Ep. 793: The Mysteries of Gar Fish

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
If this is the me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening podcast, you
can't predict.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Anything brought to you by first Light. When I'm hunting,
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just gear that works. Check it out at first light
dot com. That's f I R S T L I
T E dot com. All right, Join today by Solomon David,

(00:44):
the gar guy who has a Garassic Park sticker. See,
I was sitting here thinking you were a big Jurassic
Park fan.

Speaker 3 (00:51):
I mean that too as well, But.

Speaker 4 (00:53):
Then I realized it's Garassic Park.

Speaker 3 (00:55):
Why not vote Steve.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
We're gonna get into that. We're gonna get into That's
gonna be my first quest, but I don't want to
ask it yet. Solomon David is an aquatic ecologist an
assistant professor, works on fish biodiversity, conservation, science, communication, and
runs the Garlab. It's like a colloquial term. Garlab focuses

(01:21):
on the ecology of migratory and ancient fishes and how
that research can help us better understand and conserve aquatic ecosystems.
Additional projects involve conservation of Great Lakes migratory fishes. I'm
assuming you mean the native ones. Yeah, Yeah, ancient sport
fish e g. Guards, bowfins. We're gonna talk about what

(01:43):
that means. Insert We're gonna talk about terms rough fish,
trash fish, how those terms aren't really doing the best.
They're doing a little bit of a disservice to some
fish species. I'm going to call for you know what,
you know what Brody does, the indefensible law thing. I'm

(02:03):
going to call for a new law, and I'm gonna
tell you why people think it's a bad idea, and
then I'm going to refute that and explain why it's
actually not, why it's good. It'll be how could people
tell the difference? And I'll say between a game and
that's what will happen. And I'll say, I don't know,
how can we How can they tell the difference on ducks?

(02:24):
Why is that? Okay, That's what I'm going to use
on them. People. No one knows what I'm talking about.

Speaker 5 (02:28):
Ex I know exactly what you're talking about.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
You know where I'm going with this. So I'm going
with this. Oh, here's a good one. A gar. A
gar comes into a bar. Bartender says, why the long
face classic? I didn't make that up. It's in my note.
Is that your joke?

Speaker 3 (02:50):
Yeah, I kind of you made that up. Yeah, for
the moviet.

Speaker 6 (02:53):
Other people of its crowdsourcing too, so you know, people
do the punts for me these days.

Speaker 3 (02:58):
But started off artisanal.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
I'm holding in my hand an alligator guard. We're gonna
talk about alligator guards too. And I read the thing
that Krinn put down. I had no idea about. Don't
answer this yet, you can answer like a little.

Speaker 5 (03:12):
Bit, all right.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
I had no idea that alligator guys were uping louis
or up in Illinois.

Speaker 3 (03:17):
Yeah, they're trying to bring them back they used to be.

Speaker 2 (03:20):
Had no idea. I think of that as like strictly
like East Texas, Louisiana, no idea.

Speaker 7 (03:29):
That's almost an ice fishing state.

Speaker 8 (03:31):
And they even go further than Illinois.

Speaker 2 (03:33):
Yeah, we're gonna talk about that. I didn't know any
of that. We're gonna talk a little bit about buffalo,
not the animal, the fish. We're gonna talk about the fish. Buffalo.
Here's what, here's what, here's how this whole thing came
to be. There was an article like, I can't you know,
I can't police everything that happens. I can't police everything.

(03:58):
Now a little bit, I'm gonna complain about you fair enough.
I'm gonna praise you and complain about it.

Speaker 3 (04:03):
Sounds about right.

Speaker 4 (04:06):
There was an article on.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
Our website on the meeater dot com and it was
a bowfishing article and it use terms like rough fish
as a catch all, which as a catch all like,
and we were using that like. We didn't say trash
fish as a kid. We used rough fish meaning non
game fish, unregulated fish. So if you had if I

(04:30):
was going to categorize and I think most people in
the country would understand I'm tom about here. If I
was going to categorize fish like in the most basic
general terms would be uh, someone might be familiar with
this lingo game fish okay, which would be like regulated
fish that people sport fish for. Then there'd be a

(04:53):
fish that they don't really have a word for, but
it's like the no touch fish in my area stir okay,
grown up Michigan and be like, no one would call
a sturgeon a rough fish, but they're not a game fish.
They're like no touch fish. And then rough fish would
mean any fish that there's no regulatory structure in place,

(05:16):
no close season, no bag limit, and method of take
would be least regulated. And that's kind of what you
would use the term for. It didn't mean you didn't
want it, It didn't mean you didn't eat it.

Speaker 4 (05:26):
It just meant like.

Speaker 2 (05:29):
Wide open shad.

Speaker 7 (05:33):
Cart, you want to hear the orders.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
One of the rough fish term hell yes man.

Speaker 9 (05:38):
Originated in mid to late eighth nineteenth century commercial fishing
practices to describe less valuable fish that were rough dressed,
gutted but non flayed, and often discarded from river boats
to reduce weight and prevent spoilage.

Speaker 4 (05:54):
Go back to the rough dress that's great.

Speaker 7 (05:56):
Yeah, gutted but not filaid.

Speaker 2 (06:00):
That's whe that comes from.

Speaker 7 (06:02):
And then it I'll buy that.

Speaker 2 (06:04):
Yeah, I was thinking about that this morning. Well, it
wasn't showering.

Speaker 7 (06:09):
I thought it was like I thought it was a
term that came from like English.

Speaker 6 (06:15):
Yeah, I mean they've got a term over there. I
mean they used rough fish in a different context. It's
not as negative as it here.

Speaker 3 (06:22):
What's that?

Speaker 2 (06:23):
Oh, they use they use it, Yeah, but they fish
for they like name their cart Yeah yeah, yeah, well
carper native departs of Europe too, so you know.

Speaker 6 (06:30):
But yeah, it's like with the here when they had
the river boats, and they had the fully dressed fish,
so that was full aid, the fish that had higher value,
and then you've got the rough dressed fish, which I said,
the guts taken out.

Speaker 3 (06:41):
And then when they had to make it, you know,
to market in time.

Speaker 6 (06:45):
And navigate shallow waters and hot summers, they had to
discard some of the catch and so they ditched the
rough dressed fish first and they kept the you know,
the fully dressed fish.

Speaker 2 (06:59):
Where was that?

Speaker 7 (06:59):
Oh?

Speaker 4 (07:00):
So we had this article.

Speaker 2 (07:01):
Come out and and and uh Solomon uh took a front.
He wrote a mean email.

Speaker 3 (07:11):
The email.

Speaker 2 (07:13):
He wrote a mean email, being like, you're just contributing
to the negativity. You're taking away from fish conservation, not
respecting fish right your email.

Speaker 6 (07:30):
It's a I mean, that's all go to hell and die.
That was in the post script that was in PS.

Speaker 4 (07:35):
Yeah, yeah, that's how he ended it. I hope you
go to Helen die. And he offered to.

Speaker 2 (07:42):
He said, sometime we should get together and talk about
some of these issues. Now I trust I haven't looked
by trust. You wrote very flattering nice emails when we
publish things like gar recipes. Yeah yeah, okay, we didn't
dig those up. But no, And in all fairness, uh,
in all fairness, Solomon David, the guard guy, wrote in

(08:04):
saying talking about a lot of his work doing with
native fish that get from from the perspective of like
guys that grow up bowfish and guys that grow up
whatever they get, a lot of these fragile native fish
get kind of rolled into this category of trash fish

(08:26):
or this category of rough fish. And we have these
very loose regulatory structures, and people think they're out doing
the world of favor by getting carp like non native
carp out of a system or whatever. They think they're
doing the world of favor. And meanwhile they are also
unknowingly or knowingly laying waste to like pretty sensitive native

(08:49):
fish and throwing them up on the bank and thinking
that they're somehow helping it the world out. And it's like, uh, people,
it's time for people to get a little more of
a nuanced perspective of what fish are in their waterways.
And I would argue it's time to get a little
smarter about how we regulate these things. Let's start out.

(09:14):
There's a lot of folks here, so we're gonna take
turns asking questions. Let's start out by what what help
tell people what the gar lab is?

Speaker 5 (09:21):
Right?

Speaker 2 (09:21):
And within that I got that, there's a second question.
Aren't you making the same mistake because you're saying gar lab,
but you're talking about stuff besides gar right, so you're
lumping everybody into a GAR.

Speaker 6 (09:32):
Well, Steve, if you look at the Big ten conference,
are we more than ten teams?

Speaker 2 (09:37):
Now?

Speaker 3 (09:38):
It's more of a name? You know, Well, you're a Michigan, right,
you know we're.

Speaker 6 (09:44):
Now like, yeah, yeah, it's not ten, it's like eighteen
teams now, so stupid, you know.

Speaker 2 (09:51):
It's more than we were straight honest, Yeah, you knew that.

Speaker 5 (09:56):
I knew that ten years. I didn't know how many
exactly I knew the Big ten was.

Speaker 9 (10:01):
I went to Penn State, which was the first school
that made the Big ten more than ten teams.

Speaker 8 (10:07):
There's also a conference called the Big twelve. That's not
twelve types.

Speaker 2 (10:11):
Yeah, I'll look it up.

Speaker 6 (10:18):
Yeah, sure, So Big ten started with ten. Gar Labs
started with guard But you know, now we're expanding there's
a lot of non game native fish that you know,
we want to work on, but.

Speaker 4 (10:27):
It started out working on guard.

Speaker 3 (10:28):
Yeah, yeah, that's still the flagship group.

Speaker 2 (10:31):
Yeah. So talk about the scope of the Gar.

Speaker 6 (10:34):
Lab, right, So we want to use these sort of native,
non game fish, these underappreciated fish to answer questions about ecology, evolution,
sustainable managements, just informing our understanding of conservation of aquatic
ecosystems and also increasing our knowledge and also sort of
sharing the value of freshwater biodiversity. So it's kind of

(10:57):
a multifaceted thing. We use a small group of fish.
I mean, there's only seven species of Gars, which is
why we figured we had.

Speaker 3 (11:02):
To expand now.

Speaker 6 (11:03):
But in order to show that, you know, you can
look at things like fisheries management, conservation, uh, native fish
angling and consumption from just looking at some of these species.

Speaker 3 (11:15):
People who working on trout and walleye for ages. That
stuff is being done. It's been done.

Speaker 2 (11:19):
So this is kind of a lot of money there. Yeah.

Speaker 6 (11:21):
Yeah, there's there's a lot more money there than there
isn't Garn Boffen.

Speaker 2 (11:24):
Funding funding on Gar and Boff and work's got to
be a bit oh for sure, for sure.

Speaker 3 (11:29):
Yeah, trying to get by.

Speaker 2 (11:31):
There's no like gar fishermen of of Michigan. Yeah.

Speaker 9 (11:36):
Yeah, but I feel like alligator gar have a good
thing going.

Speaker 2 (11:40):
Now.

Speaker 3 (11:41):
That's that's one of that's kind of been improving for sure.

Speaker 2 (11:43):
Yeah, that's a that's become a destination fish. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (11:46):
Yeah, all over the world, Texas and Louisiana.

Speaker 2 (11:49):
Oh seven gar. Let's play a game, all right, you
can't play Okay, all right?

Speaker 8 (11:55):
Alligator gar spot like short nose, long nose.

Speaker 4 (11:59):
Oh, we got alligator spotted.

Speaker 8 (12:02):
Short long nose. I just ran out Florida Cuba. I
can't think of what the last.

Speaker 2 (12:09):
I don't know about.

Speaker 8 (12:10):
Florida and Cuba are Florida and Cuba one.

Speaker 3 (12:12):
Yeah, Florida gar and Cuban gar.

Speaker 8 (12:14):
Yeah, I don't know what the last one.

Speaker 6 (12:16):
There's one that runs from Mexico all the way down
to Costa Rica. So you might call that range. What
kind of range?

Speaker 3 (12:22):
Got temporary trol you got?

Speaker 7 (12:24):
You got tropical?

Speaker 3 (12:26):
Tropical? Yeah, tropical, yep, tropical gar.

