Native
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: American use of again, to define our terms, Native American
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: use of gar? Absolutely, suckers, I know that, But like
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: Native American use of gar and bowfin her dogfish.
• 16:46
  Speaker 6: Oh yeah, I mean you can look at even early illustrations,
• 16:49
  Speaker 6: you know, when we had you know, colonial explorers coming in,
• 16:52
  Speaker 6: I mean they sketch those out there are some early
• 16:55
  Speaker 6: documentation of indigenous people is actually sharing those fish, and
• 17:00
  Speaker 6: there was some I can't think of the reference right now,
• 17:02
  Speaker 6: but some of the colonists actually thought that, like, wow,
• 17:04
  Speaker 6: this fish actually is pretty good. But that switched or
• 17:06
  Speaker 6: you know that, we moved away from that pretty quickly.
• 17:09
  Speaker 6: But as far as archaeology, yeah, you find arrowheads that
• 17:12
  Speaker 6: were made out of gar scales. I mean, you look
• 17:13
  Speaker 6: at a big alligator guard.
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: They can use that. Those scales are basically made out
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: of tooth enamel.
• 17:17
  Speaker 6: So that's the hardest, you know, substance that our bodies produced,
• 17:21
  Speaker 6: so it's not like other fish. So yeah, they've been
• 17:23
  Speaker 6: part of human culture here in North America for a
• 17:25
  Speaker 6: long time. And what about both in though both in
• 17:28
  Speaker 6: as a food fish for sure. Yeah, even you know
• 17:31
  Speaker 6: that's a rough one.
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, you know it can be. It can be.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: I eat gars, no problem, Yeah, I like them.
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah, both and s tough.
• 17:37
  Speaker 6: Really, I look at Louisiana for six years. We ate
• 17:39
  Speaker 6: them all the time down there. Folks down there eat them.
• 17:42
  Speaker 6: I was able to try them, but people fish for
• 17:44
  Speaker 6: them alongside the roads. The big cane poles flip them
• 17:47
  Speaker 6: across the road. When they're getting them out of the bodyos.
• 17:49
  Speaker 6: But you can drive down the road and you can
• 17:51
  Speaker 6: see shoepick patties on the signs, So they call them
• 17:54
  Speaker 6: shoe pick down there, which is kind of a French
• 17:56
  Speaker 6: and Indigenous name for him. So it's a very popular
• 17:59
  Speaker 6: food fish down because.
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: The yeah, they're just like they just they have like
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: an over I find relative to other fish, they have
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: an overpowering flavor. Well.
• 18:15
  Speaker 6: They also they do turn to mush pretty fast, so
• 18:17
  Speaker 6: they call them cotton cotton fish because you know, they
• 18:21
  Speaker 6: got a bunch of different names, but because that flesh
• 18:23
  Speaker 6: turns to mush because they got these enzymes and just
• 18:25
  Speaker 6: start breaking it down. So when I was down in
• 18:27
  Speaker 6: Louisiana for the one of my first times down there,
• 18:30
  Speaker 6: went with a couple of professors there, they you know,
• 18:32
  Speaker 6: cook up anything.
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: Shout out to quent and fond and who can do this.
• 18:36
  Speaker 6: They got boffin put them in a bucket their air
• 18:38
  Speaker 6: breathers so they can survive the trip, you know, from
• 18:40
  Speaker 6: where we were back home to their place. One of
• 18:43
  Speaker 6: them got the fryer going. The other one took the
• 18:45
  Speaker 6: bowfin out of the back of the truck.
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: Still alive.
• 18:48
  Speaker 6: Because it can breathe there wax the head on the
• 18:51
  Speaker 6: back of the you know, on the tailgate, and then
• 18:53
  Speaker 6: immediately starts flaying that and then takes that flay and
• 18:55
  Speaker 6: throws into the fryer.
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: And that's basically what you have to do. You have
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: to basically process.
• 18:59
  Speaker 6: Them as as quickly as you can after you've you know,
• 19:02
  Speaker 6: dispatched the fish.
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: Otherwise it just.
• 19:04
  Speaker 6: Starts turning into goo. You can't throw that filet in
• 19:06
  Speaker 6: a freezer or anything like that. And it was delicious,
• 19:08
  Speaker 6: it was yeah hmm, try that. Yeah, I recommend it.
• 19:13
  Speaker 4: Why don't live in.
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: Both in country more? But we grew up in it,
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: you know.
• 19:16
  Speaker 6: Yeah, Michigan, Minnesota's got both, and I mean you don't
• 19:18
  Speaker 6: all you got short nose gar out here though.
• 19:20
  Speaker 7: So are they?
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I can't get excited about short nois not to
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: disparage them.
• 19:25
  Speaker 6: Yeah yeah, like along those guards, yeah.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, along in those gars like you can see like
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: along those guards and impressive fishes. Yeah. Yeah.
• 19:32
  Speaker 9: Are both end kind of self contained as far as
• 19:35
  Speaker 9: like it's just them.
• 19:35
  Speaker 7: They don't have other relatives.
• 19:38
  Speaker 6: There used to be way more and then recently as
• 19:41
  Speaker 6: part of a study where we actually split them into
• 19:43
  Speaker 6: two species. So but then I know, a hundred years
• 19:46
  Speaker 6: ago they thought there were maybe ten of them, and
• 19:48
  Speaker 6: then they're getting back to how understudy these fish are.
• 19:51
  Speaker 6: Scientists back then said, nope, there's not ten, there's just
• 19:53
  Speaker 6: one with no evidence whatsoever, like, yeah, ten's too many,
• 19:56
  Speaker 6: so we're going to condense that down. And then over
• 19:59
  Speaker 6: the year we found evidence from their morphology like their
• 20:02
  Speaker 6: shape and their genetics that there's actually evidence for two species.
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: And they're both pretty similar.
• 20:07
  Speaker 6: But one's more on the Atlantic coast down to Florida,
• 20:09
  Speaker 6: and when's from Michigan, Minnesota all the way down to Louisiana.
• 20:12
  Speaker 6: So we are still finding out new stuff about bofen
• 20:15
  Speaker 6: from what you can you know, eat, you can fish
• 20:17
  Speaker 6: from on the fly. They fight really hard to and yeah,
• 20:21
  Speaker 6: now there's two species instead of one.
• 20:22
  Speaker 5: How old are those species of gar?
• 20:24
  Speaker 6: They go, Gars go back to Jurassic era, Jurassic period stuff,
• 20:29
  Speaker 6: so one hundred and fifty million years for gars. That's
• 20:32
  Speaker 6: for the family like long nose gar, short nose gar,
• 20:34
  Speaker 6: they're about two and a half to five million years old.
• 20:36
  Speaker 5: And how much have they changed since then?
• 20:39
  Speaker 6: Very little, very little. So if you're to look at
• 20:41
  Speaker 6: a fossil garb and looked at a living guard. They
• 20:44
  Speaker 6: basically look the same.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Same, That's a question I had, and I want
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: to spend some more time on that. People will point
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: out like, well, let me start with one that's annoying.
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: People will say that's an ice age relic. I'm like,
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: you're an ice age like mice er. Yeah yeah, yeah,
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: I mean it's like a dumb thing to say, like
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: humans are around during the ice age. Yeah yeah, like
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: everything the name something that's not an ice age relative.
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: It's not like as a bunch of new species emerged
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: since the ice Age. Yeah yeah, so that's dumb. But
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: people will say that's from the dinosaurs. Yeah, Like what
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: what does that mean when we say the fish is ancient?
• 21:25
  Speaker 4: What do we mean that it's ancient? Like is a
• 21:28
  Speaker 4: walleye is not?
• 21:29
  Speaker 5: Yeah?
• 21:29
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you know what I mean, Like, help me understand
• 21:30
  Speaker 4: the relative quality here?
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah yeah.
• 21:33
  Speaker 6: So some fish, you know, and some organisms change at
• 21:36
  Speaker 6: a faster rate than other organisms. So when we think
• 21:39
  Speaker 6: about mutation, mutations what leads to evolutions. So organisms changing
• 21:42
  Speaker 6: over time, but some of them change slow, some of
• 21:44
  Speaker 6: them change fast, while I change faster. There was that
• 21:48
  Speaker 6: group of modern fish we're kind of lumping together called
• 21:50
  Speaker 6: tea lass, so walileye perch swordfish to another all part
• 21:53
  Speaker 6: of that group haven't been around as long as sturgeons
• 21:56
  Speaker 6: and gars. And that brings in this idea of a
• 21:58
  Speaker 6: living fossil, which sounds kind of paradoxical, right.
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: That's that's the one.
• 22:03
  Speaker 4: I'm talking about living fossil term. What the hell people mean?
• 22:06
  Speaker 6: Yeah, And so I feel like most people can kind
• 22:08
  Speaker 6: of get an idea of what that means, but evolutionary
• 22:11
  Speaker 6: biologists hate that term. They're going to, well, actually that
• 22:13
  Speaker 6: all the time because they'd be like, well, that means
• 22:15
  Speaker 6: that these animals haven't been evolving or anything like that.
• 22:18
  Speaker 6: Like everything's evolving constantly, as your DNA is replicating past
• 22:21
  Speaker 6: from one generation the next, but some change slower than others.
• 22:25
  Speaker 6: And so if you were to look at a gar
• 22:27
  Speaker 6: in the fossil record, looking the same as what the
• 22:29
  Speaker 6: shape of a gar looks like now, they have a
• 22:32
  Speaker 6: very slow evolutionary rate. So you go back to the
• 22:35
  Speaker 6: drastic period, they look basically the same as they do now.
• 22:38
  Speaker 6: If we're to look at something that might be Walleye's
• 22:41
  Speaker 6: early ancestors, they're going to look different than.
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: What a walleye.
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: They're not going to recognize them.
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you're not going to recognize them as much.
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: But I could be standing there, like at the same
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: time when there's a at the same time when there's
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: a Trannosaurus Rex on the planet. Yeah, I could be
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: staying there in my flashlight, yeah, shining into a marsh.
• 22:57
  Speaker 6: Yeah, and I'd be like, holy a gar Yeah yeah, yeah.
• 23:00
  Speaker 6: It does the same basic whereas look what happened to
• 23:03
  Speaker 6: t Rex. I mean their pickens are the you know.
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, chickens.
• 23:07
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 23:08
  Speaker 8: I've dug around for fossils in the Green River formation
• 23:11
  Speaker 8: in Wyoming, found a lot of different fish there. Most
• 23:14
  Speaker 8: of what you're getting are extinct species of herring and shad.
• 23:18
  Speaker 8: But sometimes you'll come across a gar scale that looks
• 23:21
  Speaker 8: just like a gar scale today. You also come across paddlefish,
• 23:24
  Speaker 8: these are fifty million year old fossils. You'll come across
• 23:28
  Speaker 8: skates that look like our skates today. But there's like
• 23:31
  Speaker 8: a handful of fish that when you see it, it's
• 23:33
  Speaker 8: it's just identical to what you would catch today. And
• 23:35
  Speaker 8: that's fifty million years old.
• 23:37
  Speaker 4: And at that time there was not a bluegill.
• 23:43
  Speaker 6: There might have been bluegill like fish, but definitely not
• 23:45
  Speaker 6: bluegill like we know them today.
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, sun he's spawning off them.
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 23:50
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: The dock probably wasn't there either, But you know.
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: Uh, they're a bone fish gar all the things we're
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: talking about, our bone cartilaginous fish.
• 24:01
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 24:01
  Speaker 6: Yeah, sturgeon and paddlefish are primarily cartilaginous fish. But that's
• 24:07
  Speaker 6: different from like the sharks and the raisin skates. So
• 24:09
  Speaker 6: you're all in that bony fish branch.
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: Can you real quick just because you know all this
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: like I know, it's not it's not we're here talk
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: about what I ascott a question? Yeah, can you explain
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: the fish to have like the nodo cord?
• 24:27
  Speaker 6: Yeah, like talk about that, yeah, explain to people. Yeah,
• 24:31
  Speaker 6: I mean notochords kind of an early it goes along
• 24:34
  Speaker 6: with your vertebral column, the spinal cord. So some early animals,
• 24:40
  Speaker 6: when you think about the lancelets of chordates, they had,
• 24:43
  Speaker 6: they had a note achord, but they didn't have a
• 24:45
  Speaker 6: true vertebral column. So for a while, there was this
• 24:49
  Speaker 6: idea that hagfish and lambreys didn't have what would consider
• 24:52
  Speaker 6: be vertebrae. So we didn't consider them vertebrates. We consider
• 24:56
  Speaker 6: them a little bit off from that. But now the
• 24:58
  Speaker 6: new research going back to the.
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: Fossil records suggest that hagfish and lamp ray are also vertebrates.
• 25:03
  Speaker 6: So the note achord sort of thing is an you know,
• 25:05
  Speaker 6: early structure, but now we're we're kind of past that.
• 25:09
  Speaker 6: So some fish, let's say, when you do talk about notochordscars.
• 25:12
  Speaker 6: When they're little, they've got a notochord that turns into
• 25:14
  Speaker 6: extends like a filament off the back side of the tail,
• 25:17
  Speaker 6: and they use that like little helicopter rotor. So when
• 25:19
  Speaker 6: they're little, they move like little sticks.
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: Through the water.
• 25:21
  Speaker 4: That's the notochord.
• 25:22
  Speaker 6: Yeah, but it's basically an extension of the notochord, and
• 25:25
  Speaker 6: as they get older that reduces down. They don't keep
• 25:28
  Speaker 6: that longer than their first year because eventually the physics
• 25:31
  Speaker 6: of water changes.
• 25:31
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 25:32
  Speaker 6: You kind of think of it as moving with a
• 25:33
  Speaker 6: little propeller. You're moving a little animal through there. As
• 25:35
  Speaker 6: they get bigger and bigger, that doesn't you can't propel
• 25:38
  Speaker 6: that through that anymore. And by then their scale is
• 25:40
  Speaker 6: hard and they're able to eat fish, but they move
• 25:42
  Speaker 6: their pectrol fins beating back and forth really rapid. Least
• 25:45
  Speaker 6: I've every got a chance. I think we got some
• 25:46
  Speaker 6: video we can send you too. But they move that
• 25:48
  Speaker 6: little notochord, that extension like a film it there. So
• 25:51
  Speaker 6: a lot of those early fish you can see them
• 25:53
  Speaker 6: both in even in pike they have a little one.
• 25:56
  Speaker 6: They don't use it the same way gars do, but
• 25:57
  Speaker 6: you will see a little bit of a note achord extension.
• 25:59
  Speaker 6: So you see that in early development of a lot
• 26:01
  Speaker 6: of vertebrates. But eventually that kind of goes by the wayside,
• 26:05
  Speaker 6: and you know, gets kind of overpowered by a lot
• 26:09
  Speaker 6: of other structures.
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: One of the more impressive things I've seen is I
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: was with my friend Kevin Murphy and we're fishing calfish.
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: But here comes a big paddlefish and got hit by
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: a boat prop kind of half dead, so I shot
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: it with my bow. I mean it was already a mass.
• 26:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it was fresh when he caught it, And.
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: That was a noise.
• 26:31
  Speaker 4: Pulling that note chord out to that was unbelievable site.
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, and.
• 26:35
  Speaker 7: It looks way longer.
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: Just draw it out. You seen that before, Yeah, yeah, it'll.
• 26:40
  Speaker 8: Come out like five times longer than the fish was.
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that was an unbelievable site, and that made me
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: think that that was like a very different kind of thing.
• 26:48
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, they you're also you know, you could
• 26:50
  Speaker 6: be pulling the spine like out of your pulling that
• 26:53
  Speaker 6: spinal cord out of the actual spinal calm. I'd have to,
• 26:56
  Speaker 6: you know, look into that for with the paddlefish and
• 26:59
  Speaker 6: the sturgeon, they're very similar.
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: But yeah, how long was that? Would you say?
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: Oh man, we got it on video? Long?
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: How did it taste though?
• 27:08
  Speaker 5: Fish?
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: Man? When you trim them up, When you trim them up,
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: they're good, but you gotta trim them carefully. It's like
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: shark and stuff, like, you gotta trim it all that red,
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: all that red. The fat's not good. You gotta get
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: the fat off. I think when you trim them up,
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: they're good.
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: I've had sturgeon, I haven't had paddle fish.
• 27:23
  Speaker 4: Now, shovel nose surgeon. That's not a good fish.
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they're they're pretty spiny.
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: You know. The yield is low. Yeah. Yeah, like you
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: clean it, there's nothing left. You feel bad you killed
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: the thing in the first place, and then you fry
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: it up and it's not good. Yeah. Yeah, that's been
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: my finding.
