 The Paddlefish Research and Processing Center in northeast Oklahoma processed a total of 4,221 paddlefish during this spring's fishing season. Anglers could take their fish to the station where biologists would gather data and clean their fish for them.  Paddlefish are prehistoric giants commonly weighing more than 50 pounds, despite feeding on nothing more than plankton. Anglers from all over the Midwest, like Jerry Younger, flock to Oklahoma to fish for them.  Paddlefish eggs, or caviar, fetch a hefty price on the wholesale market. It's illegal for anglers to sell it but the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation's program collected data and sold the eggs, netting more than $1 million. By Marc Murrell Special to The Capital-Journal Published Sunday, June 08, 2008 Paddlefish are prehistoric looking giants that grow to gargantuan proportions, a trait even more amazing considering they eat nothing but plankton. These cartilaginous creatures are throwbacks from times gone by but their populations continue to thrive in several states throughout the Midwest. The Sooner State is one of those and a recent paddlefish research project may have just netted the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation (ODWC) more than $1 million. But even more important than the monetary gain may be the amount of data collected on this species and the interaction with anglers fishing for these beasts. "Up until now we really had a brush fire approach to paddlefish management," said Brent Gordon, Northeast Regional Fisheries Supervisor for the ODWC. "We've done creel surveys and looked at the exploitation of these fish since 1979, but we really only knew about the current population and didn't get the answers we were looking for since many of these fish take eight to 10 years to reach maturity." Gordon's research in recent years found him collecting 2,000 paddlefish and getting his data from this sample. He would tag, weigh and measure each fish and release it, looking at recapturing information when tagged fish were subsequently caught. This research was costing the ODWC upwards of $200,000 to collect and process. "It didn't really make sense," Gordon said of trying to figure out a better way. "So we decided to make anglers part of the data collection process and give them something in return for helping us collect this information." Gordon and other ODWC employees manned the Paddlefish Research and Processing Center (PRPC) from mid-February to mid-May. It was located at the Twin Bridges Area above Grand Lake where the Neosho and Spring rivers converge to form the Grand River. "We were there from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day," Gordon said. Anglers in Oklahoma can legally keep one paddlefish per day and they must stop fishing once they keep a fish. At the completion of their trip they could take their fish, as long as it was still alive, to the PRPC and ODWC employees would process it. Or, anglers could call from their cell phones while on the water or at another location and ODWC employees would take a boat or truck and pick up the fish. As part of the processing, biologists would take part of the fish's jaw to age it (a cross section reveals growth rings similar to that of a tree) and weigh and measure the fish. A graduate student from The University of Kansas was also able to collect samples from fish to determine the prevalence of an ancient parasite. Tissue samples were also collected by the Peoria Tribe to determine contaminant levels in that paddlefish population. The fish carcass would be gutted and the eggs, or caviar, from the females would be processed to sell on the wholesale market, an option not legally available to anglers. "The best eggs would bring $160 to $200 per pound," Gordon said. "By the end of the project we collected 7,000 pounds of eggs that would fall into this category and another 1,000 pounds that weren't quite that good." It doesn't take a mathematician to figure out that's well over $1 million for something that really doesn't taste that good to many people. But the worldwide demand for caviar is apparently strong and Gordon admitted that black market caviar often fetches more than $200 per pound. "Most of the money will go back into paddlefish research, management and law enforcement," Gordon said of plans for the revenue generated by the project. The fish would be skinned with a pneumatic tool similar to those used in a hog cleaning operation. The fillets would be removed from the fish and packaged and heat sealed with a tag that referenced the angler's paddlefish license and returned to them all in a matter of minutes. The livers were saved from the fish to distribute to any catfish anglers that requested them and the rest of the carcass was placed in barrels to be shipped to a rendering plant in Carthage, Mo. "We sent a total of about 90,000 pounds of this off and they rendered it into heating oil," Gordon said of the pieces and parts leftover. "So there really wasn't any part of the fish that was wasted and a lot of these items were things that anglers normally just discarded or dumped into a trash can or back into the lake." A total of 4,221 paddlefish were processed at the PRPC with about 60 percent being males. Gordon said the amount of data and positive publicity for this endeavor was huge. "This provides us with too much good information to ever stop doing it," Gordon said. "We now have a database on paddlefish that any state in the country would envy." Plans are already under way for the 2009 paddlefishing season and Gordon says his administration thinks the PRPC was a huge success. "One of the most important benefits of the PRPC was that it put our biologists in one-on-one situations with anglers from all over and they could talk about paddlefish and even other species like blue catfish and crappie," Gordon said of the public support and interaction often so crucial to the success of any governmental venture. "It's a win-win situation for everyone and we've got a lot of good press from it and anglers really love it so there's no way we could stop it now." Marc Murrell can be reached at mmoutdoors@cox.net. ================================================ Fishing reduces stress and gives you a break from our modern world where everything is going a million miles per hour 73 Check & Clear 6 LOC: 38-54-14.60N / 097-14-09.07W |
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