Speaker 9 (12:29):
Do any of the none of the other ones get
close to the size of this.

Speaker 2 (12:33):
No, yep.

Speaker 6 (12:33):
Even as far as what we know in the fossils,
alligator gar a is still the.

Speaker 10 (12:36):
Biggest and then short nose compared to long nose, Like
how many inches off are away from the max?

Speaker 6 (12:43):
Yeah, I mean short noses they max out around maybe
thirty six inches. Long noses can get up to sixty
inches sixty Yeah.

Speaker 4 (12:52):
That's our gar.

Speaker 9 (12:53):
What percentage of that long noses is?

Speaker 3 (12:56):
Yeah, yeah, the long nose.

Speaker 6 (12:57):
The nose makes up you know, quite a significant amount that,
So i'd say, you know, it's it's not twenty five percent,
but it might be like ten or fifteen percent. Yeah,
decent size. But even a short nose gar has a
long nose, So it's all relative.

Speaker 5 (13:09):
Right.

Speaker 2 (13:09):
I want to get into what makes gar garden, why
they're why they're special in what they do. But let's
let's just pasture this whole. Let's let's talk about some
terminology for me. Trash fish, rough fish, non game fish. Right,
like in the sort of do you do you have
any idea and it doesn't matter what state you draw

(13:31):
from in the regulatory structure, like.

Speaker 4 (13:35):
How did that come to be? Do you understand?

Speaker 3 (13:37):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (13:38):
Like like like take Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, whatever, Like how
did it come to be that they that they create
the categorization?

Speaker 6 (13:48):
Yeah, well, you know, we just we value some fish
more than other fish, And so I think, yeah, I
got to look at when you think about historical perspective,
it depends on where you're starting your history, right, So
when you're thinking about maybe modern fisheries management, what's been
going on for the past I don't know, fifty hundred years,
we're looking at largemouth bass and trout and salmon. Those

(14:09):
fish are valued because those are considered sport fish. People
like to eat them, maybe a significant portion of the
population likes to eat them. But there are other fish
like suckers and gars and bowfins that were eaten by
indigenous peoples for a long time before that.

Speaker 9 (14:25):
What about like colonial a Maria recons or you know,
not even that, did they have a different view of
those fish or like, yeah, what we'd call rough fish?

Speaker 6 (14:35):
Yeah, for sure, I think it's it gets kind of foggy,
you know, it is more of a colonial perspective when
you think about the fish that we value now, especially
if you look at a European influence, like they've got
trout over there, they've got fish that are kind of
like perch, fish that are kind of like walleye and
even walley took a little bit of time before people
saw those as a game fish, so that definitely had
an influence, whereas these other fish, people hadn't seen a

(14:57):
gar before before they came to North America, and they're
looking this like what, we can't filly this like you
would a walleye or a trout. You got to use
some sort of hatchet or you know, ten snips now
to do that. So those other fish kind of fell
by the wayside, and we value these, you know, the bass,
the trout, the salmon more and that just kind of
got wrapped up into fisheries management. So it started, like

(15:18):
we talked about with let's, you know, fully address some
of these fish that are considered valuable and some of
these other fish might be less valuable. So we're just
gonna take the guts out and if we got to
get rid of some of them, then we will. And
you know, you kind of follow the money. That's where
you know, we valued them. We didn't value others. And
you know, we did research that looked at even the

(15:39):
science behind these We've got way more research on steelhead
and largemouth bass and chinook salmon than we do on
even some of the sturgeon or the suckers. So we
like to think that science can attempt to be objective,
but we got to follow where the money is. Right,
We've got way more money to look at these game fish,
and now we're trying to play some ketch up here.
So that's been going on, you know, hundred years back,

(16:00):
two hundred years back, when you're thinking about what was
historically valued by different peoples and what is now being valued,
and now we're just trying to make it a little
bit more you know, inclusive as far as biodiversity is considered,
Like why not you know, take care of all the
fish from a holistic ecosystem perspective, because when you do that,
that's good for everybody when you think about waterways, water quality, habitat,

(16:22):
that sort of thing.

Speaker 2 (16:23):
Do you see if you ever visited with any archaeologists
on this issue, do you see much evidence of Native
American use of again, to define our terms, Native American
use of gar? Absolutely, suckers, I know that, But like
Native American use of gar and bowfin her dogfish.

Speaker 6 (16:46):
Oh yeah, I mean you can look at even early illustrations,
you know, when we had you know, colonial explorers coming in,
I mean they sketch those out there are some early
documentation of indigenous people is actually sharing those fish, and
there was some I can't think of the reference right now,
but some of the colonists actually thought that, like, wow,
this fish actually is pretty good. But that switched or

(17:06):
you know that, we moved away from that pretty quickly.
But as far as archaeology, yeah, you find arrowheads that
were made out of gar scales. I mean, you look
at a big alligator guard.

Speaker 3 (17:14):
They can use that. Those scales are basically made out
of tooth enamel.

Speaker 6 (17:17):
So that's the hardest, you know, substance that our bodies produced,
so it's not like other fish. So yeah, they've been
part of human culture here in North America for a
long time. And what about both in though both in
as a food fish for sure. Yeah, even you know
that's a rough one.

Speaker 3 (17:31):
Oh yeah, you know it can be. It can be.

Speaker 2 (17:34):
I eat gars, no problem, Yeah, I like them.

Speaker 4 (17:36):
Yeah, both and s tough.

Speaker 6 (17:37):
Really, I look at Louisiana for six years. We ate
them all the time down there. Folks down there eat them.
I was able to try them, but people fish for
them alongside the roads. The big cane poles flip them
across the road. When they're getting them out of the bodyos.
But you can drive down the road and you can
see shoepick patties on the signs, So they call them
shoe pick down there, which is kind of a French
and Indigenous name for him. So it's a very popular

(17:59):
food fish down because.

Speaker 2 (18:00):
The yeah, they're just like they just they have like
an over I find relative to other fish, they have
an overpowering flavor. Well.

Speaker 6 (18:15):
They also they do turn to mush pretty fast, so
they call them cotton cotton fish because you know, they
got a bunch of different names, but because that flesh
turns to mush because they got these enzymes and just
start breaking it down. So when I was down in
Louisiana for the one of my first times down there,
went with a couple of professors there, they you know,
cook up anything.

Speaker 3 (18:34):
Shout out to quent and fond and who can do this.

Speaker 6 (18:36):
They got boffin put them in a bucket their air
breathers so they can survive the trip, you know, from
where we were back home to their place. One of
them got the fryer going. The other one took the
bowfin out of the back of the truck.

Speaker 3 (18:48):
Still alive.

Speaker 6 (18:48):
Because it can breathe there wax the head on the
back of the you know, on the tailgate, and then
immediately starts flaying that and then takes that flay and
throws into the fryer.

Speaker 3 (18:56):
And that's basically what you have to do. You have
to basically process.

Speaker 6 (18:59):
Them as as quickly as you can after you've you know,
dispatched the fish.

Speaker 3 (19:03):
Otherwise it just.

Speaker 6 (19:04):
Starts turning into goo. You can't throw that filet in
a freezer or anything like that. And it was delicious,
it was yeah hmm, try that. Yeah, I recommend it.

Speaker 4 (19:13):
Why don't live in.

Speaker 2 (19:14):
Both in country more? But we grew up in it,
you know.

Speaker 6 (19:16):
Yeah, Michigan, Minnesota's got both, and I mean you don't
all you got short nose gar out here though.

Speaker 7 (19:20):
So are they?

Speaker 2 (19:21):
Yeah, I can't get excited about short nois not to
disparage them.

Speaker 6 (19:25):
Yeah yeah, like along those guards, yeah.

Speaker 2 (19:28):
Yeah, along in those gars like you can see like
along those guards and impressive fishes. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 9 (19:32):
Are both end kind of self contained as far as
like it's just them.

Speaker 7 (19:35):
They don't have other relatives.

Speaker 6 (19:38):
There used to be way more and then recently as
part of a study where we actually split them into
two species. So but then I know, a hundred years
ago they thought there were maybe ten of them, and
then they're getting back to how understudy these fish are.
Scientists back then said, nope, there's not ten, there's just
one with no evidence whatsoever, like, yeah, ten's too many,
so we're going to condense that down. And then over

(19:59):
the year we found evidence from their morphology like their
shape and their genetics that there's actually evidence for two species.

Speaker 3 (20:06):
And they're both pretty similar.

Speaker 6 (20:07):
But one's more on the Atlantic coast down to Florida,
and when's from Michigan, Minnesota all the way down to Louisiana.
So we are still finding out new stuff about bofen
from what you can you know, eat, you can fish
from on the fly. They fight really hard to and yeah,
now there's two species instead of one.

Speaker 5 (20:22):
How old are those species of gar?

Speaker 6 (20:24):
They go, Gars go back to Jurassic era, Jurassic period stuff,
so one hundred and fifty million years for gars. That's
for the family like long nose gar, short nose gar,
they're about two and a half to five million years old.

Speaker 5 (20:36):
And how much have they changed since then?

Speaker 6 (20:39):
Very little, very little. So if you're to look at
a fossil garb and looked at a living guard. They
basically look the same.

Speaker 2 (20:45):
Yeah. Same, That's a question I had, and I want
to spend some more time on that. People will point
out like, well, let me start with one that's annoying.
People will say that's an ice age relic. I'm like,
you're an ice age like mice er. Yeah yeah, yeah,
I mean it's like a dumb thing to say, like
humans are around during the ice age. Yeah yeah, like

(21:08):
everything the name something that's not an ice age relative.
It's not like as a bunch of new species emerged
since the ice Age. Yeah yeah, so that's dumb. But
people will say that's from the dinosaurs. Yeah, Like what
what does that mean when we say the fish is ancient?

Speaker 4 (21:25):
What do we mean that it's ancient? Like is a
walleye is not?

Speaker 5 (21:29):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (21:29):
Yeah, you know what I mean, Like, help me understand
the relative quality here?

Speaker 3 (21:32):
Yeah yeah.

Speaker 6 (21:33):
So some fish, you know, and some organisms change at
a faster rate than other organisms. So when we think
about mutation, mutations what leads to evolutions. So organisms changing
over time, but some of them change slow, some of
them change fast, while I change faster. There was that
group of modern fish we're kind of lumping together called
tea lass, so walileye perch swordfish to another all part

(21:53):
of that group haven't been around as long as sturgeons
and gars. And that brings in this idea of a
living fossil, which sounds kind of paradoxical, right.

Speaker 2 (22:01):
That's that's the one.

Speaker 4 (22:03):
I'm talking about living fossil term. What the hell people mean?

Speaker 6 (22:06):
Yeah, And so I feel like most people can kind
of get an idea of what that means, but evolutionary
biologists hate that term. They're going to, well, actually that
all the time because they'd be like, well, that means
that these animals haven't been evolving or anything like that.
Like everything's evolving constantly, as your DNA is replicating past
from one generation the next, but some change slower than others.
And so if you were to look at a gar

(22:27):
in the fossil record, looking the same as what the
shape of a gar looks like now, they have a
very slow evolutionary rate. So you go back to the
drastic period, they look basically the same as they do now.
If we're to look at something that might be Walleye's
early ancestors, they're going to look different than.

Speaker 3 (22:43):
What a walleye.

Speaker 2 (22:44):
They're not going to recognize them.

Speaker 3 (22:45):
Yeah, you're not going to recognize them as much.

Speaker 2 (22:46):
But I could be standing there, like at the same
time when there's a at the same time when there's
a Trannosaurus Rex on the planet. Yeah, I could be
staying there in my flashlight, yeah, shining into a marsh.

Speaker 6 (22:57):
Yeah, and I'd be like, holy a gar Yeah yeah, yeah.
It does the same basic whereas look what happened to
t Rex. I mean their pickens are the you know.

Speaker 2 (23:05):
Yeah, chickens.