• 27:36
  Speaker 6: They form a white sturgeon though those are yeah, yeah,
• 27:39
  Speaker 6: that's a real good fish.
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: Uh okay, we're all let's talk about these ones for
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: a minute, because he's the big Like how alligator are
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: are becoming fashionable?
• 27:59
  Speaker 4: You would, yeah, I agree, Like your work is complete.
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: On alligator guard. And I recently saw that they're making it.
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: I think who was it, what state was trying to
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: make it that you can't shoot an alligator gar with
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: a boone anymore?
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: Oh?
• 28:12
  Speaker 4: Really, huh we're pushing for it.
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: Huh. And I remember being like, oh, brother a little bit.
• 28:18
  Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, I think they've definitely had a reputation improvement.
• 28:23
  Speaker 6: You think about shows like River Monsters that came out,
• 28:26
  Speaker 6: you know, almost twenty years ago now, Jeremy Wade going
• 28:29
  Speaker 6: out there. I remember yelling at the TV when that
• 28:31
  Speaker 6: episode was on because like, picture isn't right, that's not
• 28:34
  Speaker 6: the right thing. But you know, overall, I think that
• 28:36
  Speaker 6: was a win because you've got these big river fish
• 28:38
  Speaker 6: that people weren't paying attention to, and you had this
• 28:41
  Speaker 6: idea of the habitat's important. You can go and catch
• 28:44
  Speaker 6: these fish. They're not you know, monsters that are eating
• 28:47
  Speaker 6: people or anything. Like that, so I think that the
• 28:50
  Speaker 6: reputation has definitely improved. We went fishing down in Texas
• 28:53
  Speaker 6: with a Bubba Bedrie, you know, number one guar guide
• 28:56
  Speaker 6: in the world. He you know, took Jeremy Wade out
• 28:59
  Speaker 6: and he used to be a bowfisher, and he realized that,
• 29:02
  Speaker 6: you know, over the years, these big fish were going away.
• 29:04
  Speaker 6: He wasn't seeing nearly as many as they were out there,
• 29:07
  Speaker 6: and he realized, you know, if his livelihood is going
• 29:09
  Speaker 6: to depend on these fish, he's got to put him back.
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: And then, you know, now they're even more.
• 29:13
  Speaker 6: Valuable because people are coming from all over the world
• 29:15
  Speaker 6: to fish for them, catch them, and then also release them.
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah. One of my buddies in Michigan went down to
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: Texas to for a catch and release alligator.
• 29:24
  Speaker 6: Gar Yeah, yep, that's that's what most people do now.
• 29:27
  Speaker 6: I would say the majority are doing that. I mean,
• 29:28
  Speaker 6: there's still people at harvestom. They've got a one fish
• 29:31
  Speaker 6: per day limit that Texas Parks and Wildlife has put in.
• 29:33
  Speaker 6: They've got probably some of the most conservation oriented regulations
• 29:37
  Speaker 6: in Texas. You say that the job is done, I
• 29:40
  Speaker 6: don't think, you know, neuro joking, but the job isn't done.
• 29:42
  Speaker 6: You look next door in Louisiana also arguably one of
• 29:45
  Speaker 6: the healthiest gator gar populations in the world. There's no
• 29:48
  Speaker 6: regulations on them, so you can shoot as many as
• 29:51
  Speaker 6: you want. And the thing is these are giant fish.
• 29:53
  Speaker 6: We work with the fish rodeos there and we.
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: Shoo as many as you want. You can choose as
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: many of these as you want.
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, there's still limit.
• 30:00
  Speaker 9: Yeah, how long if someone's killing say one hundred pound
• 30:04
  Speaker 9: alligator gun, which is not nearly how as big as
• 30:07
  Speaker 9: they get, but one hundred pound er, Say, how long
• 30:10
  Speaker 9: does it take to replace that fish if someone kills one?
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: It depends on where you're coming from Texas.
• 30:16
  Speaker 6: There's different populations in the Trinity River versus coastal population.
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: So I've had students work on this.
• 30:20
  Speaker 6: When I was down in Louisiana, I'd lived there for
• 30:22
  Speaker 6: six years, and so those coastal populations have access to
• 30:25
  Speaker 6: different kinds of food, right, and gars can live in
• 30:28
  Speaker 6: full salt water. You'll find them with bull sharks and
• 30:30
  Speaker 6: sea turtles, you know, way off the golf there, so
• 30:33
  Speaker 6: they have access to food, but they can also go
• 30:35
  Speaker 6: into fresh water.
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: They mainly need the freshwater to.
• 30:37
  Speaker 8: Spawn or off the golf where you find them.
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: I mean you can find them.
• 30:40
  Speaker 6: Miles off the golf really yeah. Yeah, you go to
• 30:42
  Speaker 6: the aquarium, the Autumn Aquarium in New Orleans. They've got
• 30:44
  Speaker 6: them at sea turtles and tarpin of course, and then
• 30:47
  Speaker 6: all kinds of sharks, sand bar sharks.
• 30:48
  Speaker 8: What are they doing out there?
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: Is there like a motivation can forage out there?
• 30:51
  Speaker 6: I mean, it's other food that they can go after, so,
• 30:54
  Speaker 6: you know, if they can tolerate it, which all gars
• 30:56
  Speaker 6: can tolerate.
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: Saltwater for the most part. Long noses you can find
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: miles off the coat too, so highly adaptive.
• 31:03
  Speaker 6: And you know, I think some of the latest research
• 31:04
  Speaker 6: suggests that guards probably originated in salt water made their
• 31:07
  Speaker 6: under fresh water.
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: But is that right?
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that sort of paleontology gets flip flopped all the time.
• 31:11
  Speaker 5: Can they live in salt their whole life?
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: They can't.
• 31:13
  Speaker 6: They theoretically could, but they couldn't reproduce. They need that
• 31:17
  Speaker 6: fresh water for reproduction. Alligator gars in particular need submerged
• 31:22
  Speaker 6: terrestrial vegetation to spawn on, so they need that big
• 31:25
  Speaker 6: flood pulse. And you don't get those big floods every year,
• 31:28
  Speaker 6: so they have to take advantage. Think about the flood
• 31:30
  Speaker 6: nineteen twenty seven.
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: I think he needs he needs a dry land plant
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: that happens to be underwater to spawn.
• 31:39
  Speaker 6: Typically, and a lot of the rivers in the floodplains
• 31:41
  Speaker 6: where they spawn, they basically are spawning on submerged terrestrial vegetation.
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: Because to dry out for a while or what is it.
• 31:48
  Speaker 6: It's just that's kind of indicative of the floodplain being
• 31:51
  Speaker 6: submerged for a decent amount of time. Those eggs hatch,
• 31:54
  Speaker 6: They hatch in like maybe a day or two, depending
• 31:56
  Speaker 6: on water conditions and temperature, and.
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: Then they'll move out within that season.
• 32:00
  Speaker 6: But we've had alligator guards they hatch out about, you know,
• 32:04
  Speaker 6: less than half an inch long within a month, month
• 32:06
  Speaker 6: and a half. They can be twelve inches long within
• 32:08
  Speaker 6: their first season. Yeah, they grow fast.
• 32:11
  Speaker 9: Yeah, I want to get back to the age thing. Yeah,
• 32:15
  Speaker 9: like in the Trinity River in Texas, how old there
• 32:18
  Speaker 9: is one hundred pounder?
• 32:19
  Speaker 7: This is like a multipart question.
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, how old is it?
• 32:24
  Speaker 9: Have you seen like the average size of these things shrinking?
• 32:28
  Speaker 9: And then and then like how do they deal with
• 32:32
  Speaker 9: eating a chunk of dead cart with a treble hook
• 32:35
  Speaker 9: that goes way down its throat, like and you cut,
• 32:37
  Speaker 9: if you cut the line, does that thing do just fine?
• 32:39
  Speaker 5: Right? Right?
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: That is a serious questions.
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: I get it.
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, get them in while you can.
• 32:48
  Speaker 6: Yeah, So, like one hundred pound fish might be something like,
• 32:51
  Speaker 6: you know, five feet six feet long.
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: It depends so more.
• 32:54
  Speaker 6: We mainly go by length because depending you know, if
• 32:56
  Speaker 6: it's a gravid female, it's way way more. You could
• 32:59
  Speaker 6: be looking at a gravid's that means got lots of eggs.
• 33:02
  Speaker 7: Have you ever heard of that for egg wagon?
• 33:05
  Speaker 4: Yeah, there you go, that's what gravid means.
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what gravid means.
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: Never heard that word. I didn't hear that word before.
• 33:10
  Speaker 8: I worked at a fish Yeah, that's work with Solomon
• 33:13
  Speaker 8: for a decade.
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: That's right. For a minute, you heard that word brody yep,
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: doubt so.
• 33:20
  Speaker 6: Yeah, So you know, we go by lengths more than weight.
• 33:23
  Speaker 6: But that could be twenty years old, it could be
• 33:25
  Speaker 6: forty years old.
• 33:26
  Speaker 7: And that you're not talking like a hundred year old.
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: It could be so.
• 33:30
  Speaker 6: Males, if you got an alligator guard that's over six
• 33:32
  Speaker 6: feet long, that's typically going to be a female. Males
• 33:35
  Speaker 6: don't tend to get that big, so you could get
• 33:38
  Speaker 6: males that live for that long. But if you're talking
• 33:40
  Speaker 6: just six foot fish that we don't know what the
• 33:42
  Speaker 6: sex of it is twenty forty, but if it's an
• 33:45
  Speaker 6: old male, it could be sixty eighty.
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: We know they can live for over one hundred years.
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: I thought you're gonna have saying a lot older.
• 33:52
  Speaker 6: We don't know when you said they can hit twelve
• 33:53
  Speaker 6: inches how fast within a month and a half. But
• 33:57
  Speaker 6: if they're fed, they can reach two feet within that
• 34:00
  Speaker 6: first growing season. They can get big fast. Yeah, they
• 34:04
  Speaker 6: get huge. Even long nose gars can reach about We
• 34:06
  Speaker 6: got some out of Minnesota about fifteen inches long that
• 34:10
  Speaker 6: were born, you know, hatched out this year, and they
• 34:13
  Speaker 6: hatch out in May. You know, Michigan, Minnesota, it doesn't
• 34:15
  Speaker 6: stay warm that long, so I would have hatched out
• 34:18
  Speaker 6: in May. We caught one in August and it was
• 34:22
  Speaker 6: already about fifteen inches long.
• 34:23
  Speaker 9: And then does it slow way down after their first year.
• 34:26
  Speaker 6: In sort of temperate regions it slows down a bit
• 34:29
  Speaker 6: because of winter. But what we found in our work
• 34:31
  Speaker 6: is that they've actually evolved a faster growth rate in
• 34:33
  Speaker 6: the north than they are in the South, but they
• 34:35
  Speaker 6: live a shorter time in the South. If you're looking
• 34:37
  Speaker 6: at fish that are from the north versus the South,
• 34:39
  Speaker 6: alligator gars is a little bit different. So they can
• 34:42
  Speaker 6: live a long time, and they grow super fast because
• 34:45
  Speaker 6: they're eating fish. Gars switch to eating fish faster than
• 34:48
  Speaker 6: any other North American fish, faster than musky, faster than pike,
• 34:51
  Speaker 6: faster than fast.
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: They also like to eat each other. A good gar
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: shaped you know, fish to eat is another gar.
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: Got it?
• 34:57
  Speaker 5: What are they eating on that first day of life?
• 35:00
  Speaker 6: Yolk sack stuff, So I mean that's they've got the yolk,
• 35:03
  Speaker 6: which is also somewhat poisonous. So gar eggs are poisonous.
• 35:06
  Speaker 6: You're not going to find people making gar caviars. So
• 35:08
  Speaker 6: if you ever prepping that, I might have heard that,
• 35:10
  Speaker 6: Yeah forget it. Yeah it's pretty toxic. So they're they're
• 35:13
  Speaker 6: toxic for you know, the first few days, and then
• 35:16
  Speaker 6: once they absorbed that yolk sack, then they're eating plankton.
• 35:19
  Speaker 6: So usually like you know, daphnia, that sort oft of
• 35:21
  Speaker 6: a zooplankton. But what we found is what might actually
• 35:23
  Speaker 6: lead to the gars, alligator gar growing so big in
• 35:26
  Speaker 6: their first year is that their gills are a little
• 35:29
  Speaker 6: bit different than long nose gars and short nose gars.
• 35:31
  Speaker 6: They actually have a filtration aspect to their gills. And
• 35:34
  Speaker 6: we actually found an alligator gar that was about this
• 35:37
  Speaker 6: big down Louisiana and its stomach was full of plankton,
• 35:41
  Speaker 6: and so like balen Way, just yeah, exactly, it's like
• 35:44
  Speaker 6: imagine like a great white shark eating krill, which is
• 35:46
  Speaker 6: what you're looking at, because you don't think of an
• 35:47
  Speaker 6: alligator gar as a as a film theater.
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: And so my students, how's it getting from because that's
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: like feeding into his blood stream.
• 35:54
  Speaker 4: How's it getting like he's like raking it out?
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and then it somehow is getting as esophagus.
• 36:01
  Speaker 6: Yeah, yep, just like you know, paddlefish are filter feeders, right,
• 36:04
  Speaker 6: So alligator gars and the cuban and tropical gar have
• 36:07
  Speaker 6: gill rakers that work kind of like a sieve, and
• 36:09
  Speaker 6: so they can actually filter out the plankton and that
• 36:12
  Speaker 6: goes down their esophagus, like you said, whereas long nose
• 36:15
  Speaker 6: and short nosed gars, we got spoted gars the same day.
• 36:17
  Speaker 6: The gill rakers are very different. Nothing in their stomach,
• 36:20
  Speaker 6: but we didn't know what it was. We had this
• 36:21
  Speaker 6: frozen fish, and my students brought it up to me.
• 36:23
  Speaker 6: It's like, we don't know what this is in the
• 36:24
  Speaker 6: stomach because I'm always doing paperwork. So I tell the
• 36:26
  Speaker 6: students and they're doing dissection, let me know if you
• 36:28
  Speaker 6: find anything cool. We found half a giant rat in
• 36:30
  Speaker 6: a bofend once. We found all kinds of stuff, but
• 36:33
  Speaker 6: they said, we found some in the stomach.
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: We don't know what it is.
• 36:35
  Speaker 6: It looks like a popsicle, and so I'm like, well,
• 36:37
  Speaker 6: there's a frozen fish. So I said, let's take a
• 36:40
  Speaker 6: look at it. We dissected it and I was they're
• 36:42
  Speaker 6: chopping it up. I'm like, this looks really weird. Reminds
• 36:44
  Speaker 6: me of some fish food I used to feed to
• 36:45
  Speaker 6: fish at home. I have gars and aquariums at home too,
• 36:48
  Speaker 6: And so Ransom water over it and started like melting
• 36:50
  Speaker 6: into these particles and that this is really weird. It's
• 36:52
  Speaker 6: bright orange too. I'm kind of like Kriller crotenoid organisms orange.
• 36:56
  Speaker 6: And so we liked under the microscope and it was
• 36:58
  Speaker 6: all copa pods and the stomach was all of this.
• 37:00
  Speaker 6: And so up until then it only been anecdotal, you know,
• 37:03
  Speaker 6: stories about them, maybe filter feeding in Mexico and other places.
• 37:07
  Speaker 6: So we think being able to take advantage of those
• 37:09
  Speaker 6: other food types allows them to grow that big. I'm
• 37:11
  Speaker 6: thinking about whales, right, they're getting that big, you know,
• 37:14
  Speaker 6: eating those smaller food items.
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: So not only are they eating shad and mullet.
• 37:18
  Speaker 6: But they're actually able to eat these other fish too.
• 37:20
  Speaker 6: So there's a lot left to be discovered about these fish.
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: Well that's pretty crazy.
• 37:24
  Speaker 9: So how do they deal with like as far as
• 37:27
  Speaker 9: mortality and stuff with a great big rusty because when
• 37:30
  Speaker 9: people are fishing for them, they're letting them chew on
• 37:33
  Speaker 9: that chunk of dead bait for a minute, then they're in.
• 37:38
  Speaker 3: I don't know, usually they try to retrieve it.
• 37:40
  Speaker 6: I know that a lot of anglers now are trying
• 37:43
  Speaker 6: to use just circle hooks or jay hooks as opposed
• 37:45
  Speaker 6: to the treble hooks. There's even when I included a
• 37:48
  Speaker 6: picture of this, they come up with a gar saver
• 37:50
  Speaker 6: rig which actually has a bar so the gar can't
• 37:53
  Speaker 6: actually take it down into its stomach.
