Re: NANFA-- Bluenose shiner news

Rick Phillips (philipsr_at_chartertn.net)
Wed, 17 Sep 2003 14:11:21 -0400

I'll throw my two cents worth in on this one. I'm sure for some of our SOSC
we're not even close to having an overall picture of distribution and
numbers. I know that in the past couple of years a whole lot of new
information has come to light on the distribution and numbers of the
Blackside Dace (Phoxinus cumberandensis) in Tennessee thanks to the work of
some of our Stream Survey Crews. I know of one instance in particular where
a crew was surveying in some rugged, remote areas of the Cumberaland Plateau
in Tennessee. On occasion in particular they happened to run into a
landowner who had a small stream running across his property. They asked
this gentleman if he had noticed any particularly colorful or unusual fish
in his stream. His reply was that one thing he had noticed was that the
usual minnows he caught in his minnow trap for fishing had been replaced by
some pretty little minnow that he didn't like nearly as well for
fishing...but it seemed to be about all he was catching recently so he just
used them. Well, they went and checked his minnow trap and ...you guessed
it... it had about 50 fishbait-sized, federally endangered Blackside Dace in
it. So before we assume that some hobbyist collector has decimated this
welaka population maybe we should ask around and see if anyone has really
look hard at locations and done collections to determine the true
distribution and numbers.

Rick

Rick Phillips
Kingsport, Tennessee

----- Original Message -----
From: "Chip Rinehart" <crin_at_glassmaster.com>
To: <nanfa_at_aquaria.net>
Sent: Monday, September 15, 2003 12:16 PM
Subject: RE: NANFA-- Bluenose shiner news

> I agree with BG here. It doesn't do a whole lot of good to simply list a
> fish as protected and then do nothing else about it. Dustin and I have
> tried to inform the DNR of some of the locations where we have found
> "protected" species in hopes that they will do something to help preserve
> these fish (and I don't mean just in formalin). ;-) Only time will tell
if
> they use any of the info we have supplied.
>
> Chip in SC
> (Home of the 2004 NANFA Convention.....y'all come)
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