Speaker 5 (23:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (23:08):
I've dug around for fossils in the Green River formation
in Wyoming, found a lot of different fish there. Most
of what you're getting are extinct species of herring and shad.
But sometimes you'll come across a gar scale that looks
just like a gar scale today. You also come across paddlefish,
these are fifty million year old fossils. You'll come across
skates that look like our skates today. But there's like

(23:31):
a handful of fish that when you see it, it's
it's just identical to what you would catch today. And
that's fifty million years old.

Speaker 4 (23:37):
And at that time there was not a bluegill.

Speaker 6 (23:43):
There might have been bluegill like fish, but definitely not
bluegill like we know them today.

Speaker 2 (23:47):
Yeah, no, sun he's spawning off them.

Speaker 3 (23:49):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5 (23:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (23:51):
The dock probably wasn't there either, But you know.

Speaker 2 (23:54):
Uh, they're a bone fish gar all the things we're
talking about, our bone cartilaginous fish.

Speaker 7 (24:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (24:01):
Yeah, sturgeon and paddlefish are primarily cartilaginous fish. But that's
different from like the sharks and the raisin skates. So
you're all in that bony fish branch.

Speaker 2 (24:14):
Can you real quick just because you know all this
like I know, it's not it's not we're here talk
about what I ascott a question? Yeah, can you explain
the fish to have like the nodo cord?

Speaker 6 (24:27):
Yeah, like talk about that, yeah, explain to people. Yeah,
I mean notochords kind of an early it goes along
with your vertebral column, the spinal cord. So some early animals,
when you think about the lancelets of chordates, they had,
they had a note achord, but they didn't have a
true vertebral column. So for a while, there was this

(24:49):
idea that hagfish and lambreys didn't have what would consider
be vertebrae. So we didn't consider them vertebrates. We consider
them a little bit off from that. But now the
new research going back to the.

Speaker 3 (24:59):
Fossil records suggest that hagfish and lamp ray are also vertebrates.

Speaker 6 (25:03):
So the note achord sort of thing is an you know,
early structure, but now we're we're kind of past that.
So some fish, let's say, when you do talk about notochordscars.
When they're little, they've got a notochord that turns into
extends like a filament off the back side of the tail,
and they use that like little helicopter rotor. So when
they're little, they move like little sticks.

Speaker 3 (25:21):
Through the water.

Speaker 4 (25:21):
That's the notochord.

Speaker 6 (25:22):
Yeah, but it's basically an extension of the notochord, and
as they get older that reduces down. They don't keep
that longer than their first year because eventually the physics
of water changes.

Speaker 5 (25:31):
Right.

Speaker 6 (25:32):
You kind of think of it as moving with a
little propeller. You're moving a little animal through there. As
they get bigger and bigger, that doesn't you can't propel
that through that anymore. And by then their scale is
hard and they're able to eat fish, but they move
their pectrol fins beating back and forth really rapid. Least
I've every got a chance. I think we got some
video we can send you too. But they move that
little notochord, that extension like a film it there. So
a lot of those early fish you can see them

(25:53):
both in even in pike they have a little one.
They don't use it the same way gars do, but
you will see a little bit of a note achord extension.
So you see that in early development of a lot
of vertebrates. But eventually that kind of goes by the wayside,
and you know, gets kind of overpowered by a lot
of other structures.

Speaker 2 (26:10):
One of the more impressive things I've seen is I
was with my friend Kevin Murphy and we're fishing calfish.
But here comes a big paddlefish and got hit by
a boat prop kind of half dead, so I shot
it with my bow. I mean it was already a mass.

Speaker 4 (26:24):
Yeah, it was fresh when he caught it, And.

Speaker 2 (26:30):
That was a noise.

Speaker 4 (26:31):
Pulling that note chord out to that was unbelievable site.

Speaker 3 (26:34):
Yeah yeah, yeah, and.

Speaker 7 (26:35):
It looks way longer.

Speaker 2 (26:36):
Just draw it out. You seen that before, Yeah, yeah, it'll.

Speaker 8 (26:40):
Come out like five times longer than the fish was.

Speaker 2 (26:42):
Yeah, that was an unbelievable site, and that made me
think that that was like a very different kind of thing.

Speaker 6 (26:48):
Yeah, I mean, they you're also you know, you could
be pulling the spine like out of your pulling that
spinal cord out of the actual spinal calm. I'd have to,
you know, look into that for with the paddlefish and
the sturgeon, they're very similar.

Speaker 3 (27:00):
But yeah, how long was that? Would you say?

Speaker 2 (27:03):
Oh man, we got it on video? Long?

Speaker 3 (27:06):
How did it taste though?

Speaker 5 (27:08):
Fish?

Speaker 2 (27:09):
Man? When you trim them up, When you trim them up,
they're good, but you gotta trim them carefully. It's like
shark and stuff, like, you gotta trim it all that red,
all that red. The fat's not good. You gotta get
the fat off. I think when you trim them up,
they're good.

Speaker 3 (27:21):
I've had sturgeon, I haven't had paddle fish.

Speaker 4 (27:23):
Now, shovel nose surgeon. That's not a good fish.

Speaker 3 (27:25):
Yeah, they're they're pretty spiny.

Speaker 2 (27:27):
You know. The yield is low. Yeah. Yeah, like you
clean it, there's nothing left. You feel bad you killed
the thing in the first place, and then you fry
it up and it's not good. Yeah. Yeah, that's been
my finding.

Speaker 6 (27:36):
They form a white sturgeon though those are yeah, yeah,
that's a real good fish.

Speaker 2 (27:41):
Uh okay, we're all let's talk about these ones for
a minute, because he's the big Like how alligator are
are becoming fashionable?

Speaker 4 (27:59):
You would, yeah, I agree, Like your work is complete.

Speaker 2 (28:04):
On alligator guard. And I recently saw that they're making it.
I think who was it, what state was trying to
make it that you can't shoot an alligator gar with
a boone anymore?

Speaker 3 (28:12):
Oh?

Speaker 4 (28:12):
Really, huh we're pushing for it.

Speaker 2 (28:14):
Huh. And I remember being like, oh, brother a little bit.

Speaker 6 (28:18):
Yeah, yeah, I think they've definitely had a reputation improvement.
You think about shows like River Monsters that came out,
you know, almost twenty years ago now, Jeremy Wade going
out there. I remember yelling at the TV when that
episode was on because like, picture isn't right, that's not
the right thing. But you know, overall, I think that
was a win because you've got these big river fish

(28:38):
that people weren't paying attention to, and you had this
idea of the habitat's important. You can go and catch
these fish. They're not you know, monsters that are eating
people or anything. Like that, so I think that the
reputation has definitely improved. We went fishing down in Texas
with a Bubba Bedrie, you know, number one guar guide
in the world. He you know, took Jeremy Wade out

(28:59):
and he used to be a bowfisher, and he realized that,
you know, over the years, these big fish were going away.
He wasn't seeing nearly as many as they were out there,
and he realized, you know, if his livelihood is going
to depend on these fish, he's got to put him back.

Speaker 3 (29:11):
And then, you know, now they're even more.

Speaker 6 (29:13):
Valuable because people are coming from all over the world
to fish for them, catch them, and then also release them.

Speaker 2 (29:18):
Yeah. One of my buddies in Michigan went down to
Texas to for a catch and release alligator.

Speaker 6 (29:24):
Gar Yeah, yep, that's that's what most people do now.
I would say the majority are doing that. I mean,
there's still people at harvestom. They've got a one fish
per day limit that Texas Parks and Wildlife has put in.
They've got probably some of the most conservation oriented regulations
in Texas. You say that the job is done, I
don't think, you know, neuro joking, but the job isn't done.
You look next door in Louisiana also arguably one of

(29:45):
the healthiest gator gar populations in the world. There's no
regulations on them, so you can shoot as many as
you want. And the thing is these are giant fish.
We work with the fish rodeos there and we.

Speaker 2 (29:55):
Shoo as many as you want. You can choose as
many of these as you want.

Speaker 3 (29:58):
Yeah, yeah, there's still limit.

Speaker 9 (30:00):
Yeah, how long if someone's killing say one hundred pound
alligator gun, which is not nearly how as big as
they get, but one hundred pound er, Say, how long
does it take to replace that fish if someone kills one?

Speaker 3 (30:13):
It depends on where you're coming from Texas.

Speaker 6 (30:16):
There's different populations in the Trinity River versus coastal population.

Speaker 3 (30:19):
So I've had students work on this.

Speaker 6 (30:20):
When I was down in Louisiana, I'd lived there for
six years, and so those coastal populations have access to
different kinds of food, right, and gars can live in
full salt water. You'll find them with bull sharks and
sea turtles, you know, way off the golf there, so
they have access to food, but they can also go
into fresh water.

Speaker 3 (30:35):
They mainly need the freshwater to.

Speaker 8 (30:37):
Spawn or off the golf where you find them.

Speaker 3 (30:39):
I mean you can find them.

Speaker 6 (30:40):
Miles off the golf really yeah. Yeah, you go to
the aquarium, the Autumn Aquarium in New Orleans. They've got
them at sea turtles and tarpin of course, and then
all kinds of sharks, sand bar sharks.

Speaker 8 (30:48):
What are they doing out there?

Speaker 3 (30:49):
Is there like a motivation can forage out there?

Speaker 6 (30:51):
I mean, it's other food that they can go after, so,
you know, if they can tolerate it, which all gars
can tolerate.

Speaker 3 (30:57):
Saltwater for the most part. Long noses you can find
miles off the coat too, so highly adaptive.

Speaker 6 (31:03):
And you know, I think some of the latest research
suggests that guards probably originated in salt water made their
under fresh water.

Speaker 2 (31:08):
But is that right?

Speaker 3 (31:08):
Yeah, that sort of paleontology gets flip flopped all the time.

Speaker 5 (31:11):
Can they live in salt their whole life?

Speaker 3 (31:13):
They can't.

Speaker 6 (31:13):
They theoretically could, but they couldn't reproduce. They need that
fresh water for reproduction. Alligator gars in particular need submerged
terrestrial vegetation to spawn on, so they need that big
flood pulse. And you don't get those big floods every year,
so they have to take advantage. Think about the flood
nineteen twenty seven.

Speaker 2 (31:31):
I think he needs he needs a dry land plant
that happens to be underwater to spawn.

Speaker 6 (31:39):
Typically, and a lot of the rivers in the floodplains
where they spawn, they basically are spawning on submerged terrestrial vegetation.

Speaker 2 (31:46):
Because to dry out for a while or what is it.

Speaker 6 (31:48):
It's just that's kind of indicative of the floodplain being
submerged for a decent amount of time. Those eggs hatch,
They hatch in like maybe a day or two, depending
on water conditions and temperature, and.

Speaker 3 (31:58):
Then they'll move out within that season.

Speaker 6 (32:00):
But we've had alligator guards they hatch out about, you know,
less than half an inch long within a month, month
and a half. They can be twelve inches long within
their first season. Yeah, they grow fast.

Speaker 9 (32:11):
Yeah, I want to get back to the age thing. Yeah,
like in the Trinity River in Texas, how old there
is one hundred pounder?

Speaker 7 (32:19):
This is like a multipart question.

Speaker 2 (32:20):
Sure, yeah, how old is it?

Speaker 9 (32:24):
Have you seen like the average size of these things shrinking?
And then and then like how do they deal with
eating a chunk of dead cart with a treble hook
that goes way down its throat, like and you cut,
if you cut the line, does that thing do just fine?

Speaker 5 (32:39):
Right? Right?

Speaker 3 (32:40):
That is a serious questions.

Speaker 2 (32:45):
I get it.

Speaker 3 (32:46):
Yeah, get them in while you can.

Speaker 6 (32:48):
Yeah, So, like one hundred pound fish might be something like,
you know, five feet six feet long.

Speaker 3 (32:53):
It depends so more.

Speaker 6 (32:54):
We mainly go by length because depending you know, if
it's a gravid female, it's way way more. You could
be looking at a gravid's that means got lots of eggs.

Speaker 7 (33:02):
Have you ever heard of that for egg wagon?

Speaker 4 (33:05):
Yeah, there you go, that's what gravid means.

Speaker 3 (33:07):
Yeah, that's what gravid means.

Speaker 2 (33:08):
Never heard that word. I didn't hear that word before.