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: Oh, really keeps it in the jaws.
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like a crossbar.
• 37:59
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 37:59
  Speaker 6: So that way it allows the you know, hook to
• 38:01
  Speaker 6: get stuck in the jaws, which are easy to retrieve,
• 38:04
  Speaker 6: but it doesn't go all the way down to the stomach,
• 38:05
  Speaker 6: because yeah, you could gut hook a fish and that
• 38:08
  Speaker 6: could be you know, problematic.
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: It's it's hard to say.
• 38:11
  Speaker 6: We know so little about these fish that even looking
• 38:14
  Speaker 6: at catch and release mortality with the hooks like that
• 38:16
  Speaker 6: is understudied. We know it's you know, less mortality than
• 38:19
  Speaker 6: you know, bowfishing or bowfish catch and release, which does exist.
• 38:22
  Speaker 4: But so that exists, Yeah, yeah.
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: But it exists, but it doesn't exist where they're picturing
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: that it's going to live to be shot.
• 38:30
  Speaker 4: Another day, believe it or not.
• 38:32
  Speaker 6: In eight states catch and release bowfishing. Shoot and release
• 38:35
  Speaker 6: bowfishing is legal.
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: And that's not that just de burdens them to deal with, right.
• 38:43
  Speaker 6: Well, that's when there's been conversations about changing that regulation,
• 38:47
  Speaker 6: like let's make shoot and release bowfishing not legal, which
• 38:50
  Speaker 6: seems reasonable. Would you shoot and release the you know,
• 38:53
  Speaker 6: a deer duck or something like that and just kind
• 38:55
  Speaker 6: of leave it behind.
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: The argument is that all those fish are okay.
• 39:00
  Speaker 7: Because they're just so tough, like they just hard.
• 39:02
  Speaker 6: To you know anecdotic like, oh, you know, I've shot
• 39:04
  Speaker 6: a bunch of fish you know, and I'm paraphrasing, overnight
• 39:07
  Speaker 6: the next day we shot maybe one hundred two hundred
• 39:10
  Speaker 6: fish suckers are and the next day there weren't any
• 39:12
  Speaker 6: of them around, So they must have been fine or
• 39:15
  Speaker 6: they all sunk.
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: To the most people they get shot by a gun
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: don't die, right, right, But it's not like it's not
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: like when you shoot people. It's not like a shoot
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: and release. Yeah, what you're not thinking of it that way, right,
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: and so like, yeah, chances are that's weird. Yeah, I
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: don't think that the shooter is thinking a bit like that.
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: I think the shooters like, oh sweet, I don't need
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: to even deal with it, right, Yeah, it's a it's
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: they shake it off the air up there.
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: And then they kind of leave it.
• 39:43
  Speaker 6: But then they've done studies to look at shoot and
• 39:45
  Speaker 6: release mortality where they've you know, shot them and looked
• 39:47
  Speaker 6: at them. Depending on where the you know, animal gets shot,
• 39:50
  Speaker 6: that depends on how it's going to survive, how long
• 39:52
  Speaker 6: it's going to survive. Within twenty four hours, if it's
• 39:54
  Speaker 6: in the head or the spine, that fish is dead, sure,
• 39:57
  Speaker 6: but even after that, if it's somewhere else. It was
• 39:59
  Speaker 6: over fifty percent, you know, seventy two hours later, So
• 40:03
  Speaker 6: that's one of that's.
• 40:04
  Speaker 4: True, but that's true of like most not on my yeah,
• 40:08
  Speaker 4: most deer.
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, well okay, Spencer, what percent of deer that
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: aren't this is impossible to answer.
• 40:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah, what percent of.
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: Deer that aren't recovered archery shot white tails that aren't recovered?
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: What percent do you think.
• 40:25
  Speaker 8: Die that aren't recovered? What percent die in like the
• 40:30
  Speaker 8: next couple of days. I would say fifty percent. By
• 40:34
  Speaker 8: like the end of that following winter, probably another ten
• 40:37
  Speaker 8: or twenty percent, So that leaves like thirty percent to
• 40:40
  Speaker 8: survive for the next hunting season.
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, just to guess. My only point being, I think
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: that anyone that acts like they're shooting that air under
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: that fish as a way of letting it go is
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: being cute with themselves.
• 40:51
  Speaker 10: Yeah.
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree, it's like absurd, and I think that's
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: what you know you.
• 40:56
  Speaker 4: Said about everything. But hey, sometimes you hit a duck
• 40:58
  Speaker 4: and it doesn't die. Yeah, this is no different than that.
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: Well, no, it's different.
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 41:03
  Speaker 6: Well, ducks are managed, right, deer managed, So that's part
• 41:05
  Speaker 6: of the reason why we're looking why not just manage
• 41:07
  Speaker 6: these populations put a limit on it, you know, as
• 41:09
  Speaker 6: opposed to shoot a thousand and then there's you know,
• 41:12
  Speaker 6: what are you doing with them?
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: If you're eating a thousand gar? Like, my hat's off
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: to you.
• 41:16
  Speaker 6: But even as much as I like eating gar, I'm
• 41:18
  Speaker 6: not eating a thousand car But not to not to
• 41:21
  Speaker 6: digress too much from that.
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: No, no, are you question good?
• 41:25
  Speaker 5: Okay?
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: I think so I.
• 41:29
  Speaker 7: Could go on all day.
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: I was thinking of a different parallel. I was trying
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: to think of this morning. I was trying to think
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: of different parallels in the bird world and bird management.
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: We've accounted like, we've accounted for all birds in bird
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: management because we have the migratory and song bird treat like.
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: We have a couple non native.
• 41:50
  Speaker 4: We have a handful of non native deleterious English sparrows,
• 41:55
  Speaker 4: European starlings, Colombo Olivia, the street pigeon.
• 41:59
  Speaker 7: You can kill as many as you want, but no
• 42:01
  Speaker 7: one does.
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: Collared dove. Okay, we have a handful of like Dela teers,
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: so like very much deleterious non native.
• 42:11
  Speaker 4: We have all our game birds. We don't have loose
• 42:14
  Speaker 4: ends in the bird world. But then I start thinking
• 42:17
  Speaker 4: in the mammal world, we have a lot of loose
• 42:20
  Speaker 4: ends in the mammal world, where you have there's a
• 42:24
  Speaker 4: host of like non game species that are some of
• 42:29
  Speaker 4: them are desired, Like most states will run a possums,
• 42:33
  Speaker 4: Most states are gonna run skunks. Most states are gonna
• 42:36
  Speaker 4: run short tail, long tail, least weasel, non game. Those
• 42:40
  Speaker 4: are all native animals.
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: Right, So there's a parallel there where you just have
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: this kind of like loosey goosey configuration and.
• 42:47
  Speaker 7: It varies by state.
• 42:50
  Speaker 9: Oh yeah, like there's animals here that would be fur
• 42:53
  Speaker 9: bearers and other like highly regulated.
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah they run they run red Fox in this state.
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: They run Red Fox is an on game, no close season,
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: no bag limit. They're tightly regulated in other states. So
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: it's like, so with birds, we've kind of like sort
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: of made every bird has its area of regulatory structure.
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: With animals, we don't, and with fish we definitely don't like.
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: And with fish, I think the problem is with fish
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: is we don't even have there's not even like a
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: native non native distinction like you would think a state
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: would say, ah, well, this gets so complicated because in
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: my notes, you know what I wrote my notes bowfishing
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: conundrum and the Ranella solution a nice part of the problem.
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: Part of the problem is in a lot of the
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: big bowfishing states, they made it a long time ago
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: that you can't hunt the good eating fish everybody to hunt.
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: They're not good eating fish. In South America, they bowfish.
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: Like I've been out, both fished South America. You're after
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: the best fish in the in the river. Because they
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: bothfish the really good ones. So they've boxed dudes in
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: and like, you can't bothfish this. You can't both fish that.
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: You can't both fish this. So it is putting a
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: lot of emphasis on these other things. But I do
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: think it's ridiculous to me that a state agency wouldn't
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: come in and say, if they're gonna be like that
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: and they're not gonna let you both fish the good stuff,
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: a state agency see would come and say, non native
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: deleterious fish are open all the time, and there's a
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: you can there's no close season, there's no bag limit,
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: and there's a very loose method of take structure. Native
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: fish have bag limits. Yeah, But like they're what they're
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: gonna say is people can't tell the difference.
• 44:53
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: This is when I was talking about this earlier. They're
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: gonna like, well, how could you expect someone to tell
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: a cart from a buffalo. I'd be like, I don't know.
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: How can you expect them to tell a pit a
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: wigeon from a gadwin exactly, from a mautland from a
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: wood duck? Right? How can you? Like, you you're obligated
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: to tell all kinds of shit? How can you tell
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: a deer's antler is over or under three inches long?
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: I don't know, Like you figure it out.
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
• 45:19
  Speaker 6: That's what we'd like to do, is just let's get
• 45:21
  Speaker 6: some at least attempt at some equal application of that
• 45:24
  Speaker 6: onto fish. And I will say that Minnesota very recently,
• 45:27
  Speaker 6: in twenty twenty four, enacted the most comprehensive Native Fish
• 45:31
  Speaker 6: Conservation Bill and put it into law where they did
• 45:34
  Speaker 6: one of the first things.
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: Are you the lobbyist on that, you know, I'm one
• 45:36
  Speaker 3: of the advocates for it.
• 45:38
  Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, I did that even from down in Louisiana
• 45:40
  Speaker 6: before I had any inklings of coming up to Minnesota.
• 45:43
  Speaker 6: But so they did separate common carp from the other
• 45:47
  Speaker 6: native non game fish. That was one of the first
• 45:49
  Speaker 6: things they did, because they call him now native rough fish,
• 45:51
  Speaker 6: which are like it's the least worst name because he's
• 45:53
  Speaker 6: still got the rough fish.
• 45:54
  Speaker 4: But at least.
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: Where it came from.
• 45:58
  Speaker 6: Oh yeah, yeah, And I'm not I'm not worried about
• 46:00
  Speaker 6: the names much as now that we can get the
• 46:01
  Speaker 6: work done. So if we've got the separation there, I'm
• 46:04
  Speaker 6: not as concerned at least on some level, with the
• 46:07
  Speaker 6: naming so much as we've got a category that separates
• 46:11
  Speaker 6: the common carp the other invasive carp from our buffalo,
• 46:14
  Speaker 6: our gars are boffins. And it's allowing us to then
• 46:17
  Speaker 6: have restitution values. So if you have wanton waste, there's
• 46:21
  Speaker 6: a penalty for walleye and bass. I think it's like
• 46:24
  Speaker 6: something like thirty bucks a walleye if you have, you know,
• 46:26
  Speaker 6: want and waste for walleye and a lot of the
• 46:28
  Speaker 6: game fish. So even if they had like a negligible
• 46:32
  Speaker 6: amount for you know, buffalo or bofen or gar, I
• 46:34
  Speaker 6: mean that would start racking up.
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 46:36
  Speaker 6: So we've got some regulation there and we're going in
• 46:40
  Speaker 6: the right direction. And so Minnesota's kind of leading the
• 46:42
  Speaker 6: charge with that. I've got colleagues in Michigan that want
• 46:44
  Speaker 6: to do the same thing. Wisconsin. We've got colleagues in Oklahoma.
• 46:47
  Speaker 6: So I do think it's something that's going to start
• 46:50
  Speaker 6: catching on. We know that it's already catching on. And
• 46:53
  Speaker 6: these native fish have been here for you know, longer
• 46:55
  Speaker 6: than we have. So I think if we can get
• 46:58
  Speaker 6: past the sort of human construct of this game fish,
• 47:01
  Speaker 6: this is the valuable one and this is not the
• 47:03
  Speaker 6: valuable one. And just look at a base level, let's
• 47:06
  Speaker 6: apply what we do to duck.
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: Hunting to fish. You have to be able to tell
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: the difference.
• 47:10
  Speaker 6: Like, sure, a buffalo, you know, looks similar to a
• 47:12
  Speaker 6: carp i'll, i'll, you know, agree with that, but we
• 47:15
  Speaker 6: hear from both fishers. Well, it takes a lot of
• 47:17
  Speaker 6: skill that you know, you know, over a company excuse me,
• 47:20
  Speaker 6: a comb accommodate for the refractive index of water. Right,
• 47:23
  Speaker 6: so you already have to pay a lot of attention.
• 47:26
  Speaker 6: How about we apply that to just look, does it
• 47:28
  Speaker 6: have barballs? Is the scale type different? What does the
• 47:30
  Speaker 6: dorsal fin look like? Apply that and then also just
• 47:33
  Speaker 6: these wanton waste limits, like I mean, is there really
• 47:35
  Speaker 6: a reason to shoot a thousand gar, hundreds and hundreds
• 47:38
  Speaker 6: of buffalo if you're not eating them? You look at
• 47:40
  Speaker 6: the you know, North American model for wildlife conservation. That third,
• 47:43
  Speaker 6: you know point there of like not a frivolous use
• 47:46
  Speaker 6: for you know, killing the animal.
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: And I've had buffalo ribs of at garave at bofen.
• 47:50
  Speaker 6: Hopefully you try that sometime soon, but there are uses
• 47:52
  Speaker 6: for that, right, So it's sort of an eat what
• 47:54
  Speaker 6: you kill and be able to identify it.
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: I won't be clear. I've tried it, yeah, yeah, but
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: I think I might I might have waited too long.
• 48:00
  Speaker 9: Right, Is there a lot of evidence for non native
• 48:04
  Speaker 9: species like common carp, Asian carp impacting or other non natives,
• 48:10
  Speaker 9: non native game fish like impacting these native rough fish species.
• 48:15
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean the the non native Well yeah, so
• 48:18
  Speaker 6: we can take that as the the invasive fish, right,
• 48:20
  Speaker 6: I mean because you can. Non native is a pretty
• 48:22
  Speaker 6: you know, interesting term, you know. Right, you look in
• 48:24
  Speaker 6: the Great Lakes Range and we've got steelhead, we got
• 48:26
  Speaker 6: shinok sanmar but those aren't invasives, right, yeah, it's like, yeah,
• 48:32
  Speaker 6: so carp and you know, like so common carp and
• 48:34
  Speaker 6: the invasive carp like the silver carp and the big
• 48:36
  Speaker 6: head carp, especially the silver in the big head they
• 48:38
  Speaker 6: eat planktons, so they're actually attacking the food web at
• 48:41
  Speaker 6: the bottom of the food web, and that's what all
• 48:43
  Speaker 6: the little fish, whether they're game fish or other native fish,
• 48:46
  Speaker 6: they need to eat to grow, and so they are
• 48:48
  Speaker 6: actually you know, opening up for a potential trophic cascade
• 48:51
  Speaker 6: from basically the bottom up. So they are problematic and
• 48:53
  Speaker 6: they reproduce very fast. They get really big, really fast.
• 48:57
  Speaker 6: Common carp they you know, they stir up the water,
• 49:00
  Speaker 6: they remove vegetation, and they're super durable fish. So, I mean,
• 49:04
  Speaker 6: those are problems that we've let in and we can't
• 49:06
  Speaker 6: eradicate those. It's all about control there. So they do
• 49:09
  Speaker 6: affect the native fish. Now on the other end of
• 49:11
  Speaker 6: the big mouth buffalo is a plank tivorous fish. It's
• 49:13
  Speaker 6: one of our biggest plank divors. They actually compete with
• 49:16
  Speaker 6: the silver carp and the big head carp. So, you know,
• 49:19
  Speaker 6: as we work on controlling for invasive pieces, but also
• 49:22
  Speaker 6: just bolstering and maybe protecting some of those native fish.
• 49:25
  Speaker 6: Maybe if if it's just limits, you're actually creating more
• 49:28
  Speaker 6: resilient system to buffer against those invasive pieces.
• 49:31
  Speaker 9: So there's no like advantage either like carp or I mean,
• 49:35
  Speaker 9: gar aren't taking advantage of all these little Asian carp.
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: They are. They are.
• 49:40
  Speaker 6: There's been a study down I think it was out
• 49:42
  Speaker 6: of Indiana or Illinois which actually showed that shorten noes
• 49:44
  Speaker 6: gar were one of the few native predators are actually
• 49:47
  Speaker 6: we're selecting for invasive carps. So they were eating the
• 49:50
  Speaker 6: silver carp in the big head carp. The thing is
• 49:52
  Speaker 6: those are top predators, right. There's not going to be
• 49:54
  Speaker 6: enough gars to eat all of the invasive car so
• 49:58
  Speaker 6: it helps. It's a nice story when you got a
• 50:00
  Speaker 6: native fish that can help you out against invasive fish.
