RE: NANFA-- peacock bass

Jay DeLong (thirdwind_at_att.net)
Mon, 20 Dec 1999 15:45:23 -0800

Ray Wolff said:
> Reffering to Jays remark, I had called a " bioligist" locally to report a
> strange sunfish I caught. It was quite colorful, and had FOUR anal fin
> spines. It was shaped like a crappie for the most part, and was a
> brilliant deep red with turquoise spots. Tha answere I got, "
> oh, its from
> the east side of the river, sunfish are more colorful there, and it
> probably was a genetic freak". He didnt care to see it or want
> to know the location.

Ray, do you have a preserved fish collection? And did you keep that fish?

This biologist may not have been trained in species ID, or he may have had
other job duties, or something else might have been going on at his end.
Who knows, Ray, he may have been intimidated by you and didn't want to show
his lack of skills. Fish and wildlife "biologists" aren't the best people
to expect immediate responses from. Not that they're rude or bad-- just
from what I was saying before-- their training and the reasons they were
hired dictates what they do. And just because they work for your state
doesn't mean they are there to respond to personal requests from the public.
I'm not lecturing you or anything like that. I've just seen how some
fishery bureaucracies work. These people have specific duties and their
managers want them to work on projects and reports and other things like
that. They aren't sitting around waiting for their phones to ring so they
can get to work. Resource agencies have all kinds of people and I think we
need to be sensitive to this. When I've dealt with them I've had various
reactions, and when I got to know agency people better I saw that the people
there are as variable as they are in any group of people-- all with
different backgrounds, skills, interests, etc. Sorry, I didn't mean to
lecture. Just felt like blabbing. Blab, blab...

--
Jay DeLong
Olympia, WA

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