Speaker 8 (33:10):
I worked at a fish Yeah, that's work with Solomon
for a decade.

Speaker 2 (33:14):
That's right. For a minute, you heard that word brody yep,
doubt so.

Speaker 6 (33:20):
Yeah, So you know, we go by lengths more than weight.
But that could be twenty years old, it could be
forty years old.

Speaker 7 (33:26):
And that you're not talking like a hundred year old.

Speaker 3 (33:28):
It could be so.

Speaker 6 (33:30):
Males, if you got an alligator guard that's over six
feet long, that's typically going to be a female. Males
don't tend to get that big, so you could get
males that live for that long. But if you're talking
just six foot fish that we don't know what the
sex of it is twenty forty, but if it's an
old male, it could be sixty eighty.

Speaker 3 (33:46):
We know they can live for over one hundred years.

Speaker 2 (33:49):
I thought you're gonna have saying a lot older.

Speaker 6 (33:52):
We don't know when you said they can hit twelve
inches how fast within a month and a half. But
if they're fed, they can reach two feet within that
first growing season. They can get big fast. Yeah, they
get huge. Even long nose gars can reach about We
got some out of Minnesota about fifteen inches long that
were born, you know, hatched out this year, and they

(34:13):
hatch out in May. You know, Michigan, Minnesota, it doesn't
stay warm that long, so I would have hatched out
in May. We caught one in August and it was
already about fifteen inches long.

Speaker 9 (34:23):
And then does it slow way down after their first year.

Speaker 6 (34:26):
In sort of temperate regions it slows down a bit
because of winter. But what we found in our work
is that they've actually evolved a faster growth rate in
the north than they are in the South, but they
live a shorter time in the South. If you're looking
at fish that are from the north versus the South,
alligator gars is a little bit different. So they can
live a long time, and they grow super fast because
they're eating fish. Gars switch to eating fish faster than

(34:48):
any other North American fish, faster than musky, faster than pike,
faster than fast.

Speaker 3 (34:52):
They also like to eat each other. A good gar
shaped you know, fish to eat is another gar.

Speaker 2 (34:57):
Got it?

Speaker 5 (34:57):
What are they eating on that first day of life?

Speaker 6 (35:00):
Yolk sack stuff, So I mean that's they've got the yolk,
which is also somewhat poisonous. So gar eggs are poisonous.
You're not going to find people making gar caviars. So
if you ever prepping that, I might have heard that,
Yeah forget it. Yeah it's pretty toxic. So they're they're
toxic for you know, the first few days, and then
once they absorbed that yolk sack, then they're eating plankton.
So usually like you know, daphnia, that sort oft of

(35:21):
a zooplankton. But what we found is what might actually
lead to the gars, alligator gar growing so big in
their first year is that their gills are a little
bit different than long nose gars and short nose gars.
They actually have a filtration aspect to their gills. And
we actually found an alligator gar that was about this
big down Louisiana and its stomach was full of plankton,

(35:41):
and so like balen Way, just yeah, exactly, it's like
imagine like a great white shark eating krill, which is
what you're looking at, because you don't think of an
alligator gar as a as a film theater.

Speaker 2 (35:50):
And so my students, how's it getting from because that's
like feeding into his blood stream.

Speaker 4 (35:54):
How's it getting like he's like raking it out?

Speaker 2 (35:58):
Yeah, and then it somehow is getting as esophagus.

Speaker 6 (36:01):
Yeah, yep, just like you know, paddlefish are filter feeders, right,
So alligator gars and the cuban and tropical gar have
gill rakers that work kind of like a sieve, and
so they can actually filter out the plankton and that
goes down their esophagus, like you said, whereas long nose
and short nosed gars, we got spoted gars the same day.
The gill rakers are very different. Nothing in their stomach,
but we didn't know what it was. We had this

(36:21):
frozen fish, and my students brought it up to me.
It's like, we don't know what this is in the
stomach because I'm always doing paperwork. So I tell the
students and they're doing dissection, let me know if you
find anything cool. We found half a giant rat in
a bofend once. We found all kinds of stuff, but
they said, we found some in the stomach.

Speaker 3 (36:34):
We don't know what it is.

Speaker 6 (36:35):
It looks like a popsicle, and so I'm like, well,
there's a frozen fish. So I said, let's take a
look at it. We dissected it and I was they're
chopping it up. I'm like, this looks really weird. Reminds
me of some fish food I used to feed to
fish at home. I have gars and aquariums at home too,
And so Ransom water over it and started like melting
into these particles and that this is really weird. It's
bright orange too. I'm kind of like Kriller crotenoid organisms orange.

(36:56):
And so we liked under the microscope and it was
all copa pods and the stomach was all of this.
And so up until then it only been anecdotal, you know,
stories about them, maybe filter feeding in Mexico and other places.
So we think being able to take advantage of those
other food types allows them to grow that big. I'm
thinking about whales, right, they're getting that big, you know,
eating those smaller food items.

Speaker 3 (37:16):
So not only are they eating shad and mullet.

Speaker 6 (37:18):
But they're actually able to eat these other fish too.
So there's a lot left to be discovered about these fish.

Speaker 2 (37:23):
Well that's pretty crazy.

Speaker 9 (37:24):
So how do they deal with like as far as
mortality and stuff with a great big rusty because when
people are fishing for them, they're letting them chew on
that chunk of dead bait for a minute, then they're in.

Speaker 3 (37:38):
I don't know, usually they try to retrieve it.

Speaker 6 (37:40):
I know that a lot of anglers now are trying
to use just circle hooks or jay hooks as opposed
to the treble hooks. There's even when I included a
picture of this, they come up with a gar saver
rig which actually has a bar so the gar can't
actually take it down into its stomach.

Speaker 3 (37:56):
Oh, really keeps it in the jaws.

Speaker 2 (37:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (37:58):
Yeah, it's like a crossbar.

Speaker 5 (37:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (37:59):
So that way it allows the you know, hook to
get stuck in the jaws, which are easy to retrieve,
but it doesn't go all the way down to the stomach,
because yeah, you could gut hook a fish and that
could be you know, problematic.

Speaker 3 (38:10):
It's it's hard to say.

Speaker 6 (38:11):
We know so little about these fish that even looking
at catch and release mortality with the hooks like that
is understudied. We know it's you know, less mortality than
you know, bowfishing or bowfish catch and release, which does exist.

Speaker 4 (38:22):
But so that exists, Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (38:26):
But it exists, but it doesn't exist where they're picturing
that it's going to live to be shot.

Speaker 4 (38:30):
Another day, believe it or not.

Speaker 6 (38:32):
In eight states catch and release bowfishing. Shoot and release
bowfishing is legal.

Speaker 2 (38:37):
And that's not that just de burdens them to deal with, right.

Speaker 6 (38:43):
Well, that's when there's been conversations about changing that regulation,
like let's make shoot and release bowfishing not legal, which
seems reasonable. Would you shoot and release the you know,
a deer duck or something like that and just kind
of leave it behind.

Speaker 3 (38:57):
The argument is that all those fish are okay.

Speaker 7 (39:00):
Because they're just so tough, like they just hard.

Speaker 6 (39:02):
To you know anecdotic like, oh, you know, I've shot
a bunch of fish you know, and I'm paraphrasing, overnight
the next day we shot maybe one hundred two hundred
fish suckers are and the next day there weren't any
of them around, So they must have been fine or
they all sunk.

Speaker 2 (39:15):
To the most people they get shot by a gun
don't die, right, right, But it's not like it's not
like when you shoot people. It's not like a shoot
and release. Yeah, what you're not thinking of it that way, right,
and so like, yeah, chances are that's weird. Yeah, I
don't think that the shooter is thinking a bit like that.
I think the shooters like, oh sweet, I don't need

(39:37):
to even deal with it, right, Yeah, it's a it's
they shake it off the air up there.

Speaker 3 (39:42):
And then they kind of leave it.

Speaker 6 (39:43):
But then they've done studies to look at shoot and
release mortality where they've you know, shot them and looked
at them. Depending on where the you know, animal gets shot,
that depends on how it's going to survive, how long
it's going to survive. Within twenty four hours, if it's
in the head or the spine, that fish is dead, sure,
but even after that, if it's somewhere else. It was
over fifty percent, you know, seventy two hours later, So

(40:03):
that's one of that's.

Speaker 4 (40:04):
True, but that's true of like most not on my yeah,
most deer.

Speaker 2 (40:09):
Yeah yeah, well okay, Spencer, what percent of deer that
aren't this is impossible to answer.

Speaker 4 (40:17):
Yeah, what percent of.

Speaker 2 (40:19):
Deer that aren't recovered archery shot white tails that aren't recovered?
What percent do you think.

Speaker 8 (40:25):
Die that aren't recovered? What percent die in like the
next couple of days. I would say fifty percent. By
like the end of that following winter, probably another ten
or twenty percent, So that leaves like thirty percent to
survive for the next hunting season.

Speaker 2 (40:42):
Yeah, just to guess. My only point being, I think
that anyone that acts like they're shooting that air under
that fish as a way of letting it go is
being cute with themselves.

Speaker 10 (40:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (40:52):
Yeah, I agree, it's like absurd, and I think that's
what you know you.

Speaker 4 (40:56):
Said about everything. But hey, sometimes you hit a duck
and it doesn't die. Yeah, this is no different than that.

Speaker 2 (41:01):
Well, no, it's different.

Speaker 3 (41:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (41:03):
Well, ducks are managed, right, deer managed, So that's part
of the reason why we're looking why not just manage
these populations put a limit on it, you know, as
opposed to shoot a thousand and then there's you know,
what are you doing with them?

Speaker 3 (41:13):
If you're eating a thousand gar? Like, my hat's off
to you.

Speaker 6 (41:16):
But even as much as I like eating gar, I'm
not eating a thousand car But not to not to
digress too much from that.

Speaker 2 (41:22):
No, no, are you question good?

Speaker 5 (41:25):
Okay?

Speaker 2 (41:26):
I think so I.

Speaker 7 (41:29):
Could go on all day.

Speaker 2 (41:30):
I was thinking of a different parallel. I was trying
to think of this morning. I was trying to think
of different parallels in the bird world and bird management.
We've accounted like, we've accounted for all birds in bird
management because we have the migratory and song bird treat like.
We have a couple non native.

Speaker 4 (41:50):
We have a handful of non native deleterious English sparrows,
European starlings, Colombo Olivia, the street pigeon.

Speaker 7 (41:59):
You can kill as many as you want, but no
one does.

Speaker 2 (42:03):
Collared dove. Okay, we have a handful of like Dela teers,
so like very much deleterious non native.

Speaker 4 (42:11):
We have all our game birds. We don't have loose
ends in the bird world. But then I start thinking
in the mammal world, we have a lot of loose
ends in the mammal world, where you have there's a
host of like non game species that are some of
them are desired, Like most states will run a possums,

(42:33):
Most states are gonna run skunks. Most states are gonna
run short tail, long tail, least weasel, non game. Those
are all native animals.

Speaker 2 (42:41):
Right, So there's a parallel there where you just have
this kind of like loosey goosey configuration and.

Speaker 7 (42:47):
It varies by state.

Speaker 9 (42:50):
Oh yeah, like there's animals here that would be fur
bearers and other like highly regulated.

Speaker 2 (42:55):
Yeah they run they run red Fox in this state.
They run Red Fox is an on game, no close season,
no bag limit. They're tightly regulated in other states. So
it's like, so with birds, we've kind of like sort
of made every bird has its area of regulatory structure.
With animals, we don't, and with fish we definitely don't like.

(43:20):
And with fish, I think the problem is with fish
is we don't even have there's not even like a
native non native distinction like you would think a state
would say, ah, well, this gets so complicated because in
my notes, you know what I wrote my notes bowfishing

(43:42):
conundrum and the Ranella solution a nice part of the problem.
Part of the problem is in a lot of the
big bowfishing states, they made it a long time ago
that you can't hunt the good eating fish everybody to hunt.
They're not good eating fish. In South America, they bowfish.