• 50:02
  Speaker 3: Whitefish like whitefish.
• 50:03
  Speaker 6: And like michigan eat zebra muscles, but they're not going
• 50:06
  Speaker 6: to solve the zebra muscle problem. There was a story,
• 50:09
  Speaker 6: you know, that came up back in twenty sixteen where
• 50:11
  Speaker 6: that really was starting to rehab the gator gar reputation
• 50:14
  Speaker 6: was like a way to control invasive carp was alligator gars.
• 50:17
  Speaker 6: And this gets to them restocking them in Illinois. It's like, well,
• 50:20
  Speaker 6: we get the alligator gars, that's going to be our
• 50:22
  Speaker 6: silver bullet. There was nowhere near enough alligator gars there
• 50:24
  Speaker 6: never will be to control for the silver carp. And
• 50:27
  Speaker 6: those of us that were you know, interviewed for the
• 50:29
  Speaker 6: story that said like, eh, you should probably pump the
• 50:31
  Speaker 6: brakes on that. That was kind of left out of
• 50:33
  Speaker 6: that story because the AP ran with it. It went
• 50:36
  Speaker 6: everywhere Washington Post, La Times, and they eventually had to
• 50:39
  Speaker 6: do retractions along with the Illinois DNR that had to
• 50:41
  Speaker 6: walk it back. Illinois d and rn't realized that this
• 50:43
  Speaker 6: is not the story we want to tell, like this
• 50:45
  Speaker 6: is what the science says, So you know.
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: We kept that kind they kept run away with like
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: these books, like guys will do a book like or
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: I'd eat nothing, but I eat nothing but non native species.
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: As a conservationist, it's like, well, you're not gonna eat
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: your way out of it, right right, Yeah, yeah.
• 51:03
  Speaker 7: Man.
• 51:05
  Speaker 8: Gar are also, in my observations, pretty inefficient predators, at
• 51:10
  Speaker 8: least short nose and long nose. I used to have
• 51:12
  Speaker 8: to take care of them at our aquarium at the
• 51:14
  Speaker 8: fish Atry Aquarium, And when you dump minnows into like
• 51:17
  Speaker 8: a gar tank, they'll roll up next to the minnow
• 51:20
  Speaker 8: and then they'll like do a very sudden swipe in
• 51:23
  Speaker 8: them and it would be like fifty percent of the
• 51:25
  Speaker 8: time they would get their meno. Now, a bass does
• 51:27
  Speaker 8: not miss like that. A walleye doesn't miss like that,
• 51:30
  Speaker 8: but like long nose gar especially, we're very bad at
• 51:33
  Speaker 8: catching a healthy manuow.
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: Or it's because he doesn't have the suction. Yeah, he's
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: he's just like his mouth, he doesn't create a vacuum.
• 51:40
  Speaker 8: It seemed as though he was guessing often where his
• 51:43
  Speaker 8: like rostrum was gonna end.
• 51:45
  Speaker 3: It's just not fair. Go ahead, yeah, yeah.
• 51:47
  Speaker 8: Do you see that with alligator gar You like that
• 51:49
  Speaker 8: thing is not very good at catching like an adult fish.
• 51:52
  Speaker 6: Well, first, I'd say if they weren't good at catching fish,
• 51:55
  Speaker 6: they wouldn't be around for you know, one hundred and
• 51:56
  Speaker 6: fifty millionars.
• 51:57
  Speaker 3: So clear they're doing some.
• 51:58
  Speaker 6: But I agree with you captive situations and we see
• 52:01
  Speaker 6: this in aquariums and and hatter in our tanks in
• 52:04
  Speaker 6: the lab there. You know, it's like the t rex
• 52:06
  Speaker 6: and Jurassic Park. It doesn't want to be fed at
• 52:08
  Speaker 6: once to hunt, and so, like you get used to
• 52:10
  Speaker 6: captivity and so they realize like they don't have to
• 52:13
  Speaker 6: you know, connect every single time. Alongo's got a lot
• 52:16
  Speaker 6: of range. They might be used to, you know, you know,
• 52:19
  Speaker 6: going after fish in the open water, and so it's
• 52:22
  Speaker 6: a little bit different dynamics than if you're in a
• 52:24
  Speaker 6: rounded tank or a raceway and you got all those
• 52:26
  Speaker 6: fish that can kind of navigate a little bit better.
• 52:28
  Speaker 3: So I will agree they do miss.
• 52:30
  Speaker 6: But you know, you watch a wildlife documentary, the cheetah
• 52:32
  Speaker 6: doesn't catch the gazelle every time either, So yeah, take like.
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: A little baby human and lock it up with and
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: then a couple of years later you like, oh, I
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: don't see these things not that smart.
• 52:42
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 52:43
  Speaker 8: My takeaway from watching gar feed was that they're picking
• 52:46
  Speaker 8: on not the healthy individual, right, which is.
• 52:48
  Speaker 3: What predators would do in the wild anyway, right.
• 52:50
  Speaker 6: But gars in captivity actually have smaller teeth than the
• 52:53
  Speaker 6: gars in the wild, So when we catch them out
• 52:54
  Speaker 6: of the wild, they got bigger teeth, which makes sense, right,
• 52:57
  Speaker 6: So if you're not using you know that, you know
• 52:59
  Speaker 6: what you're white put energy into sort of you know,
• 53:01
  Speaker 6: generating or growing bigger teeth.
• 53:03
  Speaker 9: Do they scavenge at all? Or is it mostly because
• 53:06
  Speaker 9: I mean for these guys a lot of dead baits?
• 53:09
  Speaker 6: Oh yeah, yeah, cater gars will scavenge. Spotted gars, short nosecars.
• 53:12
  Speaker 6: They'll feed off the bottom. You'll see them even in
• 53:14
  Speaker 6: Indiana and Illinois. They'll go basically a headstand with the
• 53:18
  Speaker 6: tails are sticking out of the water. So whether they
• 53:19
  Speaker 6: eating crawfish or whether they're scavenging, long nose gars more
• 53:24
  Speaker 6: feeding on fish and whatever they can get down.
• 53:26
  Speaker 3: They're more active feeders.
• 53:27
  Speaker 6: It's like they'd be trying to like using four steps,
• 53:29
  Speaker 6: and we already know that you don't have confidence in
• 53:30
  Speaker 6: their ability to eat anyway, so they're not gonna be
• 53:32
  Speaker 6: able to pick stuff out the bottom.
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: I come from a long line of bowl fisherman.
• 53:37
  Speaker 4: My father was a bowl fisherman.
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: That's about the extent of it.
• 53:41
  Speaker 4: That is a long line bullfish. Yeah, yeah, it is,
• 53:45
  Speaker 4: but he was bullfish.
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: Back. When you take a Folger's coffee can, okay, okay,
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: picture you gotta recurve bow. You take a Foldger's coffee can,
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: take a tin snip, and first off, you cut the
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: end off it so you got a cylinder. Now, okay,
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: you take it tin snip and make two flanges that
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: you can hose. Clamp the flanges to your bow above
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: and below the rest. Then you wrap the line around
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: the folders can, pass the arrow through the can so
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: that when you shoot, the arrow goes through the can
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: and pulls the line out, that's all.
• 54:20
  Speaker 3: That's impressive.
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: I'm only setting this up to be that a multi
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: generational bowfisherman. I often find myself criticizing my own kind o,
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: my own brethren, my own bowfishing brethren, who are like, oh,
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: we're doing the world of favor, you know. And I
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: was like, listen, it's fine to go bowfish carp. That's fine.
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: You're not heard anything. You're not helping anything. Like you
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: cannot mechanically remove fish, remove carp from the Great Lakes
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: or whatever watershed, Like, you can't mechanically remove them to
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: a point where you have made any difference. We one
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: time had a guy on the podcast. We had an
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: expert on USGS guy about Burmese pythons. He explained, like
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: all this snake rodeo, this, and that doesn't matter, like
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: when they wind up doing the work on the pythons
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: and how many are there, how many you're catching that
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: whole world. He's like, knock yourself out, have a good time,
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: it don't matter. After that, I was in Florida and
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: the guy's telling me Richard Martinez tell me his buddy,
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: oh he hates you. I'm like, I hear this often
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: and I'm like kind of like anxious to hear what
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: he hates me about. He hates me because that guy
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: said that he's a d he's a snake catcher. He
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: hates me because that guy said that, and I didn't
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: challenge him. But it's like some things don't matter. Shooting
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: cart and the great legs, you are not helping anything.
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: You're not hurting anything. You're not helping anything.
• 56:04
  Speaker 9: So it's not like coyote hunters when it's like shoot
• 56:06
  Speaker 9: a coyote, save a fawn.
• 56:07
  Speaker 7: It's not like shoot a carp save a whatever.
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: Kyotes has been proven to be effective if it's done
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: in a spatially in a temporally and spatially advantageous set
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: of circumstances. So you're not going to get there. Bowfishing
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: carp you're not helping anyone, now, are they? If you're
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: bowfishing gar? Is it also a drop in the bucket,
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: Like you're not actually having population level impacts on gar,
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: just like you're not having population level impacts on.
• 56:46
  Speaker 4: Carp Or is it different?
• 56:48
  Speaker 3: I would say it's different.
• 56:50
  Speaker 6: You look at where they are in the food web, right,
• 56:52
  Speaker 6: I mean, carp are pretty omnivorous, they're eating you know,
• 56:55
  Speaker 6: stuff off the bottom, vegetation, sometimes bugs, whereas gars are
• 56:58
  Speaker 6: more on your sort of predator apex predator level. Right,
• 57:02
  Speaker 6: there's way fewer gars than there are carp So sure
• 57:05
  Speaker 6: you maybe be doing a drop in the bucket with carp.
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: And there's other ways.
• 57:08
  Speaker 6: We work with the organizations out in Minnesota that do
• 57:10
  Speaker 6: carp removals on the inland lakes and they actually do
• 57:13
  Speaker 6: make a difference. But that's like massive carp traps and everything.
• 57:15
  Speaker 6: So you're right shooting the carp. You can feel good
• 57:18
  Speaker 6: about it, you want to. Part of what we want
• 57:19
  Speaker 6: to say is like if you want to shoot something,
• 57:21
  Speaker 6: you know, shoot carp shooting basis past you shoot as
• 57:23
  Speaker 6: many as you want. There aren't limits on those as
• 57:26
  Speaker 6: far as I know. Definitely in Minnesota Michigan. Those places
• 57:30
  Speaker 6: just dispose of them properly. But you know, shoot as
• 57:32
  Speaker 6: many as you want there.
• 57:33
  Speaker 4: That's aesthetically sure.
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 57:35
  Speaker 6: And so you know, but the gars, there's fewer of them,
• 57:38
  Speaker 6: there's fewer of the bowfin. Those are your predatory fish.
• 57:42
  Speaker 6: And so when you do sort of take out a
• 57:45
  Speaker 6: large number of these predatory animals that also live for
• 57:49
  Speaker 6: a long time, I know we have disrespect for the
• 57:51
  Speaker 6: short nosed gar, but even they can live for fifty
• 57:53
  Speaker 6: years so and we just found that from our work
• 57:55
  Speaker 6: down in Mississippi. So if the sort of latitudinal differences
• 57:58
  Speaker 6: mean anything, we expect that probably live longer in Montana
• 58:02
  Speaker 6: and in Minnesota than they do down south. If they
• 58:04
  Speaker 6: lived for fifty years down to mississippi's probably even older
• 58:06
  Speaker 6: up here. And I would take an aside to say,
• 58:08
  Speaker 6: I'm really impressed with the Montana's doing. They've got a
• 58:10
  Speaker 6: five gar limit. You have to get a guard card
• 58:12
  Speaker 6: now as of this year to get short notse cars.
• 58:15
  Speaker 3: So I thought that was pretty cool. Got in touch
• 58:17
  Speaker 3: with the fishing wileife fie.
• 58:18
  Speaker 2: The hell's getting after short nosey? You know it's you know,
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: no clue how long nose car.
• 58:24
  Speaker 6: That's I'm glad you're impressed with That was my first
• 58:27
  Speaker 6: fish actually on the Miskigan River in Michigan.
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: I know.
• 58:31
  Speaker 3: I did my master's thesis on the Mskeigan River.
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: It's a boat. We did a bowfishing episode I filmed
• 58:36
  Speaker 2: on the Miskegan River in which we messed around with both.
• 58:39
  Speaker 3: Oh really nice.
• 58:40
  Speaker 7: I thought, didn't you shoot a gard?
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: You shot gar?
• 58:43
  Speaker 4: We shot Yeah, suckers.
• 58:46
  Speaker 6: Yeah, we worked on all those fishes on the Miskeigan
• 58:48
  Speaker 6: on Thesigan. Yeah yeah, two thousand and one to two
• 58:52
  Speaker 6: thousand and five, probably is out there all the time.
• 58:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We stayed at the old Coast Guard
• 58:56
  Speaker 3: station out on the you know Mona Lakes.
• 59:00
  Speaker 4: Really yeah yeah yeah, yep, more Skegan play.
• 59:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah's a paper mill there, you know.
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's something. My girlfriend's dad was a mill
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: ray at that paper I want to see him in
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: the Tough Band contest one time.
• 59:13
  Speaker 3: Oh wow.
• 59:14
  Speaker 6: It's one of the only spots you can find chinook
• 59:16
  Speaker 6: salmon and long nose gars in the same river system
• 59:19
  Speaker 6: with the buffalo. And that was only what It's one
• 59:21
  Speaker 6: of the few places you can see chinook salmon and
• 59:23
  Speaker 6: long nose bars in the same river systems.
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: So oh man, we used to hunt that flat for docks,
• 59:28
  Speaker 2: but those are in base of yeah right, yeah, exactly.
• 59:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah, let's let's let's do that for me.
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: Let's play that game for because if you look up
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: like if you look up, let let's say take a
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: turn like weed when you look up weed in a dictionary,
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: but we just means like a non desirable right, it's
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: a non desirable plan, So we say something that's like,
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: here's where gets a little tricky. If you take a
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: fish and you deliberately introduce it usually doesn't carry the
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: non it's not.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 7: They can't retroactively call it invasive.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like does it carry invasive because invasive implies not desirable.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: But I was reading this book. There's a really good
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: book called Fishing in the Great Lakes. It's a history
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: of commercial fishing in the Great Lakes, and it talks
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: about it's funny because the due's name. There's this ichthyologist
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: named Seth Green. It's hard to look them up because
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: of the other dude. But they were working to as
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 2: they were collapsing all the native fisheries in the Great
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: Lakes from over harvest and then rafting all those logs
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: and all the spawning grounds. So the bark falls off
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: and you got like thirteen feet of bark laying over
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: the spawning habitat as they're destroying all the native fish.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: They're in there introducing karp deliberately thinking that people are
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: going to appreciate them as a food fish, the same
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: way they're appreciated in Europe and appreciated in Asia. So
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: there you get like, Okay, so it was deliberately introduced,
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: there was budget for it. We now regard them as
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: della tearious like whatever. Yeah, so does all these like
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: terminologies No one says, like salmon in the Great Lakes
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 2: are absolutely not native Walleye and the rivers here and
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: then the lakes.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 4: Here are not native, but they're not.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 7: Like in basive.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 4: No, people don't call some people.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 9: Some people will try to, right, I mean you'll hear
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 9: people try to call brown trout.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I do that just to be yeah, I do
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 2: that too, and I tease pheasants too. Yeah, yeah, I
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: tease brown trout, rainbow trout, pheasants. But just to clarify
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: the terminology, Yeah, it's all perspective.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so introduced versus invasive.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 6: That's a tricky thing, you know, And uh so, yeah,
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 6: we've got to introduced some on it's I think, getting
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 6: back to Brody's question, like those introduced some on it
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 6: are problematic in some parts of the Eastern United States.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 6: You've got you know, even the the next category there's
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 6: like non game made of fish, like the shiners and
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 6: the darters and the minnows. They're problematic for some of
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 6: those nest building areas, they take up.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 3: Space, they eat the fish there, the native species.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 9: So have you guys done any like reintroductions of these
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 9: native fish in places where maybe they were wiped out
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 9: or they're just not doing well.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 6: There's a group called Conservation Fisheries down in Tennessee that's
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 6: doing that, and so they're doing that with like different
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 6: types of mad Toms, darters and not.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: Guard.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 3: Well that gets back to Illinois and the alligator gar who.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 6: All had alligator gar who well, oh went all the
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 6: way up into Illinois.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 4: So it was all the Mississippi Missouri systems.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 6: Yeah, And so the damming and the leveing and the
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 6: eradication efforts. So sure, I mean the looking at them
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 6: as sort of trash fish and problematic was a problem,
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 6: but so was the dams and the levees and the
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 6: modification cutting them off from those floodplain habitats where they
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 6: can't get to that terrestrial vegetation they need to despawn.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 6: And so now a big effort is not only to
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 6: introduce some of those you know populations to try to
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 6: recharge those, but also to reconnect the river with its
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 6: floodplain habitat. And that is research that we're working on
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 6: with Nature Can Servancy, US Fish and Wildlife Service to
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 6: make those connections between the river and the floodplaine because
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 6: that's good for.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 3: The gars, it's good for other fish, it's good for
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 3: water birds.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 6: We see thousands of these wood storks down there, all
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 6: kinds of different animals, but we're using the gars is
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 6: kind of an indicator of that because they do migrate
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 6: onto the floodplane. So we've kind of used to try
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 6: to get some money for the grants, is to show
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 6: that you can use gars as indicators of this restoration efficacy.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 6: If you reconnect that river with the floodplane. The use
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 6: are fish that move on to them. So do we
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 6: see the fish moving on there? Do we see those
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 6: twelve inch young of the year popping out in a
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 6: month and a half and so far we've seen that
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 6: success there and we do see tons of crappy there,
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 6: a lot of other animals as well taking advantage of
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 6: those habitats.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 2: So you'll put a.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 4: Tag on a gar and you'll see him travel out
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 4: into that stuff.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 3: We're tagging some of them with Fish and Wiley Service.
