RE: NANFA-L-- Releasing native fish back to the wild -- EVER

Bonnie McNeely (bnmcneely-in-sbcglobal.net)
Thu, 24 Aug 2006 05:28:53 -0700 (PDT)

Fact is, fishing and boating gear are responsible for movement and introduction of invasive aquatic plants like Hydrilla, giant Azolla, water hyacinth ...... . Boaters are given some recommendations for cleaning the boat of plant materials, but most have no idea how few, or how small the propogules may be in order to effect transfer. And many have no idea how much of a real impact such plants have on ecosystem processes and community structure. When Texas institutued a Hydrilla control program a few years back, many fishers were opposed because they saw the Hydrilla beds as bass habitat. Well, they are, but in the same bodies of water native plants had provided even better bass habitat before they were crowded out by the Hydrilla.

Oh, well.

Dave

Peter Unmack <peter.lists-in-> wrote:
On Wed, 23 Aug 2006, Irate Mormon wrote:

> Jase, I have thought exactly the same thing. Buckets, nets, test
> equipment, etc., - all are viable means of disease transmission.

I'm sure none of that helps. But most of that stuff is not going from
aquarium to wild, it's all wild to wild (at least for me it is). I do
make a point of not using the same sampling gear when I go to Australia
though. But moving sampling gear around is at least no different to
fishing equipment or boats, which is a far more common occurence.
Doesn't make it right, but proper steralization is pretty close to
impossible most of the time.

Cheers
Peter
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