(44:04):
Like I've been out, both fished South America. You're after
the best fish in the in the river. Because they
bothfish the really good ones. So they've boxed dudes in
and like, you can't bothfish this. You can't both fish that.
You can't both fish this. So it is putting a
lot of emphasis on these other things. But I do
think it's ridiculous to me that a state agency wouldn't

(44:26):
come in and say, if they're gonna be like that
and they're not gonna let you both fish the good stuff,
a state agency see would come and say, non native
deleterious fish are open all the time, and there's a
you can there's no close season, there's no bag limit,
and there's a very loose method of take structure. Native

(44:46):
fish have bag limits. Yeah, But like they're what they're
gonna say is people can't tell the difference.

Speaker 5 (44:53):
Right.

Speaker 2 (44:53):
This is when I was talking about this earlier. They're
gonna like, well, how could you expect someone to tell
a cart from a buffalo. I'd be like, I don't know.
How can you expect them to tell a pit a
wigeon from a gadwin exactly, from a mautland from a
wood duck? Right? How can you? Like, you you're obligated
to tell all kinds of shit? How can you tell
a deer's antler is over or under three inches long?

(45:15):
I don't know, Like you figure it out.

Speaker 3 (45:17):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 6 (45:19):
That's what we'd like to do, is just let's get
some at least attempt at some equal application of that
onto fish. And I will say that Minnesota very recently,
in twenty twenty four, enacted the most comprehensive Native Fish
Conservation Bill and put it into law where they did
one of the first things.

Speaker 3 (45:34):
Are you the lobbyist on that, you know, I'm one
of the advocates for it.

Speaker 6 (45:38):
Yeah, yeah, I did that even from down in Louisiana
before I had any inklings of coming up to Minnesota.
But so they did separate common carp from the other
native non game fish. That was one of the first
things they did, because they call him now native rough fish,
which are like it's the least worst name because he's
still got the rough fish.

Speaker 4 (45:54):
But at least.

Speaker 2 (45:57):
Where it came from.

Speaker 6 (45:58):
Oh yeah, yeah, And I'm not I'm not worried about
the names much as now that we can get the
work done. So if we've got the separation there, I'm
not as concerned at least on some level, with the
naming so much as we've got a category that separates
the common carp the other invasive carp from our buffalo,
our gars are boffins. And it's allowing us to then
have restitution values. So if you have wanton waste, there's

(46:21):
a penalty for walleye and bass. I think it's like
something like thirty bucks a walleye if you have, you know,
want and waste for walleye and a lot of the
game fish. So even if they had like a negligible
amount for you know, buffalo or bofen or gar, I
mean that would start racking up.

Speaker 2 (46:36):
Sure.

Speaker 6 (46:36):
So we've got some regulation there and we're going in
the right direction. And so Minnesota's kind of leading the
charge with that. I've got colleagues in Michigan that want
to do the same thing. Wisconsin. We've got colleagues in Oklahoma.
So I do think it's something that's going to start
catching on. We know that it's already catching on. And
these native fish have been here for you know, longer
than we have. So I think if we can get

(46:58):
past the sort of human construct of this game fish,
this is the valuable one and this is not the
valuable one. And just look at a base level, let's
apply what we do to duck.

Speaker 3 (47:07):
Hunting to fish. You have to be able to tell
the difference.

Speaker 6 (47:10):
Like, sure, a buffalo, you know, looks similar to a
carp i'll, i'll, you know, agree with that, but we
hear from both fishers. Well, it takes a lot of
skill that you know, you know, over a company excuse me,
a comb accommodate for the refractive index of water. Right,
so you already have to pay a lot of attention.
How about we apply that to just look, does it
have barballs? Is the scale type different? What does the
dorsal fin look like? Apply that and then also just

(47:33):
these wanton waste limits, like I mean, is there really
a reason to shoot a thousand gar, hundreds and hundreds
of buffalo if you're not eating them? You look at
the you know, North American model for wildlife conservation. That third,
you know point there of like not a frivolous use
for you know, killing the animal.

Speaker 3 (47:48):
And I've had buffalo ribs of at garave at bofen.

Speaker 6 (47:50):
Hopefully you try that sometime soon, but there are uses
for that, right, So it's sort of an eat what
you kill and be able to identify it.

Speaker 2 (47:56):
I won't be clear. I've tried it, yeah, yeah, but
I think I might I might have waited too long.

Speaker 9 (48:00):
Right, Is there a lot of evidence for non native
species like common carp, Asian carp impacting or other non natives,
non native game fish like impacting these native rough fish species.

Speaker 6 (48:15):
Yeah, I mean the the non native Well yeah, so
we can take that as the the invasive fish, right,
I mean because you can. Non native is a pretty
you know, interesting term, you know. Right, you look in
the Great Lakes Range and we've got steelhead, we got
shinok sanmar but those aren't invasives, right, yeah, it's like, yeah,
so carp and you know, like so common carp and
the invasive carp like the silver carp and the big

(48:36):
head carp, especially the silver in the big head they
eat planktons, so they're actually attacking the food web at
the bottom of the food web, and that's what all
the little fish, whether they're game fish or other native fish,
they need to eat to grow, and so they are
actually you know, opening up for a potential trophic cascade
from basically the bottom up. So they are problematic and
they reproduce very fast. They get really big, really fast.

(48:57):
Common carp they you know, they stir up the water,
they remove vegetation, and they're super durable fish. So, I mean,
those are problems that we've let in and we can't
eradicate those. It's all about control there. So they do
affect the native fish. Now on the other end of
the big mouth buffalo is a plank tivorous fish. It's
one of our biggest plank divors. They actually compete with
the silver carp and the big head carp. So, you know,

(49:19):
as we work on controlling for invasive pieces, but also
just bolstering and maybe protecting some of those native fish.
Maybe if if it's just limits, you're actually creating more
resilient system to buffer against those invasive pieces.

Speaker 9 (49:31):
So there's no like advantage either like carp or I mean,
gar aren't taking advantage of all these little Asian carp.

Speaker 2 (49:39):
They are. They are.

Speaker 6 (49:40):
There's been a study down I think it was out
of Indiana or Illinois which actually showed that shorten noes
gar were one of the few native predators are actually
we're selecting for invasive carps. So they were eating the
silver carp in the big head carp. The thing is
those are top predators, right. There's not going to be
enough gars to eat all of the invasive car so
it helps. It's a nice story when you got a
native fish that can help you out against invasive fish.

Speaker 3 (50:02):
Whitefish like whitefish.

Speaker 6 (50:03):
And like michigan eat zebra muscles, but they're not going
to solve the zebra muscle problem. There was a story,
you know, that came up back in twenty sixteen where
that really was starting to rehab the gator gar reputation
was like a way to control invasive carp was alligator gars.
And this gets to them restocking them in Illinois. It's like, well,
we get the alligator gars, that's going to be our
silver bullet. There was nowhere near enough alligator gars there

(50:24):
never will be to control for the silver carp. And
those of us that were you know, interviewed for the
story that said like, eh, you should probably pump the
brakes on that. That was kind of left out of
that story because the AP ran with it. It went
everywhere Washington Post, La Times, and they eventually had to
do retractions along with the Illinois DNR that had to
walk it back. Illinois d and rn't realized that this
is not the story we want to tell, like this

(50:45):
is what the science says, So you know.

Speaker 2 (50:47):
We kept that kind they kept run away with like
these books, like guys will do a book like or
I'd eat nothing, but I eat nothing but non native species.
As a conservationist, it's like, well, you're not gonna eat
your way out of it, right right, Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 7 (51:03):
Man.

Speaker 8 (51:05):
Gar are also, in my observations, pretty inefficient predators, at
least short nose and long nose. I used to have
to take care of them at our aquarium at the
fish Atry Aquarium, And when you dump minnows into like
a gar tank, they'll roll up next to the minnow
and then they'll like do a very sudden swipe in
them and it would be like fifty percent of the
time they would get their meno. Now, a bass does

(51:27):
not miss like that. A walleye doesn't miss like that,
but like long nose gar especially, we're very bad at
catching a healthy manuow.

Speaker 2 (51:35):
Or it's because he doesn't have the suction. Yeah, he's
he's just like his mouth, he doesn't create a vacuum.

Speaker 8 (51:40):
It seemed as though he was guessing often where his
like rostrum was gonna end.

Speaker 3 (51:45):
It's just not fair. Go ahead, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 8 (51:47):
Do you see that with alligator gar You like that
thing is not very good at catching like an adult fish.

Speaker 6 (51:52):
Well, first, I'd say if they weren't good at catching fish,
they wouldn't be around for you know, one hundred and
fifty millionars.

Speaker 3 (51:57):
So clear they're doing some.

Speaker 6 (51:58):
But I agree with you captive situations and we see
this in aquariums and and hatter in our tanks in
the lab there. You know, it's like the t rex
and Jurassic Park. It doesn't want to be fed at
once to hunt, and so, like you get used to
captivity and so they realize like they don't have to
you know, connect every single time. Alongo's got a lot
of range. They might be used to, you know, you know,

(52:19):
going after fish in the open water, and so it's
a little bit different dynamics than if you're in a
rounded tank or a raceway and you got all those
fish that can kind of navigate a little bit better.

Speaker 3 (52:28):
So I will agree they do miss.

Speaker 6 (52:30):
But you know, you watch a wildlife documentary, the cheetah
doesn't catch the gazelle every time either, So yeah, take like.

Speaker 2 (52:36):
A little baby human and lock it up with and
then a couple of years later you like, oh, I
don't see these things not that smart.

Speaker 4 (52:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (52:43):
My takeaway from watching gar feed was that they're picking
on not the healthy individual, right, which is.

Speaker 3 (52:48):
What predators would do in the wild anyway, right.

Speaker 6 (52:50):
But gars in captivity actually have smaller teeth than the
gars in the wild, So when we catch them out
of the wild, they got bigger teeth, which makes sense, right,
So if you're not using you know that, you know
what you're white put energy into sort of you know,
generating or growing bigger teeth.

Speaker 9 (53:03):
Do they scavenge at all? Or is it mostly because
I mean for these guys a lot of dead baits?

Speaker 6 (53:09):
Oh yeah, yeah, cater gars will scavenge. Spotted gars, short nosecars.
They'll feed off the bottom. You'll see them even in
Indiana and Illinois. They'll go basically a headstand with the
tails are sticking out of the water. So whether they
eating crawfish or whether they're scavenging, long nose gars more
feeding on fish and whatever they can get down.

Speaker 3 (53:26):
They're more active feeders.

Speaker 6 (53:27):
It's like they'd be trying to like using four steps,
and we already know that you don't have confidence in
their ability to eat anyway, so they're not gonna be
able to pick stuff out the bottom.

Speaker 2 (53:35):
I come from a long line of bowl fisherman.

Speaker 4 (53:37):
My father was a bowl fisherman.

Speaker 2 (53:39):
That's about the extent of it.

Speaker 4 (53:41):
That is a long line bullfish. Yeah, yeah, it is,
but he was bullfish.

Speaker 2 (53:46):
Back. When you take a Folger's coffee can, okay, okay,
picture you gotta recurve bow. You take a Foldger's coffee can,
take a tin snip, and first off, you cut the
end off it so you got a cylinder. Now, okay,
you take it tin snip and make two flanges that
you can hose. Clamp the flanges to your bow above

(54:06):
and below the rest. Then you wrap the line around
the folders can, pass the arrow through the can so
that when you shoot, the arrow goes through the can
and pulls the line out, that's all.

Speaker 3 (54:20):
That's impressive.

Speaker 2 (54:21):
I'm only setting this up to be that a multi
generational bowfisherman. I often find myself criticizing my own kind o,
my own brethren, my own bowfishing brethren, who are like, oh,
we're doing the world of favor, you know. And I

(54:43):
was like, listen, it's fine to go bowfish carp. That's fine.
You're not heard anything. You're not helping anything. Like you
cannot mechanically remove fish, remove carp from the Great Lakes
or whatever watershed, Like, you can't mechanically remove them to

(55:05):
a point where you have made any difference. We one
time had a guy on the podcast. We had an
expert on USGS guy about Burmese pythons. He explained, like
all this snake rodeo, this, and that doesn't matter, like
when they wind up doing the work on the pythons

(55:25):
and how many are there, how many you're catching that
whole world. He's like, knock yourself out, have a good time,
it don't matter. After that, I was in Florida and
the guy's telling me Richard Martinez tell me his buddy,
oh he hates you. I'm like, I hear this often
and I'm like kind of like anxious to hear what
he hates me about. He hates me because that guy

(55:46):
said that he's a d he's a snake catcher. He
hates me because that guy said that, and I didn't
challenge him. But it's like some things don't matter. Shooting
cart and the great legs, you are not helping anything.
You're not hurting anything. You're not helping anything.