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 3: They're pit tag.
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 6: They've got an external tag too, but we're also using
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 6: a fin clip where we look at a chemical signature
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 6: where we can actually look at we catch you out
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 6: of the river, do you have a river signature?
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 3: Do we catch you on the floodplane? Do we see
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 3: a floodplain signature?
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 6: And we can look at that by looking at carbon
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 6: and nitrogen just from the fin clip. At least that's
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 6: a non lethal way of doing it. So that's been
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 6: helpful and that's ongoing research. We're going there in October
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 6: to do that.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 2: So they went up that system into Illinois. Yeah, and
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: now how far up are they?
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 6: They're still up in Illinois. I think Hennepin and Hopper
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 6: Lakes or some lakes up there. They seem to be
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 6: doing well there because I guess there's like a nuclear
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 6: plant or something, so it keeps it a bit warmer.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 6: Some of those fish are growing decent, but they don't
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 6: mature until they're about five to eleven years old, depending
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 6: on males or females. And we expect those ones further
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 6: north they're going to take longer to mature.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 3: We see that in other gar spie.
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 7: Are they are they protected like up in the northern extreme.
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 6: Of their Ragin's that's a great question. I think they're
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 6: working towards protecting them because that was the issue and
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 6: we had that maybe five five years ago where bofish
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 6: are actually shot one of the restocked, you know, one
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 6: of the little guys that made it to be decent size,
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 6: and luckily, you know, she reported it, and you know,
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 6: we're able to see like, well, this might actually be
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 6: kind of an issue where we might want to protect
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 6: those fish. But you have to be able to identify
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 6: the fish as well, and that's tricky with with gars,
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 6: I get it, but at least being able to you know,
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 6: then you need some sort of maybe blanket protection or
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 6: maybe a harvest limit.
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 3: Right that we are not, I.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 2: Would be very careful just as advice. Yeah, I wouldn't
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: use the word protection because you're gonna you're gonna generate
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 2: too much social friction. I would if I was in
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: your shoes, just long line of bow fishermen, if I was,
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 2: if I was in your shoes, I would be talking
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 2: about I would be talking about putting a regulatory structure
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 2: in place, because people are gonna they're gonna hear protection
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 2: and their head's gonna go in a certain direction. But
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 2: a regulatory structure the same way, like the same way,
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: all the other stuff the same way, all the birds
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 2: and everything like.
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 6: No, I agree with you, and that's the language we
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 6: use anyway. You know, I think it depends on the
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 6: audience we're talking to as well, but yeah, it's definitely
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 6: more regulation and management, and even from our perspective, it's
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 6: informing management. Right, we're doing the science and we you know,
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 6: been lucky to work with Minnesota. DNR has been very
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 6: receptive to you know, non game native fish conservation and
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 6: management because they don't have the data. So we go
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 6: out there and we have that expertise coming off of
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 6: six years in Louisiana and also several years in Michigan,
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 6: where to find these fish, where to catch them, how
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 6: to extract the otel.
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 3: It's what kind of data we can get from them.
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 6: Because you know, everybody's strapped for resources, whether you're a state, federal,
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 6: that sort of thing.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 3: So that's been helpful.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 6: But we can help again inform that management, give recommendations
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 6: that you know, might help improve that sort of regulatory structure.
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think an achievable goal would be that you
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 2: would that you would help fishermen, help them understand that
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: that we have this category we use to categorize fish.
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 2: It's not that's not a great category, and that we
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 2: should understand that there are these problematic invasive fish that
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 2: people brought from far away that we wish weren't in
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 2: the systems. We have these fish that have always been here, right,
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 2: and we should make sure they're always here. And so
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 2: we draw a distinction between these and these and with gars.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 2: And I don't know what the number is with gars
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 2: is like you're allowed two or five a night or
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 2: whatever the hell, just like you're allowed two or five
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: bass a day whatever, And like just start kind of
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 2: creating this idea that it's not all that these fish
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 2: aren't damaging to the eco, that they're not all damaging
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: to the ecosystems, you know, and that like the buffalo
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 2: is like a big sucker that used to be a
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: very soft after commercial fish and it shouldn't be ditched
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: like cart.
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 9: Is there any like examples of there being like bounties
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 9: on alligator gar other Did that ever happen?
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 3: I don't think not. In recent history.
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 6: You go back to the nineteen thirties, Texas Parks and
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 6: Wildlife had the electrical gar destroyer that they made to
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 6: just they thought that I think they were taken out.
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 6: I want to say it was waterbirds or something. And
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 6: so you know, they basically raned this rig that was
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 6: supposed to kill.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 3: All the gars.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 4: Ye use the term the gar war, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 6: So Matt Miller is the director of Science Communications for
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 6: the Nature Conservancy, good friend of mine, and he wrote
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 6: this book Fishing through the Apocalypse, which is great about
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 6: fishing and conservation, and he brought up like this gar
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 6: wars idea but using that broadly not just gars, but
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 6: other non game native fish and even non game isn't
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 6: you know that's relative as well to look at just
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 6: kind of providing some respect for these fish again looking
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 6: at the North American model of wildlife conservation where we're
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 6: looking at, you know, having the best science available and
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 6: then also not hunting these animals or using them for
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 6: frivolous purposes. So if you're going to shoot, if you're
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 6: going to kill it, eat it, and you know they
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 6: taste delicious. I think with that also we've got the
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 6: opportunity to reach the next generation, which is important if
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 6: we want to preserve that hunting and fishing and show
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 6: that there's value. So there's two directions I want to
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 6: go with that, But there's opportunity, right, So you go
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 6: to a spot that may not be the best for
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 6: rainbow trout or walleye or bass, but a lot of
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 6: these habitats have plenty of gars, bowfens, suckers. So there's
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 6: opportunity for fishing that people may not have if they
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 6: don't have a boat to go after walleye or to
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 6: go after bass. So we're trying to introduce other opportunities
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 6: for fishing again to look at, you know, both conservation
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 6: and management and just better stewardship of our natural resource,
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 6: but to conserve that recreational way of life. And so
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 6: if we don't do that, that's going to start slipping away.
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 6: We can go on and on about how people are
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 6: you know, on screens more than outside. And one of
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 6: the ways that we've done that is working with the anglers,
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 6: whether they're bowfishers or whether they're you know, catching release
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 6: or hooking line anglers. We did this with a bowfen
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 6: and my lab just a couple months ago.
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 3: This summer.
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 6: We're a bunch of anglers that know how to catch
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 6: bofen and some of them never caught them before. But
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 6: they got together and I said, hey, can you catch
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 6: us some bowfriend that we can use for our research.
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 6: And I brought my research team with me and these
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 6: are all you know, undergrads and grad students. They also
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 6: were able to catch both and they really had a blast.
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 6: Like some of them, they're from Minnesota. They were able
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 6: to fish walleye and fish bluegill, but they never caught
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 6: bouf in before and they really got into that. And
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 6: then the anglers got to learn about, well, if you're
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 6: going to help us out, here's what we want as
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 6: far as a measurement and a photograph and a fin clip.
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 6: So really building that relationship with the anglers, and we're
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 6: doing that with the bowfishers too, looking at where are
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 6: these lakes where you might be doing some bowfishing tournaments.
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 6: Can we at least use the carcasses to get the
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 6: data to look at the age structure of those fish.
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 6: So we're definitely not looking to end bowfishing or to
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 6: you know, to to stop that sort of recreational aspect,
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 6: but we're looking to can we manage it sustainably to
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 6: where we can have the fish and the water doing
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 6: their jobs. As you know, Ecosystem Services balancing you know,
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 6: predator prey populations, but then also you can go there
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 6: and you can shoot the fish hopefully eat them sustainably,
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 6: so you know, kind of everybody wins, and so far
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 6: that's we've made progress with that, even with a lot
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 6: of the boatfishers.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 4: Have you guys seen.
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 2: Besides alligator gar getting extirpated from native range, have you
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 2: seen any other fish that people categorize as a rough fish?
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 5: Hell?
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 4: There are there any records of other fish being extirpated.
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 6: That's a good question. I think there's plenty. I mean,
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 6: you've got the spotted guar in Michigan, so that's considered
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 6: a species of concern. Now it's not endangered or threatened.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 6: It is considered endangered in Pennsylvania, So there are places
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 6: of state by state, there's places where you might consider
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 6: a spotted guard to be protected, and in other states
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 6: it's just we don't know enough about them.
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 3: But now we know that they can live for over
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 3: forty years, so we've lagged so far behind.
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 6: So I think that's a great question where we've seen
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 6: them extirpated. Quite honestly, we don't have enough data in
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 6: a lot of places to tell are they still here
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 6: are they gone?
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 3: Why might they have you know gone?
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 6: We like to say, like we're about one hundred years
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 6: behind what we know about trout and salmon and walleye.
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 6: We don't have to take one hundred years to catch
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 6: up on that. So what we're trying to do is
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 6: use those methods that you've all learned about from managing
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 6: smallmouth bass, largemouth pass. How do we apply that to
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 6: these data deficient species. So again working together to more
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 6: sustainable management with that stuff. So honestly, we don't know
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 6: we could be losing populations and not know it because
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 6: we aren't accounting for the harvest.
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 2: Of those fish. You know. That brings up a really
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 2: interesting a cology point that my brother Danny raised to me.
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 2: He's with US Fish and Wildlife Service in Alaska that
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 2: works on salmon, and.
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 4: We're talking about I brought this up before.
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 2: We're talking about difference between the Lower forty eight and
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 2: Alaska in terms of we're speaking about fisheries, but you
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 2: could almost apply it to like conservation in general, where
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 2: he was just like, not in a publication form, just
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 2: talking casually. He was saying that, like the Lower forty
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 2: eight is kind of like in recovery mode, right, Like
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 2: conservation in lower forty eight is like largely about recovery,
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 2: he said. In Alaska and big parts of Alaska, we're
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 2: still in the descriptive phase. We're still trying to be
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 2: like what's here? Right, there's salmon runs that like people know.
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 2: It's like people don't don't know. I mean, people have
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 2: been utilizing the salmon runs for thousands and thousands and
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 2: thousands of years, but no one's put their arms around
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 2: it yet. No one's been like, Okay, what does it
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 2: look like in twenty twenty what does the run look
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 2: like in twenty twenty one? You know what I mean?
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 2: Like measuring, trying to put some kind of number around,
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 2: like what is here? So a lot of the work
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 2: they'll they'll do work of just trying to describe what's here,
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 2: which makes the recovery mode it lets you track change
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 2: over time. But what were you say about gar almost
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 2: like contradicts that, because if you look, there probably are
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 2: things down here that we haven't done the discovery mode
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 2: on because we just disregarded it or lumped it into
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 2: some goofy classification to the point where you might later say,
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 2: we don't know where they lived. Yeah. Yeah, there's a
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 2: lot of old people talk about seeing them, but like,
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 2: I don't know how accurate is that. Can't find one now,
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 2: you know, because no one ever measured it, right, right, Yeah.
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 3: No, I think that's a that's a great analogy.
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 6: I think we're very much still in the discovery phase,
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 6: but also in a recovery phase too, because we don't
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 6: know where they've been, you know, overfished or where.
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 3: It's a combination.
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 6: Again, it's not just harvest, but it's you know, the
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 6: modification of those habits, shaits. So I think we're playing
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 6: catch up and you know, we're just trying to you know,
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 6: make the best that we can. And sort of that's
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 6: why sort of encouraging.
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 3: The value of these native species.
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 6: To sort of then promote our ability to research them,
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 6: to get multiple stakeholders involved, whether it's the beau fishers,
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 6: the hook and line anglers, the state and federal agencies.
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 3: And I think there is momentum towards that.
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 6: And to do that, we want to communicate effectively and
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 6: want to build those relationships, not you know, shooting people
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 6: down with like you shouldn't be doing this or this
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 6: should be stopped. And that's a big part of our
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 6: sort of science communication.
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 5: Aspect of it.
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 6: So we appreciate the work that you all do for
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 6: that because I think we need a multifaceted approach to
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 6: make that happen before we, you know, lose what we
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 6: didn't even know we had.
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 8: No do you know examples of other parts of the
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 8: world that are being wrecked by our native rough fish
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 8: the way carp are like disturbing our waterways, like over
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 8: in Germany the short head red horses right just ripping
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 8: up their creeks or something like that.
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, well, you know it's funny you mentioned. So
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 3: there's two parts of that.
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 6: Yes, our fish are wrecking plenty of habitats in other places,
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 6: but it's not our native rough fish. It's our game fish,
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 6: you know, largemouth bass, steelhead, bluegill, I mean, rainbow Trout's
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 6: one of the most widely distributed species.
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 3: Of fish in the world.
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 6: I know, you know fishermen the go down to Argentina
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 6: to fish for steelhead. I'm like, what, I would rather
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 6: find out what fish are actually there and then you know,
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 6: go for those. So it's mainly our game fish because
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 6: you know, we like to take the fish that we
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 6: like and take them to other places. Now, as far
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 6: as gars go, they have been introduced not on purpose,
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 6: relatively speaking, through the aquarium trade. And so in some
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 6: places where they've released them. There's a couple parts of India,
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 6: there's parts of Southeast Asia where they've.
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 3: They've made their way into waterways.
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, you can go. Dudes in Southeast Asia are
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 2: buying garsh here, turn loose in their aquarium and then
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 2: dumping them.
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 3: They're mainly want to keep them their aquarium.
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 6: But then when they get too big, because believe or not,
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 6: you know, as you know, I mean, alligator gars get big,
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 6: so it's a big aquarium fish. They're super popular gars.
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 6: And then they've got arijuanas down there too.
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 4: That's a boatfish.
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 8: How are our guar doing in those other places?
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 6: In most places, they're not doing great because they don't
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 6: have enough to sort of create a system population and
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 6: self sustake population. But there are a couple spots I've
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 6: seen it in India through videos sent me where they
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 6: have spawned. Now, sure that could be problematic, but it's
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 6: probably something that's still controlled. I mean, you know, I know,
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 6: I feel like you know, I also feel like you know,
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 6: who better to take care of alligator gars in India
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 6: than an Indian dude you could send out there.
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 3: So maybe it's just job security. We'll see, but yeah,
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 3: I think.
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 6: But in other places they've kind of tracked alligator gars
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 6: have been released. There was I think a moat around
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 6: as some.
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 3: Sort of pas palace or castle in.
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 6: Japan where an alligator gar was released, and so they had,
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 6: like I know, their version of fish and wildlife trying
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 6: to catch this gar out of there for a while.
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 3: And so you'll hear stories they put it in there
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 3: to keep intruders out. I know, right, Yeah, it's not
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 3: gonna I'm not gonna work that way.
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 9: Is there actually is there, Like I'm sure people have
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 9: been bitten by mistake, like in muddy Water, right, Like,
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 9: is there claims of them ever attacking.
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 6: There's like very very few records of even the mistaken identity.