Speaker 9 (56:04):
So it's not like coyote hunters when it's like shoot
a coyote, save a fawn.

Speaker 7 (56:07):
It's not like shoot a carp save a whatever.

Speaker 2 (56:11):
Kyotes has been proven to be effective if it's done
in a spatially in a temporally and spatially advantageous set
of circumstances. So you're not going to get there. Bowfishing
carp you're not helping anyone, now, are they? If you're

(56:33):
bowfishing gar? Is it also a drop in the bucket,
Like you're not actually having population level impacts on gar,
just like you're not having population level impacts on.

Speaker 4 (56:46):
Carp Or is it different?

Speaker 3 (56:48):
I would say it's different.

Speaker 6 (56:50):
You look at where they are in the food web, right,
I mean, carp are pretty omnivorous, they're eating you know,
stuff off the bottom, vegetation, sometimes bugs, whereas gars are
more on your sort of predator apex predator level. Right,
there's way fewer gars than there are carp So sure
you maybe be doing a drop in the bucket with carp.

Speaker 3 (57:07):
And there's other ways.

Speaker 6 (57:08):
We work with the organizations out in Minnesota that do
carp removals on the inland lakes and they actually do
make a difference. But that's like massive carp traps and everything.
So you're right shooting the carp. You can feel good
about it, you want to. Part of what we want
to say is like if you want to shoot something,
you know, shoot carp shooting basis past you shoot as
many as you want. There aren't limits on those as
far as I know. Definitely in Minnesota Michigan. Those places

(57:30):
just dispose of them properly. But you know, shoot as
many as you want there.

Speaker 4 (57:33):
That's aesthetically sure.

Speaker 2 (57:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (57:35):
And so you know, but the gars, there's fewer of them,
there's fewer of the bowfin. Those are your predatory fish.
And so when you do sort of take out a
large number of these predatory animals that also live for
a long time, I know we have disrespect for the
short nosed gar, but even they can live for fifty
years so and we just found that from our work
down in Mississippi. So if the sort of latitudinal differences

(57:58):
mean anything, we expect that probably live longer in Montana
and in Minnesota than they do down south. If they
lived for fifty years down to mississippi's probably even older
up here. And I would take an aside to say,
I'm really impressed with the Montana's doing. They've got a
five gar limit. You have to get a guard card
now as of this year to get short notse cars.

Speaker 3 (58:15):
So I thought that was pretty cool. Got in touch
with the fishing wileife fie.

Speaker 2 (58:18):
The hell's getting after short nosey? You know it's you know,
no clue how long nose car.

Speaker 6 (58:24):
That's I'm glad you're impressed with That was my first
fish actually on the Miskigan River in Michigan.

Speaker 2 (58:30):
I know.

Speaker 3 (58:31):
I did my master's thesis on the Mskeigan River.

Speaker 2 (58:33):
It's a boat. We did a bowfishing episode I filmed
on the Miskegan River in which we messed around with both.

Speaker 3 (58:39):
Oh really nice.

Speaker 7 (58:40):
I thought, didn't you shoot a gard?

Speaker 2 (58:42):
You shot gar?

Speaker 4 (58:43):
We shot Yeah, suckers.

Speaker 6 (58:46):
Yeah, we worked on all those fishes on the Miskeigan
on Thesigan. Yeah yeah, two thousand and one to two
thousand and five, probably is out there all the time.

Speaker 3 (58:54):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We stayed at the old Coast Guard
station out on the you know Mona Lakes.

Speaker 4 (59:00):
Really yeah yeah yeah, yep, more Skegan play.

Speaker 3 (59:04):
Yeah's a paper mill there, you know.

Speaker 2 (59:07):
Oh yeah, that's something. My girlfriend's dad was a mill
ray at that paper I want to see him in
the Tough Band contest one time.

Speaker 3 (59:13):
Oh wow.

Speaker 6 (59:14):
It's one of the only spots you can find chinook
salmon and long nose gars in the same river system
with the buffalo. And that was only what It's one
of the few places you can see chinook salmon and
long nose bars in the same river systems.

Speaker 2 (59:25):
So oh man, we used to hunt that flat for docks,
but those are in base of yeah right, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 4 (59:31):
Yeah, let's let's let's do that for me.

Speaker 2 (59:34):
Let's play that game for because if you look up
like if you look up, let let's say take a
turn like weed when you look up weed in a dictionary,
but we just means like a non desirable right, it's
a non desirable plan, So we say something that's like,
here's where gets a little tricky. If you take a
fish and you deliberately introduce it usually doesn't carry the

(59:59):
non it's not.

Speaker 7 (01:00:00):
They can't retroactively call it invasive.

Speaker 2 (01:00:03):
Yeah, like does it carry invasive because invasive implies not desirable.
But I was reading this book. There's a really good
book called Fishing in the Great Lakes. It's a history
of commercial fishing in the Great Lakes, and it talks
about it's funny because the due's name. There's this ichthyologist
named Seth Green. It's hard to look them up because
of the other dude. But they were working to as

(01:00:26):
they were collapsing all the native fisheries in the Great
Lakes from over harvest and then rafting all those logs
and all the spawning grounds. So the bark falls off
and you got like thirteen feet of bark laying over
the spawning habitat as they're destroying all the native fish.
They're in there introducing karp deliberately thinking that people are
going to appreciate them as a food fish, the same

(01:00:47):
way they're appreciated in Europe and appreciated in Asia. So
there you get like, Okay, so it was deliberately introduced,
there was budget for it. We now regard them as
della tearious like whatever. Yeah, so does all these like
terminologies No one says, like salmon in the Great Lakes

(01:01:07):
are absolutely not native Walleye and the rivers here and
then the lakes.

Speaker 4 (01:01:12):
Here are not native, but they're not.

Speaker 7 (01:01:16):
Like in basive.

Speaker 4 (01:01:17):
No, people don't call some people.

Speaker 9 (01:01:19):
Some people will try to, right, I mean you'll hear
people try to call brown trout.

Speaker 2 (01:01:25):
Yeah, I do that just to be yeah, I do
that too, and I tease pheasants too. Yeah, yeah, I
tease brown trout, rainbow trout, pheasants. But just to clarify
the terminology, Yeah, it's all perspective.

Speaker 3 (01:01:38):
Yeah, so introduced versus invasive.

Speaker 6 (01:01:40):
That's a tricky thing, you know, And uh so, yeah,
we've got to introduced some on it's I think, getting
back to Brody's question, like those introduced some on it
are problematic in some parts of the Eastern United States.
You've got you know, even the the next category there's
like non game made of fish, like the shiners and
the darters and the minnows. They're problematic for some of
those nest building areas, they take up.

Speaker 3 (01:01:59):
Space, they eat the fish there, the native species.

Speaker 9 (01:02:01):
So have you guys done any like reintroductions of these
native fish in places where maybe they were wiped out
or they're just not doing well.

Speaker 6 (01:02:10):
There's a group called Conservation Fisheries down in Tennessee that's
doing that, and so they're doing that with like different
types of mad Toms, darters and not.

Speaker 2 (01:02:19):
Guard.

Speaker 3 (01:02:20):
Well that gets back to Illinois and the alligator gar who.

Speaker 6 (01:02:24):
All had alligator gar who well, oh went all the
way up into Illinois.

Speaker 4 (01:02:28):
So it was all the Mississippi Missouri systems.

Speaker 2 (01:02:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:02:31):
Yeah, And so the damming and the leveing and the
eradication efforts. So sure, I mean the looking at them
as sort of trash fish and problematic was a problem,
but so was the dams and the levees and the
modification cutting them off from those floodplain habitats where they
can't get to that terrestrial vegetation they need to despawn.
And so now a big effort is not only to

(01:02:51):
introduce some of those you know populations to try to
recharge those, but also to reconnect the river with its
floodplain habitat. And that is research that we're working on
with Nature Can Servancy, US Fish and Wildlife Service to
make those connections between the river and the floodplaine because
that's good for.

Speaker 3 (01:03:06):
The gars, it's good for other fish, it's good for
water birds.

Speaker 6 (01:03:09):
We see thousands of these wood storks down there, all
kinds of different animals, but we're using the gars is
kind of an indicator of that because they do migrate
onto the floodplane. So we've kind of used to try
to get some money for the grants, is to show
that you can use gars as indicators of this restoration efficacy.
If you reconnect that river with the floodplane. The use
are fish that move on to them. So do we

(01:03:29):
see the fish moving on there? Do we see those
twelve inch young of the year popping out in a
month and a half and so far we've seen that
success there and we do see tons of crappy there,
a lot of other animals as well taking advantage of
those habitats.

Speaker 2 (01:03:42):
So you'll put a.

Speaker 4 (01:03:43):
Tag on a gar and you'll see him travel out
into that stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:03:45):
We're tagging some of them with Fish and Wiley Service.
They're pit tag.

Speaker 6 (01:03:48):
They've got an external tag too, but we're also using
a fin clip where we look at a chemical signature
where we can actually look at we catch you out
of the river, do you have a river signature?

Speaker 3 (01:03:57):
Do we catch you on the floodplane? Do we see
a floodplain signature?

Speaker 6 (01:03:59):
And we can look at that by looking at carbon
and nitrogen just from the fin clip. At least that's
a non lethal way of doing it. So that's been
helpful and that's ongoing research. We're going there in October
to do that.

Speaker 2 (01:04:10):
So they went up that system into Illinois. Yeah, and
now how far up are they?

Speaker 6 (01:04:15):
They're still up in Illinois. I think Hennepin and Hopper
Lakes or some lakes up there. They seem to be
doing well there because I guess there's like a nuclear
plant or something, so it keeps it a bit warmer.
Some of those fish are growing decent, but they don't
mature until they're about five to eleven years old, depending
on males or females. And we expect those ones further
north they're going to take longer to mature.

Speaker 3 (01:04:33):
We see that in other gar spie.

Speaker 7 (01:04:34):
Are they are they protected like up in the northern extreme.

Speaker 6 (01:04:37):
Of their Ragin's that's a great question. I think they're
working towards protecting them because that was the issue and
we had that maybe five five years ago where bofish
are actually shot one of the restocked, you know, one
of the little guys that made it to be decent size,
and luckily, you know, she reported it, and you know,
we're able to see like, well, this might actually be
kind of an issue where we might want to protect

(01:04:58):
those fish. But you have to be able to identify
the fish as well, and that's tricky with with gars,
I get it, but at least being able to you know,
then you need some sort of maybe blanket protection or
maybe a harvest limit.

Speaker 3 (01:05:09):
Right that we are not, I.

Speaker 2 (01:05:10):
Would be very careful just as advice. Yeah, I wouldn't
use the word protection because you're gonna you're gonna generate
too much social friction. I would if I was in
your shoes, just long line of bow fishermen, if I was,
if I was in your shoes, I would be talking

(01:05:31):
about I would be talking about putting a regulatory structure
in place, because people are gonna they're gonna hear protection
and their head's gonna go in a certain direction. But
a regulatory structure the same way, like the same way,

(01:05:54):
all the other stuff the same way, all the birds
and everything like.

Speaker 6 (01:05:58):
No, I agree with you, and that's the language we
use anyway. You know, I think it depends on the
audience we're talking to as well, but yeah, it's definitely
more regulation and management, and even from our perspective, it's
informing management. Right, we're doing the science and we you know,
been lucky to work with Minnesota. DNR has been very
receptive to you know, non game native fish conservation and
management because they don't have the data. So we go

(01:06:19):
out there and we have that expertise coming off of
six years in Louisiana and also several years in Michigan,
where to find these fish, where to catch them, how
to extract the otel.

Speaker 3 (01:06:28):
It's what kind of data we can get from them.

Speaker 6 (01:06:30):
Because you know, everybody's strapped for resources, whether you're a state, federal,
that sort of thing.

Speaker 3 (01:06:34):
So that's been helpful.

Speaker 6 (01:06:35):
But we can help again inform that management, give recommendations
that you know, might help improve that sort of regulatory structure.

Speaker 2 (01:06:43):
Yeah, I think an achievable goal would be that you
would that you would help fishermen, help them understand that
that we have this category we use to categorize fish.
It's not that's not a great category, and that we
should understand that there are these problematic invasive fish that

(01:07:04):
people brought from far away that we wish weren't in
the systems. We have these fish that have always been here, right,
and we should make sure they're always here. And so
we draw a distinction between these and these and with gars.
And I don't know what the number is with gars
is like you're allowed two or five a night or
whatever the hell, just like you're allowed two or five

(01:07:26):
bass a day whatever, And like just start kind of
creating this idea that it's not all that these fish
aren't damaging to the eco, that they're not all damaging
to the ecosystems, you know, and that like the buffalo
is like a big sucker that used to be a
very soft after commercial fish and it shouldn't be ditched

(01:07:46):
like cart.

Speaker 9 (01:07:48):
Is there any like examples of there being like bounties
on alligator gar other Did that ever happen?

Speaker 3 (01:07:55):
I don't think not. In recent history.

Speaker 6 (01:07:58):
You go back to the nineteen thirties, Texas Parks and
Wildlife had the electrical gar destroyer that they made to
just they thought that I think they were taken out.
I want to say it was waterbirds or something. And
so you know, they basically raned this rig that was
supposed to kill.

Speaker 3 (01:08:14):
All the gars.

Speaker 4 (01:08:15):
Ye use the term the gar war, Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:08:19):
So Matt Miller is the director of Science Communications for
the Nature Conservancy, good friend of mine, and he wrote
this book Fishing through the Apocalypse, which is great about
fishing and conservation, and he brought up like this gar
wars idea but using that broadly not just gars, but
other non game native fish and even non game isn't
you know that's relative as well to look at just
kind of providing some respect for these fish again looking

(01:08:42):
at the North American model of wildlife conservation where we're
looking at, you know, having the best science available and
then also not hunting these animals or using them for
frivolous purposes. So if you're going to shoot, if you're
going to kill it, eat it, and you know they
taste delicious. I think with that also we've got the
opportunity to reach the next generation, which is important if

(01:09:03):
we want to preserve that hunting and fishing and show
that there's value. So there's two directions I want to
go with that, But there's opportunity, right, So you go
to a spot that may not be the best for
rainbow trout or walleye or bass, but a lot of
these habitats have plenty of gars, bowfens, suckers. So there's
opportunity for fishing that people may not have if they
don't have a boat to go after walleye or to

(01:09:25):
go after bass. So we're trying to introduce other opportunities
for fishing again to look at, you know, both conservation
and management and just better stewardship of our natural resource,
but to conserve that recreational way of life. And so
if we don't do that, that's going to start slipping away.

Speaker 2 (01:09:40):
You know.

Speaker 6 (01:09:40):
We can go on and on about how people are
you know, on screens more than outside. And one of
the ways that we've done that is working with the anglers,
whether they're bowfishers or whether they're you know, catching release
or hooking line anglers. We did this with a bowfen
and my lab just a couple months ago.

Speaker 3 (01:09:57):
This summer.

Speaker 6 (01:09:57):
We're a bunch of anglers that know how to catch
bofen and some of them never caught them before. But
they got together and I said, hey, can you catch
us some bowfriend that we can use for our research.
And I brought my research team with me and these
are all you know, undergrads and grad students. They also
were able to catch both and they really had a blast.
Like some of them, they're from Minnesota. They were able
to fish walleye and fish bluegill, but they never caught
bouf in before and they really got into that. And

(01:10:18):
then the anglers got to learn about, well, if you're
going to help us out, here's what we want as
far as a measurement and a photograph and a fin clip.
So really building that relationship with the anglers, and we're
doing that with the bowfishers too, looking at where are
these lakes where you might be doing some bowfishing tournaments.
Can we at least use the carcasses to get the
data to look at the age structure of those fish.

(01:10:39):
So we're definitely not looking to end bowfishing or to
you know, to to stop that sort of recreational aspect,
but we're looking to can we manage it sustainably to
where we can have the fish and the water doing
their jobs. As you know, Ecosystem Services balancing you know,
predator prey populations, but then also you can go there
and you can shoot the fish hopefully eat them sustainably,

(01:11:01):
so you know, kind of everybody wins, and so far
that's we've made progress with that, even with a lot
of the boatfishers.

Speaker 4 (01:11:08):
Have you guys seen.

Speaker 2 (01:11:11):
Besides alligator gar getting extirpated from native range, have you
seen any other fish that people categorize as a rough fish?

Speaker 5 (01:11:20):
Hell?

Speaker 4 (01:11:20):
There are there any records of other fish being extirpated.

Speaker 6 (01:11:23):
That's a good question. I think there's plenty. I mean,
you've got the spotted guar in Michigan, so that's considered
a species of concern. Now it's not endangered or threatened.
It is considered endangered in Pennsylvania, So there are places
of state by state, there's places where you might consider
a spotted guard to be protected, and in other states
it's just we don't know enough about them.

Speaker 3 (01:11:43):
But now we know that they can live for over
forty years, so we've lagged so far behind.

Speaker 6 (01:11:47):
So I think that's a great question where we've seen
them extirpated. Quite honestly, we don't have enough data in
a lot of places to tell are they still here
are they gone?

Speaker 3 (01:11:56):
Why might they have you know gone?

Speaker 6 (01:11:58):
We like to say, like we're about one hundred years
behind what we know about trout and salmon and walleye.
We don't have to take one hundred years to catch
up on that. So what we're trying to do is
use those methods that you've all learned about from managing
smallmouth bass, largemouth pass. How do we apply that to
these data deficient species. So again working together to more
sustainable management with that stuff. So honestly, we don't know

(01:12:18):
we could be losing populations and not know it because
we aren't accounting for the harvest.

Speaker 2 (01:12:23):
Of those fish. You know. That brings up a really
interesting a cology point that my brother Danny raised to me.
He's with US Fish and Wildlife Service in Alaska that
works on salmon, and.

Speaker 4 (01:12:34):
We're talking about I brought this up before.

Speaker 2 (01:12:39):
We're talking about difference between the Lower forty eight and
Alaska in terms of we're speaking about fisheries, but you
could almost apply it to like conservation in general, where
he was just like, not in a publication form, just
talking casually. He was saying that, like the Lower forty
eight is kind of like in recovery mode, right, Like

(01:13:01):
conservation in lower forty eight is like largely about recovery,
he said. In Alaska and big parts of Alaska, we're
still in the descriptive phase. We're still trying to be
like what's here? Right, there's salmon runs that like people know.
It's like people don't don't know. I mean, people have
been utilizing the salmon runs for thousands and thousands and

(01:13:21):
thousands of years, but no one's put their arms around
it yet. No one's been like, Okay, what does it
look like in twenty twenty what does the run look
like in twenty twenty one? You know what I mean?
Like measuring, trying to put some kind of number around,
like what is here? So a lot of the work
they'll they'll do work of just trying to describe what's here,

(01:13:45):
which makes the recovery mode it lets you track change
over time. But what were you say about gar almost
like contradicts that, because if you look, there probably are
things down here that we haven't done the discovery mode
on because we just disregarded it or lumped it into
some goofy classification to the point where you might later say,

(01:14:08):
we don't know where they lived. Yeah. Yeah, there's a
lot of old people talk about seeing them, but like,
I don't know how accurate is that. Can't find one now,
you know, because no one ever measured it, right, right, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:14:21):
No, I think that's a that's a great analogy.

Speaker 6 (01:14:24):
I think we're very much still in the discovery phase,
but also in a recovery phase too, because we don't
know where they've been, you know, overfished or where.

Speaker 3 (01:14:32):
It's a combination.

Speaker 6 (01:14:32):
Again, it's not just harvest, but it's you know, the
modification of those habits, shaits. So I think we're playing
catch up and you know, we're just trying to you know,
make the best that we can. And sort of that's
why sort of encouraging.

Speaker 3 (01:14:45):
The value of these native species.

Speaker 6 (01:14:48):
To sort of then promote our ability to research them,
to get multiple stakeholders involved, whether it's the beau fishers,
the hook and line anglers, the state and federal agencies.

Speaker 3 (01:14:57):
And I think there is momentum towards that.

Speaker 6 (01:15:00):
And to do that, we want to communicate effectively and
want to build those relationships, not you know, shooting people
down with like you shouldn't be doing this or this
should be stopped. And that's a big part of our
sort of science communication.

Speaker 5 (01:15:11):
Aspect of it.

Speaker 6 (01:15:12):
So we appreciate the work that you all do for
that because I think we need a multifaceted approach to
make that happen before we, you know, lose what we
didn't even know we had.

Speaker 8 (01:15:21):
No do you know examples of other parts of the
world that are being wrecked by our native rough fish
the way carp are like disturbing our waterways, like over
in Germany the short head red horses right just ripping
up their creeks or something like that.

Speaker 3 (01:15:38):
Yeah, yeah, well, you know it's funny you mentioned. So
there's two parts of that.

Speaker 6 (01:15:42):
Yes, our fish are wrecking plenty of habitats in other places,
but it's not our native rough fish. It's our game fish,
you know, largemouth bass, steelhead, bluegill, I mean, rainbow Trout's
one of the most widely distributed species.

Speaker 3 (01:15:56):
Of fish in the world.

Speaker 6 (01:15:57):
I know, you know fishermen the go down to Argentina
to fish for steelhead. I'm like, what, I would rather
find out what fish are actually there and then you know,
go for those. So it's mainly our game fish because
you know, we like to take the fish that we
like and take them to other places. Now, as far
as gars go, they have been introduced not on purpose,

(01:16:17):
relatively speaking, through the aquarium trade. And so in some
places where they've released them. There's a couple parts of India,
there's parts of Southeast Asia where they've.

Speaker 3 (01:16:27):
They've made their way into waterways.

Speaker 2 (01:16:29):
Oh yeah, you can go. Dudes in Southeast Asia are
buying garsh here, turn loose in their aquarium and then
dumping them.

Speaker 3 (01:16:35):
They're mainly want to keep them their aquarium.

Speaker 6 (01:16:37):
But then when they get too big, because believe or not,
you know, as you know, I mean, alligator gars get big,
so it's a big aquarium fish. They're super popular gars.
And then they've got arijuanas down there too.

Speaker 3 (01:16:49):
Yeah yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 4 (01:16:51):
That's a boatfish.

Speaker 5 (01:16:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (01:16:52):
How are our guar doing in those other places?

Speaker 6 (01:16:55):
In most places, they're not doing great because they don't
have enough to sort of create a system population and
self sustake population. But there are a couple spots I've
seen it in India through videos sent me where they
have spawned. Now, sure that could be problematic, but it's
probably something that's still controlled. I mean, you know, I know,
I feel like you know, I also feel like you know,

(01:17:16):
who better to take care of alligator gars in India
than an Indian dude you could send out there.

Speaker 3 (01:17:20):
So maybe it's just job security. We'll see, but yeah,
I think.

Speaker 6 (01:17:24):
But in other places they've kind of tracked alligator gars
have been released. There was I think a moat around
as some.

Speaker 3 (01:17:30):
Sort of pas palace or castle in.

Speaker 6 (01:17:32):
Japan where an alligator gar was released, and so they had,
like I know, their version of fish and wildlife trying
to catch this gar out of there for a while.

Speaker 3 (01:17:39):
And so you'll hear stories they put it in there
to keep intruders out. I know, right, Yeah, it's not
gonna I'm not gonna work that way.