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 6: I think there is something that happened a couple of
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 6: years ago go there was I think a woman in
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 6: Texas or Louisiana had stepped near an alligator gar and
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 6: got tagged by it. But that was it and there
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 6: wasn't It was pretty foggy details around that, but other
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 6: than that, gars aren't. They definitely are not attacking people.
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 6: They're very gape limited, so even a fish like that
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 6: can get this exactly. That was probably about a five
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 6: foot long fish, you know, give or take maybe four
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 6: and a half five feet. But you look at that
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 6: that mouth isn't you know, it's not going to fit
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 6: anything further down that.
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 3: Much as far as I mean it can open wide up.
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 6: And down, but that throat doesn't open up very much.
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 6: So they're very gape limited, so they're not gonna you know,
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 6: they can't swallow a person or anything like that.
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 3: Even a big alligator.
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 6: The biggest one we've caught in our research is eight
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 6: feet one inch long, just a couple of inches off
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 6: of the known, you know, world record fish. But we
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 6: did pull a three foot long carp out of the
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 6: stomach of that fish. I've got a picture of my
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 6: student who, yeah, it was and it was mostly not
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 6: mostly it was partially digested to where it was just
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 6: a lump of flesh.
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 7: Like someone's like house poodle or something.
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's it's kick your dogs on leashes, I guess.
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 8: But you know, hower gator gar doing in Mexico.
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 3: They're doing well in Mexico. They're native in Mexico.
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 6: And in Mexico you've got the alligator gar and the
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 6: tropical gar, which are big time food fish down there.
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 6: So you go to the Tabasco region, Tabasco State in Mexico,
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 6: which they there was a gar conference there. Believe it
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 6: or not, they do happen in twenty twelve. Tropical gar
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 6: stuff was, you know, in the little shops there. They
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 6: were in the restaurants. We had tropical gar and banadas
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 6: to Molly's. We roasted them to where they were just gutted,
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 6: but you can put them on the grill and then
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 6: the scales just flake right off. So those tropic gars
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 6: on the grill were probably about, you know, maybe foot
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 6: and a half long, but they get to three and
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 6: a half four feet long as well, so they're looking there,
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 6: but not as long as you know, but they're fatter
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 6: than the longer that's a stouter fish because that's related
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 6: to the alligator.
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 3: Gar long noses.
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 6: They're in a different genus, so they're the skinnier gars
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 6: like your short nose and your spot in but it's
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 6: as important of a food fish there as salmon are
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 6: in the Pacific Northwest, so not only have they depleted
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 6: the wild populations in some places, then they're aquaculturing them
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 6: to restore those wild populations. So Cuba and parts of
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 6: Mexico are actually good templates for gar aquaculture and restoration.
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 6: Everything we know, like through Fish and Wildlife Service, not everything,
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 6: but the starting to what we know came from those
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 6: places where people are already culturing those fish to try
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 6: to restore alligator gar bring them back in certain population.
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 7: So they're not the term rough fish down there.
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 3: No, No, it's a big good fish.
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 8: You spend a lot of time working in Minnesota at
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 8: the edge of the Mississippi Watershed, and in twenty seventeen
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 8: there was an American eel caught at Cottonwood Lake in Minnesota,
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 8: which was thirty miles off of the Mississippi River. Even so,
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 8: like it has the potential to collect some fish that
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 8: are far away from what you'd consider to be their
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 8: home up there. What are some of the unique things
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 8: you've caught Minnesota?
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 3: Gotcha in Minnesota so far?
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 6: I mean, we're still focusing a lot on the gars
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 6: and the bowfins because the you know, the DNR typically
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 6: isn't paying attention in them the same way they're paying
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 6: attention to the walleye and the bass.
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 3: So I feel like that's some of our unique fish.
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 6: We do get the blue sucker, which you know is
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 6: found all the way down in Texas too, But that's
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 6: a pretty unique fish. They look kind of like a shark,
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 6: kind of a grayish looking if you had a shark
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 6: version of a sucker, that's what they look like.
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 4: Familiar with fish they get.
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 6: You know, probably not quite three feet long, but I
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 6: mean you're yeah, decent size and there's.
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 8: Deeply blue, especially when they're spawning. Yeah, they have a
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 8: tall dorsal fin on.
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 8: They're threatened in South Dakota. We used to raise them
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 8: at the hatchery.
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 6: Yeah, very cool fish and uh you know they stay
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 6: in the midwater, sort of midwater in midstream. A lot
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 6: of some ichthyologists and also angers call me a unicorn
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 6: fish because it's very difficult to catch them because it's
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 6: a sucker. So you got a fish for them, right,
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 6: They got that ventral mouth.
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 2: Never heard of that one.
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 6: Yeah, Yeah, so blue sucker, we can you know, you
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 6: come up to Minnesota, we could probably show you some.
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 6: So they're putting trackers in some of them to find
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 6: out where they go. So DNR is doing that. They've
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 6: done that with some of the long nosed gars, so
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 6: it's finding out where some of those fish are moving
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 6: as well tracking the invasive carp where they're going.
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 3: I'm trying to think as far as unique stuff we
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 3: did find.
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 6: You know through some of those bofen that half of
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 6: a large rat in the stomach, which shows that bof
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 6: and will eat just about anything. The I tell the students,
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 6: just like with the plankton, to let me know when
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 6: there's something interesting you find in the stomach. And so
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 6: I I was coming back to the lab and showing
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 6: somebod of the lab and I said, do you find
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 6: anything interesting? I said, oh, yeah, we found a rat
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 6: in the stomach. And I'm like, well, where is it?
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 6: I said, you know, I need to see a picture
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 6: or find it. It was already in like the carcass
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 6: bin and stuff. I'm like, you're gonna have to fish
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 6: that out of here so we.
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 7: Can get your muskrat.
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 6: I mean it was the only post your end of it.
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 6: So I mean I I couldn't tell you. I'll send
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 6: you the picture. Maybe you can gain idea.
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 8: Yeah, you did say what are the little bumps that
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 8: some suckers get when they're spawning. Blue blue suckers would
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 8: really get those on there, tubercles.
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 6: Tubercles, Yeah, yeah, so they got the spawning tubercles on them,
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 6: and so on buffalo.
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 3: We'll get those two a lot of yeah.
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 6: So there's there's a lot of interesting fisher I haven't
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 6: seen any eels there yet. When we're down in Louisiana,
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 6: sw eels all the time, So I think that's what's
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 6: been interesting is having stayed and worked in Louisiana for
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 6: six years. Now being in Minnesota, we're just following the
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 6: Mississippi River further up to the top. But that's also
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 6: what some of our research is doing is looking at
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 6: those gar and buffalo populations down south. We've learned about
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 6: their life history, some of the population structure, and we
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 6: can look at gars in Buffalo up north and then
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 6: compare northern and southern populations. One of the things we
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 6: want to do is like, can we start forecasting about
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 6: climate change how that might change things? Right, Because we've
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 6: got fish that are adapted to a warmer climate down
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 6: south that we know about, how might the ones in
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 6: the north start potentially changing but then you know, you've
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 6: got your cold water fish are can be affected by
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 6: that as well. But you know, we don't have walleye
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 6: way down south. So that's why the gars and the
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 6: bofins and the buffalo can be useful for that kind
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 6: of research as well. So again we're trying to use
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 6: them as sort of these multifaceted tools to tackle management, conservation,
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 6: even climate science.
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 2: What are these northern gars doing under the ice? Like,
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 2: I've never in my life even heard of someone catching
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 2: one through the ice.
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 6: Yeah, it happens. I've got a couple of pictures that
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 6: people have sent me. It's still on my bucket list
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 6: to get a gar through the ice.
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 4: So you've heard of people getting hit.
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 3: Oh they're just.
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 6: They're just kind of chilling under there, no pun intended.
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 6: But there's places in Iowa where I've got video of
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 6: that too, where the guy cut you know, made as
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 6: a you know, cut through the ice drop the can
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 6: ice hole and it's just his ice hole there, and
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 6: then just a bunch of short nosed gars just hanging
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 6: out below there, like I mean.
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 3: Probably fifty or sixteen in a round. Yeah, just you know,
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 3: kind of.
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 6: Slowly waving their fins but you know, metabolism slows down,
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 6: They're still going to eat, but they're congregating there. And
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 6: they also are air breathers, but when the water is
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 6: that cold, as long as they find well oxygen water,
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 6: they don't have to go up for air there. But
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 6: so they're there both in or there under the ice too.
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 6: So that's still still on the list to check out.
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 2: Can I ask you snap and turtle question? Sure?
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 3: I was into turtles before I was into gars.
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 2: Actually, so okay, years ago, I was at the National
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 2: Trappers Association convention in Iowa, and I went to a
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 2: lecture by a turtle trapper. Okay, can't there his name is.
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 2: He had a like a thing hanging from he had
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 2: like a necklace that was like a pouch made out
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 2: of a big old turtle foot, big time in the turtles,
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 2: turtle trapper, but he got into raisin turtles. He was saying,
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 2: and I've told people, I've told people this a thousand
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 2: times that this is true. He was saying that a
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 2: turtle in the winter, so it's iceed over, like you know,
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 2: Norman comes up and sticks his head out of the
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 2: water and gets a gold but everything's locked and ice.
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 3: He was saying, I think I know where this is going.
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 2: Is it true?
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 3: Yes, it is if you're talking about clerical respiration.
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 2: Well, I'm talking about this.
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 4: He was saying that that turtle can go down in
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 4: the muck.
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 2: He can burrow down in the muck and push himself
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 2: up and it sends bubbles of methane out of the muck.
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 2: He says he's seen this in a wetsuit. It sends
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 2: methane bubbles by disturbing the muck and it goes up
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 2: to the ice. Like he was saying that somehow like
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 2: the CO two can leach through the ice. Huh. And
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 2: then he'll wait and eventually he'll go up and sip.
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 2: He'll go up and sip that bubble. Huh.
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 4: He says he's watched it.
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 3: That's That's not what I thought.
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 6: With the clerical respiration, that's where they just basically breed
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 6: through their butts and stuff.
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 3: So that's how they get gas exchange there.
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 6: But I've not heard about the methane bubble and blow
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 6: the ice surface, and then what was the advantage there?
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 3: It would just you get some sort of conversion picture.
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 2: You stir the muck up, all that gas comes out. Ye,
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 2: somehow he was explaining, and then you talk like I
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 2: was hoping you can help me. He's explaining that that
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 2: certain like some gas goes through the ice. I don't
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 2: get it. Yeah, but if it waits, he'll eventually go
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 2: up and he'll sip that bubble. Uh huh. To what
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 2: end he can't stick his head out of the water.
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 3: I mean, there's got to be some sort of organic chemistry. Yeah,
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 3: he was saying.
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 4: By the I know, but that's why I got to
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 4: listen to what I'm talking about.
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 2: He was saying that, like, by that bubble sitting there
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 2: for some period of time goes through some transformation. How
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 2: does how is that? How is that stupid? Do you
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 2: think like a methane bubble will just live there chemically
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 2: stable for the rest of its life.
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 9: I don't know, Like, okay, bubble turns into exactly right.
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 2: I don't know. Maybe we need to have a gas expert.
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 5: Yeah, some googling going on.
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 3: You never heard this, Yeah, I'm not. I've not heard that.
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 2: He was talking about raising turtles and eventually got so
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 2: into it that he was observing them with a wetsuit
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 2: in the winter, trying to understand winter behavior and he's
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 2: talking about them in his mind, deliberately stirring the bottom
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 2: and then going up and sipping the bubbles.
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 7: So if you're calling them, I'm not it's not meane,
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 7: they're kicking off.
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 10: Maybe it's than can be converted into oxygen and other
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 10: chemicals like carbon dioxide and water through oxidation, which is
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 10: often a highly exothermic reaction that requires high temperatures or catalysts.
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 2: Or ice.
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 3: Or yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Maybe the turtle's doing something.
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 2: I never heard that one. Yeah, no, I'm not.
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 1: You're not heard that.
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 3: But you know they're surviving somehow.
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 2: So it's just one of the things that like sticks
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 2: in your head your whole life, and you just wind
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 2: up telling everybody about it.
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 3: Oh, I know, I got But is that yeah.
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 10: Here inertness of methane. Methane is a very stable and
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 10: inert molecule, and breaking the strong carbon hydrogen bonds requires
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 10: significant energy input or specific catalysts.
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 2: Is there a chance that he's that that is there?
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 2: It's like when you when you stir in the bottom up. Look,
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 2: you know, you walk like you duck hunt every step,
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 2: like bubbles come out of there. Is there a chance
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 2: there's oxygen high.
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the thing. I'm like, it may not.
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 6: He might be talking about methane, because that's what he knows.
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 6: But you're probably stirring up all kinds of other gas
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 6: or byproducts of that, you know, of the bacteria and
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 6: all the muck on the bottom.
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 3: So I think the story holds. It just may not
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 3: be methane that I might have made.
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 6: So that sounds legit, then, I mean, if you've got
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 6: your own editions of the story, I can't.
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 2: I know I didn't make up. What I know I
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 2: didn't make up is him talking about turtles, Yeah, disturbing
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 2: the bottom in his mind. And I remember, and I'm
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 2: the bubbles would come up. He talked about that. He
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 2: explained something that he thinks happens, but I don't remember what,
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 2: and then the turtles would sip it.
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 4: That part sounds We were trying to get that turtle
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 4: expert on the show Krinn might have been before your time,
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 4: and we wound up getting a kid.
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 2: We didn't get his kid.
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 4: We couldn't get the old man.
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 10: We could have got that probably wouldn't have gotten teld
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 10: me the kids said, I like turtles, you do we
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 10: need it? Do we need to revisit.
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 2: Well, there's two things that have evaded us. A neanderthal expert,
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 2: I know, I'm I haven't pitched that on THEO Von's
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 2: show and got that. One guy reached out a neanderthal expert,
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 2: and someone who's real good on turtles, like real good and.
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 3: Understands that I can get you some rex too.
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 6: Yeah, like real good, especially snapping turtles, even alligator snapping turtles.
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 10: Okay, okay, I'm talking to a neanderthal guy at some point, hopefully.
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to ask you nanderthal question. So they're
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 2: active and they feed. Yeah, and then let's take an
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 2: alligator guard. How many eggs is he kicking out?
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 3: I mean hundreds of thousands, she's kicking out, you know, sorry?
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 4: And then how are those getting fertilized?
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 2: What happens?
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 6: It's external fertilization, so you know, you get you have
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 6: what you call polyandrees. That's more males than females. You
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 6: might have one or two females, it's usually one big
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 6: female and a bunch of males look kind of cluster together.
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 6: And that's also usually over terrestrial vegetation. So they need
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 6: that flood pulse to do that, so they're creating.
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 2: A cloud of milk. Yeah, and she's laying her eggs
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 2: and they're just fertilizing by being in the color.
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 6: The eggs as they are being laid are very sticky,
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 6: so they actually adhere to that vegetation, so it's not
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 6: necessarily broadcasts and it's just going into the water column.
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 6: It's basically attached to that veu she's applying them.
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 6: Yeah, and then you know with that spawning though, and
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 6: part of our other research is that we found down
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 6: in Texas and other places, long nose gars, your apparent
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 6: favorite gar, get into that mix and you get hybrids
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 6: between long nose an alligator long alligators. Yeah, yeah, so
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 6: you get an alligator gar that's got a longer snout
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 6: kind of nickname crocodile gars, you know, because it's a
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 6: little bit longer snout action there.
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 3: But that's across genera.
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 6: So you've got two species of gar that are producing hybrids,
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 6: which happens in fish. But not only are they two
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 6: different species, they're two different genera that diverged about one
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 6: hundred million years ago, so they split from each other
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 6: a long time ago.
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 4: And are their offspring sexually viable.
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 3: That's the thing.
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 6: So that's what makes it also, you know, unique or
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 6: relatively unique, is that their offspring are fertile.
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 3: So you've got these two species that.
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 6: Can produce fertile offspring that split over one hundred million
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 6: years ago. The next closest organisms that can do that
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 6: is two species of ferns that split sixty five million
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 6: years ago. So what that suggests to us is that
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 6: their DNA is that compatible over splitting that long ago.
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 6: So their evolutionary rates being that slow, and that goes
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 6: into some of the work we've done looking at gars
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 6: actually have the slowest rates of molecular evolution of any
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 6: vertebrate with a job. So you rule out your lamp
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 6: rays and your hagfish slower the next closest to sturgeons,
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 6: but they are changing slower than seala, cants, lungfish, to titars, crocodilians, sharks,
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 6: any of those things. So with that hybridization, though, that
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 6: suggests to us that their DNA is that compatible, So
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 6: something might be maintaining that compatibility the DNA, something might
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 6: be correcting it. So you know, evolution happens by mutations, right,
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 6: so something a couple base pairs change, so changes, you
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 6: might get something that's advantageous or deleterious whatever. With gars,
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 6: it seems like that DNA code has been staying pretty
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 6: consistent for millions and millions of years, and what we
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 6: hypothesize that there might be something like a DNA repair
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 6: mechanism that when a mutation pops up, it's correcting that mutation,
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 6: just setting back to what it's supposed to be. So
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 6: think of like a game of telephone where you've got
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 6: message on both ends. One's very different at the end
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 6: of it from the beginning, right, think of almost a
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 6: perfect game of telephone where something's correcting it over and
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 6: over and over again. So one of the things we're
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 6: looking at is like, can we isolate or identify with
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 6: these potential DNA repair mechanisms could be because think about
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 6: even in human health, how many diseases are based on
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 6: out of control DNA replication or damage to DNA, whether
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 6: you're thinking about things like even in skin cancer other
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 6: types like that. So that's very far off in the future,
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 6: but that hybridization between alligator gars and long nose gars
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 6: or actually any gar species can hybridize is a potential
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 6: biomedical value as well.
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 2: So what prevents it from becoming a Why hasn't it
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 2: just become a unispecies.
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 3: Right exactly? That's a great question.
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 6: So we kind of joke that like either there's one
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 6: species of gar or there's maybe a hundred species of cars.
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 6: But you think about with dog breeds, right, dogs all
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 6: one species, but look at all the variation there. Gars
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 6: are just changing at such a different rate relative to
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 6: our way of thinking that you know, to them, maybe
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 6: they are one species. They're just slight variations on a
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 6: basic blueprint. We don't know what that is, but that's
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 6: just another area of research we're looking into.
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 3: But that adds value to these fish.
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 6: You take buffalo, I know you all Alec Lackman on
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 6: one of the previous shows with fishing and stuff. The
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 6: buffalo can live for over one hundred years. We know that,
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 6: but since then, since twenty nineteen when you're O were
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 6: talking to.
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 4: Him, Bultiple Soccer could live on hundred years.
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 3: Rofolo socucer live over one hundred years.
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 8: Ones at Minnesota.
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 6: One's in Minnesota, you know, Saskatchewan, one hundred and twenty
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 6: five years.
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 3: There's one.
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 6: So buffalo story I can tell you is that some
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 6: of the buffalo. During World War One, they wanted to
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 6: you know, ship more meat products, food products overseas, and
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 6: so they wanted people stateside to eat less meat because
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 6: they need all those resources to go towards the war efforts.
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 6: So they wanted to encourage people to eat more fish.
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 6: And so in order to get people to eat more fish,
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 6: they're building all these new reservoirs in the southwestern United States,
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 6: the you know, Roosevelt Reservoir down southwest, and so some states,
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 6: including Iowa, shipped a bunch of game fish, including some
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 6: non game fish like buffalo, over down to the Apache
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 6: Lake down in Roosevelt Reservoir that area around nineteen seventeen.
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 6: Some of those fish are still alive today, No, and
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 6: they've gone back and looked at some of the offspring,
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 6: which are from born around the nineteen twenties, still alive today,
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 6: and they've done all kinds of aging with the otol
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 6: its radiocarbon dating. So sure those are introduced species there,
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 6: but we introduce them, but some anglers go there. They
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 6: know them by the different spot patterns and stuff. But
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 6: what they've also been able to find looking at their physiology,
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 6: their health has actually improved with old age, their immune
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 6: system function, sin essence, the sort of DNA breakdown that
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 6: we all.
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 3: Have as we get older, they don't show that. So
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 3: you've got these.
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 6: Native rough fish like gars that they've got this DNA
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 6: that's been staying coherent for millions and millions of years.
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 6: Potentially with the DNA repair mechanism. You've got buffalo which
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 6: actually are improving with age. You're trying eighty year old
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 6: one hundred year old fish just kicking as just yeah, yeah,
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 6: So you know there's a lot to about these Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 3: You know, combined the two you can live forever and
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 3: get better with age.
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 7: You know, I got an angling question.
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 9: Sure, maybe not for alligator gar because they have a
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 9: you know, they have a degree of popular popularity for fishermen.
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 9: But the other species, if if one was wanting to
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 9: set a world record, our gar one of those species
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 9: that just kind of get ignored.
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 7: And there's a bunch of like open line class records.
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 10: Yeah.
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 6: Yeah, even in Minnesota, they've got catch and release records
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 6: that are open to a bunch of non game native fish.
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 6: I think the bof in one was just set this
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 6: past summer. It was like a thirty one incher.
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah, because no dudes would ever put in for it.
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, you know, not as much anyway, but yeah,
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 6: down south you get some big long nose guards. We
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 6: actually got the biggest long nose I'd ever seen with
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 6: my students out at Nicols State when I was on Louisiana.
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 6: It was a sixty incher and later that summer, I
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 6: think somewhere else in Lousing they got a sixty five inches.
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 3: But that is right along the records.
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 9: Because for those guys, some fishermen that just look for
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 9: unfilled Yeah, yeah, nine class world records.
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 6: That's a good spot to go for, you know, the
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 6: line classes, the difference size overall.
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's that's worth you know, going after.
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 6: I would say, if you do shoot it, find a
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 6: way to get us the odolfth because we want to
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 6: we want to age that fish.
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 5: So they got some.
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 7: Skulls getting their odolith. That's got to be a process.
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, to this skull I can't stop messing with.
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 6: You have to use a hammer and a chisel for
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 6: alligator gars. I mean, it's just and we're working with
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 6: skulls that are huge too.
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 9: It's like, what are your buddy up up at the
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 9: shack when he was chopping open those yellow eyes to
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 9: get their lift.
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 7: That was work.
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a it's messy business.
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 2: But let's do this skull the school is amazing.
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's with some formalde hyde. You probably get maybe
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 3: maybe some that's good. That's good.
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 2: So you did what Now we get the skulls.
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 3: So we got it from Aligator gar Rodeo down to Louisiana.
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 2: So that that was great.
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 3: It's another opportunity to work with stakeholders there.
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 4: Well, they shoot twenty two because they.
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 6: Jug line for him first. So when you get the
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 6: fish and it's live, they want to find ways to
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 6: dispatch the dark knight.
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm always curious as to how they're doing that
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 6: on a boat and not misfiring and hitting the bottom
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 6: of the boat or something. But they use the twenty
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 6: shoot edge of the boat, I guess, so I've never
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 6: seen it. We get them where they bring them in.
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 3: So but you know, oh, you got to figure you
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 3: got these big fish.
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 6: You're not usually hanging a big that kind of gar
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 6: you might hang over the edge of the boat, but
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 6: for hanging the head of a six foot or seven
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 6: foot over the edge of your boat, you might.
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 9: I told you earlier I've got a lying cod head
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 9: do But like the general public can't just get their hands.
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 2: Did you buy from aldehyde like a jugger from albehinde?
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 3: That's a good question. I can buy from Aldie, but
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 3: I don't know. I think.
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 8: It once and yet, Yeah, what don't they want people
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 8: to have from.
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 6: A I mean it's a it's a carcinogen. I mean,
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 6: so you take your guard's head fresh off the gar, yeah,
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 6: and then you do what we Well, those we eventually
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 6: put on ice. We could storm for a bit, we
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 6: saw them out, and then I once we thaw them,
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 6: we pry the jaws open, usually wedge something in there,
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 6: because you know, the natural state of the gar isn't
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 6: with the jaws wide open like that, And then we
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 6: put them in a fromaldehyde bath for like maybe two
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 6: three days, depending on the size of the fish.
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 3: And then we take it out.
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 6: We put in a cooler with water, and we just
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 6: change that water bath a few times and we just
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 6: let it air dry.
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 3: But you can do that with a regular fishing.
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 2: You could set nail like.
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 7: I've salted pike cats and let them drive.
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 6: But that looks that would work way better than piping
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 6: because pike are still they got a lot of flesh,
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 6: you know, along the skull, whereas a gar skull.
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 3: I mean that's yeah.
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 10: We may have to communicate with Montana State University. So
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 10: purchasing a jug of formaldehyde solution requires a specialized chemical supplier.
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 10: It's not available for purchase at retail stores and is
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 10: regulated by the e p A and OSHA due to
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 10: health risk, including cancer. We need to demonstrate a legitimate use,
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 10: so you might need to. Yeah, like anyone at m
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 10: s U, get some contacts there you go, well trade
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 10: in formaldehyde.
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 2: I was gonna bring this up with your cren. You
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 2: still have those tuna heads in that freezer. You need
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 2: to deal with them or get your formal I.
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 10: Thought Alec got some and made made soup with them.
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 7: Are the collars attached? Yeah, I take I.
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 5: Don't think no.
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 2: Is it just the head. We've also got those, we
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 2: cleaned them up.
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 10: We've also got those fetuses in there too.
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 6: This is a work art, I mean, you know, hope
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 6: you all appreciate that. You know, we couldn't bring a
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 6: big one in the suitcase or anything. Show me a
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 6: big one work you know, it was with your hands
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 6: what's a big one.
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 3: When you're looking at how about that big?
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 2: Really?
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 3: I think we had some pictures in there. I'll send
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 3: them to you.
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 6: But that eight footer has a was a pretty big skull.
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 6: It got trapped in the nets, so that one had
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 6: unfortunately died. But we're able to get the otolitz I
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 6: was fifty six years old. But there you're looking at
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 6: a eight foot long fish that was fifty six It
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 6: could have easily been one hundred. When they get that big,
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 6: they aren't growing, you know, very much each year. But
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 6: this is out of the coastal Louisiana. So we had
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 6: six footers that were twenty years old. I want to
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 6: say we probably had a six and a half footer.
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 6: There might have been, you know, twenty twenty one.
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 3: So they get they get big.
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 6: But that's where working with the rodeo was very helpful
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 6: because we could get all the data we wanted.
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 3: They let us just have at it. They were cutting
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 3: the heads off for us.
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 6: They're getting, as you know, any of the samples of
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 6: the muscle tissue, the fins, and then they also clean them.
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 5: There.
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 6: It was at a bar is at Manny's Bar on
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 6: the Mara Para off Lake marpod Amy River and people
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 6: come from all over that general region and they'd be
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 6: eating this fried alligator gar.
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 2: They make gar balls, which like hush. That's why I
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 2: like Cajun's man, those Cajun doozy everything.
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 3: I mean, you know, but gar's good. They got the
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 3: big backstraps.
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 6: And the thing is they invited us back year after
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 6: year because they wanted to know what we were finding out,
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 6: and we wanted to you know, work with them and
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 6: share that info with them too. So you've got multiple stakeholders.
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 6: We weren't there to say, like you got to stop
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 6: doing this. We're there to like learn about the resource.
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 6: How can we figure out about the health of the population.
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 6: We've been invited back every year. I couldn't make it
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 6: this year because coming down from Minnesota is a little
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 6: bit tougher, But next year we plan on going back
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 6: down there. So if everyone to, you know, send somebody
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 6: to jump in on a gator gar.
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 2: Rodeo, you know, we'll be there.
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 6: But I think that's a good opportunity to again work
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 6: with stakeholders, work with the people that are using the
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 6: resource for different purposes.
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 2: Uh, it's my last question for you. They might have more.
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 2: You know when you have like like Trout Unlimited, Ducks Unlimited,
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 2: Rocky Mountain Olk Foundation. Right, Uh, they put tons of
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 2: money into habitat where they put tons of money into research.
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 2: Who like, like who out there? What what NGOs are
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 2: put any money into into GAR? Right?
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 6: As far as the definite enngy of nobody, I think
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 6: we're we're lucky that we can try to go after
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 6: grants from different organizations. Minnesota has a lottery tax that
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 6: goes into their Environmental and Natural Resources Trust Fund, and
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 6: so we apply for that. We've been lucky to get
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 6: support from the state. Then to look at these native
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 6: rough fish that's been extremely beneficial, and a few other
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 6: states have you know, stuff like that too.
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 4: But there's no GAR enthusiastic group.
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 3: I mean, you're you're looking at it, Steve, I mean,
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 3: you know, it's a you know.
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 6: And then there's a Native Fish for Tomorrow, which is
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 6: a nonprofit group that is promoting.
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 3: The value of these fish. But we're all going to
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 3: cobble together out of Minnesota as well.
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 4: Native Fish yep.
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 6: So Tyler Winter is one of their main spokespersons. He
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 6: also had a response to that article, but again promoting
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 6: eating the fish, fishing for the fish. But again that's advocacy.
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 6: I mean through the grants that we're getting, we're partnering
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 6: with them to provide them funding. So we're kind of
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 6: trying to get what money we can to work on
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 6: that stuff. But doing things like this, the work you
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 6: all do gets that message out more about the value
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 6: of these fish. But again being able to convince it
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 6: was the National Fish and Wilife Foundation. They support our
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 6: work down on the Mississippi River flood Plain in Mississippi,
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 6: working with Nature Conservancy, US Fishing Wildlife. So it's a
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 6: bunch of partners usually coming together. So I've been kind
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 6: of selling the idea of like we can use gar
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 6: to answer these questions or to get this type of restoration.
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 6: But it really is advocating for the species and then
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 6: trying to fund the funds to or find the funds
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 6: to back that research and then show that these are
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 6: again valuable organisms.
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 2: Because it's the new fountain of youth, right right, Yeah,
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 2: figure out a couple of the little trips.
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 6: I will say that the biomedical value of the fish
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 6: has bolstered that value. Spotted gar actually out of Michigan
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 6: is where we looked at that comparing them, and also
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 6: in Louisiana, the gar genome is actually organized closer to
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 6: the human genome than it is to.
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 3: Other fish like your walleye and your trout.
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 6: So because of that sort of ancient lineage, they've got
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 6: a lot of stuff that's in common with you know,
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 6: other sides of the evolutionary tree.
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 2: Do got one more question, all right? What is the
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 2: toxin that's in those eggs?
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 6: That is a great question. We've been trying to answer
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 6: that for well over a decade. We think it might
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 6: be sequestered from bacteria, but we don't know exactly. There's
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 6: actually current work being done at Nicols State and at
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 6: LSU on that right now. We did some preliminary work
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 6: on that a few years ago, so we think it
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 6: comes from bacteria mainly in the eggs. And what's also
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 6: unique about that toxin is it's toxic to birds, to mammals,
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 6: to arthropods like crayfish and crickets, but it's not toxic
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 6: to fish. So really, why you're a fish but you have,
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 6: you know, eggs that aren't toxic to the other animals
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 6: that are there.
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 2: So suck that.
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 6: I've got videos of bluegill eating long nosed gar eggs
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 6: as the long nose are laying them. So that kind
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 6: of brings kind of full circle to like this game
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 6: fish and non game fish. You're actually supporting these giant bluegill.
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 6: And what we think is because gars evolutionarily would I mean,
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 6: they live in these warm waters, right, they breathe air.
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 6: So most of your regular traditionally respiring fish like bluegill
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 6: and you know bass, aren't going to live in those
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 6: low oxygen waters. But you do have a lot of crawfish,
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 6: you have a lot of water birds, you got a
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 6: lot of camels. So it'll kill the crawfish, you'll kill
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 6: the birds.
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 2: It'll you know, have you ever given have you ever
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 2: actually given it to a mouse and seen him die there?
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 3: I haven't given it to him. There are experiments that
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 3: have been done.
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 6: They've given it to turtles too, where it's like slow
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 6: down the heart rate, and so they have none experiments
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 6: with those eggs.
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 3: With yeah, yeah, it depends on how much you're consuming
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 3: with that stuff.
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 2: But like quicker days later with crayfish.
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 6: It's pretty quick, like they basically see them eating them
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 6: and they just slow down and they just stop.
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 9: What in parts of the country like now, like or
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 9: the Cajuns are eating these things?
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 7: Is that like a no?
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 6: Like people know Oh yeah, yeah, it's a you know,
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 6: they know how to clean them there. But and it's
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 6: it's available on the thing called the internet, right, but
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 6: you'll still see.
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 3: Pop up every few years.
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 6: These people got violently ill from eating a bunch of
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 6: gar eating the row. Yeah, they thought maybe I'm gonna
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 6: try to eat these because you know, you get a
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 6: big long nose guard.
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 3: There's a lot of eggs in there. You can eat
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 3: both in caviar. They make that. They call it Cajun caviar.
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 3: I've heard it's not as good, you know.
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 2: You know I've heard of that too. I forgot about that.
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but you can't do that with the guards. So
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 3: I mean, you're not going to die, You're gonna have Yeah.
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 2: We're trying to get a caviar specialist.
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 3: Nice specialist. You can double up.
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 4: I got one question, are you from the north?
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 8: I got I got two comments from earlier. We were
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 8: talking about the native range of an alligator guard. The
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 8: US g S says it goes following the Ohio River
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 8: almost to West Virginia. What and then the Mississippi almost
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 8: to Iowa, so like deep into the Midwest.
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, seriously, they're trying to bring them back in Kentucky.
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 6: They have found them in parts of Ohio and Indiana
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 6: along the Ohio River, so they think that the one
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 6: that was I think found in Indiana is part of
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 6: restoration either in Ohio and Kentucky.
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 3: But yeah, they're parts. They're in the Ohio River.
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 2: Are they maybe just not getting like five six seven
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 2: feet long? So people just aren't like noticing.
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 6: That they had big ones down in Horseshoe Lake in Illinois,
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 6: Like I want to say, it was like it was
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 6: like early nineteen hundred's that biggest one that they got
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 6: like towards the end of their run before they're fully extirpated,
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 6: was like a five or six foot long fish.
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 3: So they get big.
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 2: I had just no idea.
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 6: We've actually found gars in the north get bigger like
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 6: long term maximum size than the fish in the south.
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 6: Like that's looking at spotted gars. So they've got the
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 6: growth rate that has to be able to compensate for winter.
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 6: But we do find on average they live longer and
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 6: they can get bigger. Alligator gar we just don't know
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 6: enough because we wiped them out from the north, so
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 6: we'll have to see.
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 5: It's almost like deer.
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 8: Other comment was, Steve, you were asking about traditional use
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 8: of gar. When I would give tours at the hatchery
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 8: and we would get to the gar section and try
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 8: to make people think they were cool. Some native tribes
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 8: would use their scales for currency or jewelry, and then
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 8: some of the early white settlers would line the front
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 8: of their plows with gar skin because it could break
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 8: through tough dirt. So there's some historical use. It's super
• 1:49:26
  Speaker 8: tough question, Solomon. What is like an aquarium you really
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 8: like as a native rough fish man where you walk
• 1:49:33
  Speaker 8: in You're like, no way, they have a quailed back,
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 8: they have a river carpsucker.
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I would say the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanoogat does
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 6: an amazing job with freshwater fish. They've got a whole
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 6: building it's all freshwater. They built another one that's marine,
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 6: which I think is cool. But I was there for
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 6: a conference last year. I visited the aquarium three times
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 6: during that conference, only went to the freshwater one. They
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 6: loved to feed the gars down there too, So shout
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 6: Tennessee Aquarium. Shout Aquarium is a postdoc there and so
• 1:49:59
  Speaker 6: they've we had a good fresh water set up to
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 6: Tennessee's better. But shed does have some of my gars
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 6: that I had in grad school that I couldn't rehome
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 6: when I moved to Chicago. So if you go to
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 6: Shad Aquarium you see any gars, most of those are
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 6: mine from grad.
• 1:50:12
  Speaker 3: School, you know, over ten years ago.
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 8: No good And I sent him peddlefish to the shah
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 8: Yah about a death way back in the day. Yeah,
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 8: in Minnesota. That's sort of like ground zero for these
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 8: wakeboard studies or wakeboat studies. Have you followed these at all?
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 2: I've not.
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 6: I just know it's a it's a topic that's come
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 6: up when you know they're looking at new management.
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 3: That's you know, we got to look into it.
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 4: Well, that's both they weigh them all down with ballast
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 4: and then make the big waves.
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 8: Destroy the shore line you surf on them. Well, they're
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 8: now like putting cameras underwater and seeing what it does
• 1:50:43
  Speaker 8: to the bottom of the lake. And it appears to
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 8: be like pretty devastating, like a bomb went off.
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 7: I love it if they got rid of those things.
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 8: Yeah, I was going to see if you have any
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 8: thoughts on what those do to rough fish.
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I think whenever you're taking out habitat like that,
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 6: that's problematic, And especially since a lot of the native
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 6: rough fish lake then your shore habitat. So when you're
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 6: scouring out the bottom increasing turbidity, that's bad for the plants.
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 6: And even if they're not in your shore, you're creating
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 6: that wave action that's going to have stronger impacts also
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 6: on the shore when you've got that vegetation. So I
• 1:51:13
  Speaker 6: think I mean, again not being an expert on that myself,
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 6: but I would say if it's damaging the habitat is
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 6: or describing them, that's going to be problematic for a
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 6: lot of these fish.
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 2: Can you imagine can you just imagine the conversation, oh God,
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 2: in the board enthusiast community when someone says, hey, man,
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 2: you can't do that anymore because.
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 5: Of the guard.
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 2: Set me up.
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 3: You're setting me up.
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 2: No, I'd be like, yeah, you can't do anymore because
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 2: the guard.
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 7: They just make my boat bounce around a lot when.
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 2: I'm perch fishing.
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 4: Yeah, they would be just like, oh my goodness, gracious.
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 7: I don't think they're listening to this show.
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 4: No, I don't think they are in Franklin.
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 2: This is my message to the wakeboard. Good community.
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 8: Have you delivered a message?
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 7: Is your first?
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 4: I need to refine my message.
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 2: My message is I'm on the lake bottom side.
• 1:52:11
  Speaker 4: I think, man, who else got a question?
• 1:52:19
  Speaker 7: Do they regrow their teeth their whole lives?
• 1:52:22
  Speaker 6: That is a great question. I think they can grow teeth,
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 6: but it's not like sharks. So we were, yeah, we
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 6: were at this rodeo and the little kid, you know,
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 6: parents brought them up to us as we're processing these fish.
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 6: And I'm there with the persona chocol Bardy, curator of
• 1:52:36
  Speaker 6: fishes at LSU S and our boath there he's Nick
• 1:52:39
  Speaker 6: the all just I'm you know, gar person there little
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 6: kid asks can I have one of the teeth? And
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 6: so I'm like sure, And so we take the pliers
• 1:52:45
  Speaker 6: and we go to pull the tooth out of this
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 6: jaw and it's like really hard to get out of there,
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 6: and we pulled it out and it just goes down
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 6: almost like a volcano underneath the water, like and you know,
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 6: we pulled that out.
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 3: We're looking at it.
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 6: Me and persona boath we've been studying fish for most
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 6: of our lives. We're just like huh, Like we just
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 6: we had no idea that that's what it looked at.
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 6: And you know, we gave it to the kid. It
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 6: made his day, right, and his little brother came up like,
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 6: I want a tooth too, So then we were starting
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 6: pulling teeth out of these things. So they do have
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 6: an interesting structure there, and they do have something called
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 6: dentine or place of dentine around those teeth, which is
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 6: similar to the you know, some of the developmental tooth
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 6: parts that we have as well. So there's a lot
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 6: of things from the fish that are kind of connected
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 6: to us.
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 9: Yeah, because it seems like with those real long ones
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 9: over time, like fifty years, they'd get broken and need.
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, with some of the big fish they get they
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 3: get broken.
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 6: But in Michigan, when we'd be doing our spotted guar work,
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 6: we we would get what we call the crocodile effect,
• 1:53:40
  Speaker 6: where you'd get gars where the teeth have grown from
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 6: the bottom jaw and pierced the top of the.
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so he's got tooth holes in his jaw.
• 1:53:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Well those some of those are nostrils.
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I actually know you're right there, those two where
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 6: you can see the open hole going all the way down.
• 1:53:54
  Speaker 6: Those are the tooth holes for those lower fangs down there.
• 1:53:56
  Speaker 10: Yeah, think piranhas are like rows of teeth in there.
• 1:53:59
  Speaker 6: Like, yeah, they got they got a lot of teeth,
• 1:54:01
  Speaker 6: you know, and they don't have a lot of bite
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 6: force them, so they're more about you know, they grasp
• 1:54:05
  Speaker 6: and hold and then swallow the food as opposed to
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 6: piranhas and sharks, which are more of a cutting plane.
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 6: Barracudas as well, but again, you know, you look at
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 6: those teeth, that's gonna be you know, intimidating. So there's
• 1:54:15
  Speaker 6: a you know, an aesthetic to them as well when
• 1:54:18
  Speaker 6: you think about, you know, getting people interested in them.
• 1:54:21
  Speaker 8: Alongside trout and walleye pass besides humans, what else are
• 1:54:25
  Speaker 8: killing alligator gars?
• 1:54:27
  Speaker 6: Alligators to an extent, depending on the size, Once a
• 1:54:30
  Speaker 6: gator gar is full size, nothing's really messing with it.
• 1:54:33
  Speaker 6: Waterbirds will eat gars as well, other fish, other gars
• 1:54:37
  Speaker 6: will eat them. I mean that's not you know, we
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 6: find both in inside of bofen too, So typically it's.
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 3: Gonna be other predatory fish. But usually like a bass
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 3: or a.
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 6: Walleye, they're not gonna be able to take them down
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 6: once they get to once they get to decent sides.
• 1:54:50
  Speaker 6: Nothing's getting through those scales really either.
• 1:54:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:54:53
  Speaker 4: You mentioned being of Indian descent, you're born in the US.
• 1:54:55
  Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, I was born in Washington State of Arlington Water, Washington,
• 1:55:00
  Speaker 6: kind of farmtown.
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 2: Out far fish as a kid.
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 3: I did you know? That's what I was going to ask.
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 6: He's like, how we all got started fishing. I got
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 6: started fishing, you know, mainly on non game fish. So
• 1:55:09
  Speaker 6: I lived in Washington and the North Dakota for eight
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 6: years as a kid, and then Ohio is where I
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 6: grew up. Cut creek chubs out of some random creek
• 1:55:18
  Speaker 6: and we'd tie like ball up a piece of bread
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 6: on a hook and then catch them that way. But
• 1:55:22
  Speaker 6: I remember catching some perch in North Dakota going out fishing.
• 1:55:25
  Speaker 6: That was one of the first fish I remember catching.
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 6: The state capitol had a big Northern pike taxidermy there.
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 6: I remember looking down the mouth of that and thinking
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 6: those teeth are really cool. And I was into dinosaurs
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 6: as well, so always getting outside. My dad would take
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 6: me to the Stillguamish River in Washington State, so like
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 6: we chuck rocks in there. So there was that connection
• 1:55:42
  Speaker 6: to the water. So I enjoy fishing. I'm not good
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 6: at fishing. My buddy Tyler Winter takes me out so
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 6: you can take me. He can get me like, where's
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 6: the gar spot, where's the boat in spot?
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 3: So I can do that.
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 6: He takes my kids out. They've caught red horse and
• 1:55:55
  Speaker 6: you know, some other non game fish. Of course, my
• 1:55:57
  Speaker 6: kids know gars, they've known that for their whole lot.
• 1:56:00
  Speaker 6: But I do think that's an important part of like,
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 6: you know, getting kids out into nature, getting them outdoors,
• 1:56:06
  Speaker 6: and so that's also what we want to do. I
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 6: would be remiss if I didn't say, like, my introduction
• 1:56:10
  Speaker 6: to gars was through Ranger Rick magazine, which is through
• 1:56:13
  Speaker 6: the National Wildlife Federation. Y. Yeah, so I got it
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 6: from my kids too, and so I mean that's what
• 1:56:18
  Speaker 6: got me started. And you know I thought they were cool.
• 1:56:20
  Speaker 6: But you know, now we look at that is that's
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 6: an opportunity to introduce kids to the outdoors. I'm also
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 6: just getting them outdoors. So again, I like getting my
• 1:56:27
  Speaker 6: kids out fishing and then you know, helping them maybe
• 1:56:29
  Speaker 6: reel it in. But I'm not a great angler. I
• 1:56:31
  Speaker 6: like to you know, count on folks like you all
• 1:56:33
  Speaker 6: for that in grad school. I'm also not a hunter,
• 1:56:35
  Speaker 6: but I am a consumer, so I just wasn't good
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 6: at getting up early in the morning.
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 3: So they go out hunting, you know, for duck and deer,
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 3: but I would eat all the food they brought back.
• 1:56:43
  Speaker 3: We'd have game night and do that.
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 6: So I'm I'm a participant on some level, but I
• 1:56:48
  Speaker 6: do recognize the importance. Married nine years as of just
• 1:56:52
  Speaker 6: a week.
• 1:56:52
  Speaker 2: And a half ago, same burst.
• 1:56:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we met at shatt Aquarium. So she she was
• 1:56:59
  Speaker 3: a great writer. She's not a fish person, but she
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 3: is bought into the gar you know, the the whole
• 1:57:05
  Speaker 3: gar thing. At our wedding.
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 6: Instead of escort cards, you know, got the name tags
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 6: or the table, she made escort guards, which are gar
• 1:57:12
  Speaker 6: figurines with the name tags. I did not know about
• 1:57:15
  Speaker 6: it at all, So you know, she has all for
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 6: She's got the gar earrings. And so again we've got
• 1:57:19
  Speaker 6: some you know, fish connections.
• 1:57:20
  Speaker 7: To park on your honeymoon, I know, right, you know, if.
• 1:57:23
  Speaker 3: It existed, we would do that, Brody. So you know
• 1:57:26
  Speaker 3: that's where the DNA is really going. We're trying to
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 3: bring back guars, but then it'll just look the same
• 1:57:30
  Speaker 3: as what we have now. So it's gonna yea yeah, yeah,
• 1:57:34
  Speaker 3: millions of dollars. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, it's a
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 3: gar Yeah.
• 1:57:41
  Speaker 4: All right, well thanks for coming on the show.
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 2: Thanks for having me tell people how to find your
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 2: work if they want to come find her, if they
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 2: want to send you a weird specimens or whatever.
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 6: Yeah, if they look up a garlab, garlab dot org.
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 6: If you just look up gar lab, you'll find us.
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 6: And we're on the social media platforms, the garlab on
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 6: Instagram and on all the major platforms there. So if
• 1:58:01
  Speaker 6: you look up garlab you'll find us. There's not that
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 6: many of them. I think there's there's just one so far.
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 6: Come until we expand further, like the big test.
• 1:58:07
  Speaker 2: So they can get a hold and send an email, yes,
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 2: say one time.
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 6: Yeah, tell us the stories if you know, spots from them,
• 1:58:14
  Speaker 6: if you get a big gar like, we're interested in that.
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 6: It is again a broad spanning effort, and so we
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 6: want contributions from the general public place.
• 1:58:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, let us know. I'm always up for gar stories.
• 1:58:27
  Speaker 4: Garlab org. Yep, garlab dot or Is that simple?
• 1:58:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yep, that's simple. There was a lot a competition
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 3: for it.
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 4: Step when he did a keyword search, Yeah yeah.
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 8: Yeah, can I say one last thing. Yeah, we used
• 1:58:40
  Speaker 8: to do touch tanks at the hand tree a lot.
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 8: The most popular fish were always garu. They like really
• 1:58:45
  Speaker 8: appeal to children. There's something like a very basic level
• 1:58:48
  Speaker 8: we just love about garfish. Yeah, and they handle touch
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 8: tanks super well.
• 1:58:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:58:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 8: A lot of fish can't handle that stress. Gar can,
• 1:58:55
  Speaker 8: So they're great for like introducing kids to cool prehistoric
• 1:58:59
  Speaker 8: rough fish.
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 6: One of my favorite pictures that I've seen of kids
• 1:59:02
  Speaker 6: interacting with gars is one that Spencer took from that hatchery.
• 1:59:05
  Speaker 3: So I've used that before in outreach activities, but it's
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 3: like these kids reaching and touching that long nose gars.
• 1:59:10
  Speaker 3: So I think that's uh, they don't.
• 1:59:13
  Speaker 6: They don't see it as weird, they don't see as trash.
• 1:59:14
  Speaker 6: So I think that's that's hope for the next generation.
• 1:59:18
  Speaker 4: You know what we didn't get into is cleaning them
• 1:59:21
  Speaker 4: ten snips.
• 1:59:22
  Speaker 3: Ten snips is good.
• 1:59:24
  Speaker 2: That's one of our books, isn't it, Brody? Peeling them
• 1:59:27
  Speaker 2: and you know, pulling their little.
• 1:59:29
  Speaker 3: Back straps out save the head for us?
• 1:59:32
  Speaker 2: Maybe well from now on, once we get our once
• 1:59:34
  Speaker 2: we get a jugger from Albert, all right, it's all
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 2: thanks a lot man, all right, Thanks for having