Speaker 9 (01:17:45):
Is there actually is there, Like I'm sure people have
been bitten by mistake, like in muddy Water, right, Like,
is there claims of them ever attacking.

Speaker 6 (01:17:54):
There's like very very few records of even the mistaken identity.
I think there is something that happened a couple of
years ago go there was I think a woman in
Texas or Louisiana had stepped near an alligator gar and
got tagged by it. But that was it and there
wasn't It was pretty foggy details around that, but other
than that, gars aren't. They definitely are not attacking people.
They're very gape limited, so even a fish like that

(01:18:14):
can get this exactly. That was probably about a five
foot long fish, you know, give or take maybe four
and a half five feet. But you look at that
that mouth isn't you know, it's not going to fit
anything further down that.

Speaker 3 (01:18:25):
Much as far as I mean it can open wide up.

Speaker 6 (01:18:28):
And down, but that throat doesn't open up very much.
So they're very gape limited, so they're not gonna you know,
they can't swallow a person or anything like that.

Speaker 3 (01:18:34):
Even a big alligator.

Speaker 6 (01:18:36):
The biggest one we've caught in our research is eight
feet one inch long, just a couple of inches off
of the known, you know, world record fish. But we
did pull a three foot long carp out of the
stomach of that fish. I've got a picture of my
student who, yeah, it was and it was mostly not
mostly it was partially digested to where it was just
a lump of flesh.

Speaker 7 (01:18:55):
Like someone's like house poodle or something.

Speaker 3 (01:18:57):
I mean, it's it's kick your dogs on leashes, I guess.

Speaker 8 (01:19:04):
But you know, hower gator gar doing in Mexico.

Speaker 3 (01:19:07):
They're doing well in Mexico. They're native in Mexico.

Speaker 6 (01:19:10):
And in Mexico you've got the alligator gar and the
tropical gar, which are big time food fish down there.
So you go to the Tabasco region, Tabasco State in Mexico,
which they there was a gar conference there. Believe it
or not, they do happen in twenty twelve. Tropical gar
stuff was, you know, in the little shops there. They
were in the restaurants. We had tropical gar and banadas

(01:19:30):
to Molly's. We roasted them to where they were just gutted,
but you can put them on the grill and then
the scales just flake right off. So those tropic gars
on the grill were probably about, you know, maybe foot
and a half long, but they get to three and
a half four feet long as well, so they're looking there,
but not as long as you know, but they're fatter
than the longer that's a stouter fish because that's related

(01:19:51):
to the alligator.

Speaker 3 (01:19:52):
Gar long noses.

Speaker 6 (01:19:52):
They're in a different genus, so they're the skinnier gars
like your short nose and your spot in but it's
as important of a food fish there as salmon are
in the Pacific Northwest, so not only have they depleted
the wild populations in some places, then they're aquaculturing them
to restore those wild populations. So Cuba and parts of
Mexico are actually good templates for gar aquaculture and restoration.

(01:20:14):
Everything we know, like through Fish and Wildlife Service, not everything,
but the starting to what we know came from those
places where people are already culturing those fish to try
to restore alligator gar bring them back in certain population.

Speaker 7 (01:20:24):
So they're not the term rough fish down there.

Speaker 3 (01:20:26):
No, No, it's a big good fish.

Speaker 2 (01:20:28):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 8 (01:20:30):
You spend a lot of time working in Minnesota at
the edge of the Mississippi Watershed, and in twenty seventeen
there was an American eel caught at Cottonwood Lake in Minnesota,
which was thirty miles off of the Mississippi River. Even so,
like it has the potential to collect some fish that
are far away from what you'd consider to be their
home up there. What are some of the unique things

(01:20:52):
you've caught Minnesota?

Speaker 3 (01:20:53):
Gotcha in Minnesota so far?

Speaker 6 (01:20:55):
I mean, we're still focusing a lot on the gars
and the bowfins because the you know, the DNR typically
isn't paying attention in them the same way they're paying
attention to the walleye and the bass.

Speaker 3 (01:21:04):
So I feel like that's some of our unique fish.

Speaker 6 (01:21:06):
We do get the blue sucker, which you know is
found all the way down in Texas too, But that's
a pretty unique fish. They look kind of like a shark,
kind of a grayish looking if you had a shark
version of a sucker, that's what they look like.

Speaker 4 (01:21:16):
Familiar with fish they get.

Speaker 6 (01:21:19):
You know, probably not quite three feet long, but I
mean you're yeah, decent size and there's.

Speaker 8 (01:21:23):
Deeply blue, especially when they're spawning. Yeah, they have a
tall dorsal fin on.

Speaker 2 (01:21:28):
Right.

Speaker 8 (01:21:28):
They're threatened in South Dakota. We used to raise them
at the hatchery.

Speaker 6 (01:21:31):
Yeah, very cool fish and uh you know they stay
in the midwater, sort of midwater in midstream. A lot
of some ichthyologists and also angers call me a unicorn
fish because it's very difficult to catch them because it's
a sucker. So you got a fish for them, right,
They got that ventral mouth.

Speaker 2 (01:21:44):
Never heard of that one.

Speaker 6 (01:21:45):
Yeah, Yeah, so blue sucker, we can you know, you
come up to Minnesota, we could probably show you some.
So they're putting trackers in some of them to find
out where they go. So DNR is doing that. They've
done that with some of the long nosed gars, so
it's finding out where some of those fish are moving
as well tracking the invasive carp where they're going.

Speaker 3 (01:22:00):
I'm trying to think as far as unique stuff we
did find.

Speaker 6 (01:22:02):
You know through some of those bofen that half of
a large rat in the stomach, which shows that bof
and will eat just about anything. The I tell the students,
just like with the plankton, to let me know when
there's something interesting you find in the stomach. And so
I I was coming back to the lab and showing
somebod of the lab and I said, do you find
anything interesting? I said, oh, yeah, we found a rat
in the stomach. And I'm like, well, where is it?

(01:22:23):
I said, you know, I need to see a picture
or find it. It was already in like the carcass
bin and stuff. I'm like, you're gonna have to fish
that out of here so we.

Speaker 7 (01:22:29):
Can get your muskrat.

Speaker 6 (01:22:33):
I mean it was the only post your end of it.
So I mean I I couldn't tell you. I'll send
you the picture. Maybe you can gain idea.

Speaker 8 (01:22:39):
Yeah, you did say what are the little bumps that
some suckers get when they're spawning. Blue blue suckers would
really get those on there, tubercles.

Speaker 6 (01:22:47):
Tubercles, Yeah, yeah, so they got the spawning tubercles on them,
and so on buffalo.

Speaker 3 (01:22:51):
We'll get those two a lot of yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:22:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:22:55):
So there's there's a lot of interesting fisher I haven't
seen any eels there yet. When we're down in Louisiana,
sw eels all the time, So I think that's what's
been interesting is having stayed and worked in Louisiana for
six years. Now being in Minnesota, we're just following the
Mississippi River further up to the top. But that's also
what some of our research is doing is looking at
those gar and buffalo populations down south. We've learned about

(01:23:16):
their life history, some of the population structure, and we
can look at gars in Buffalo up north and then
compare northern and southern populations. One of the things we
want to do is like, can we start forecasting about
climate change how that might change things? Right, Because we've
got fish that are adapted to a warmer climate down
south that we know about, how might the ones in
the north start potentially changing but then you know, you've

(01:23:37):
got your cold water fish are can be affected by
that as well. But you know, we don't have walleye
way down south. So that's why the gars and the
bofins and the buffalo can be useful for that kind
of research as well. So again we're trying to use
them as sort of these multifaceted tools to tackle management, conservation,
even climate science.

Speaker 2 (01:23:53):
What are these northern gars doing under the ice? Like,
I've never in my life even heard of someone catching
one through the ice.

Speaker 6 (01:24:02):
Yeah, it happens. I've got a couple of pictures that
people have sent me. It's still on my bucket list
to get a gar through the ice.

Speaker 4 (01:24:07):
So you've heard of people getting hit.

Speaker 3 (01:24:09):
Oh they're just.

Speaker 6 (01:24:09):
They're just kind of chilling under there, no pun intended.
But there's places in Iowa where I've got video of
that too, where the guy cut you know, made as
a you know, cut through the ice drop the can
ice hole and it's just his ice hole there, and
then just a bunch of short nosed gars just hanging
out below there, like I mean.

Speaker 3 (01:24:26):
Probably fifty or sixteen in a round. Yeah, just you know,
kind of.

Speaker 6 (01:24:30):
Slowly waving their fins but you know, metabolism slows down,
They're still going to eat, but they're congregating there. And
they also are air breathers, but when the water is
that cold, as long as they find well oxygen water,
they don't have to go up for air there. But
so they're there both in or there under the ice too.
So that's still still on the list to check out.

Speaker 2 (01:24:48):
Can I ask you snap and turtle question? Sure?

Speaker 3 (01:24:50):
I was into turtles before I was into gars.

Speaker 2 (01:24:52):
Actually, so okay, years ago, I was at the National
Trappers Association convention in Iowa, and I went to a
lecture by a turtle trapper. Okay, can't there his name is.
He had a like a thing hanging from he had
like a necklace that was like a pouch made out
of a big old turtle foot, big time in the turtles,

(01:25:12):
turtle trapper, but he got into raisin turtles. He was saying,
and I've told people, I've told people this a thousand
times that this is true. He was saying that a
turtle in the winter, so it's iceed over, like you know,
Norman comes up and sticks his head out of the
water and gets a gold but everything's locked and ice.

Speaker 3 (01:25:31):
He was saying, I think I know where this is going.

Speaker 2 (01:25:33):
Is it true?

Speaker 3 (01:25:34):
Yes, it is if you're talking about clerical respiration.

Speaker 2 (01:25:37):
Well, I'm talking about this.

Speaker 4 (01:25:40):
He was saying that that turtle can go down in
the muck.

Speaker 2 (01:25:43):
He can burrow down in the muck and push himself
up and it sends bubbles of methane out of the muck.
He says he's seen this in a wetsuit. It sends
methane bubbles by disturbing the muck and it goes up
to the ice. Like he was saying that somehow like
the CO two can leach through the ice. Huh. And

(01:26:05):
then he'll wait and eventually he'll go up and sip.
He'll go up and sip that bubble. Huh.

Speaker 4 (01:26:13):
He says he's watched it.

Speaker 3 (01:26:15):
That's That's not what I thought.

Speaker 6 (01:26:16):
With the clerical respiration, that's where they just basically breed
through their butts and stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:26:20):
So that's how they get gas exchange there.

Speaker 6 (01:26:22):
But I've not heard about the methane bubble and blow
the ice surface, and then what was the advantage there?

Speaker 3 (01:26:28):
It would just you get some sort of conversion picture.

Speaker 2 (01:26:30):
You stir the muck up, all that gas comes out. Ye,
somehow he was explaining, and then you talk like I
was hoping you can help me. He's explaining that that
certain like some gas goes through the ice. I don't
get it. Yeah, but if it waits, he'll eventually go
up and he'll sip that bubble. Uh huh. To what

(01:26:51):
end he can't stick his head out of the water.

Speaker 3 (01:26:55):
I mean, there's got to be some sort of organic chemistry. Yeah,
he was saying.

Speaker 4 (01:26:59):
By the I know, but that's why I got to
listen to what I'm talking about.

Speaker 2 (01:27:02):
He was saying that, like, by that bubble sitting there
for some period of time goes through some transformation. How
does how is that? How is that stupid? Do you
think like a methane bubble will just live there chemically
stable for the rest of its life.

Speaker 9 (01:27:19):
I don't know, Like, okay, bubble turns into exactly right.

Speaker 2 (01:27:27):
I don't know. Maybe we need to have a gas expert.

Speaker 5 (01:27:30):
Yeah, some googling going on.

Speaker 3 (01:27:34):
You never heard this, Yeah, I'm not. I've not heard that.

Speaker 2 (01:27:36):
He was talking about raising turtles and eventually got so
into it that he was observing them with a wetsuit
in the winter, trying to understand winter behavior and he's
talking about them in his mind, deliberately stirring the bottom
and then going up and sipping the bubbles.

Speaker 7 (01:27:59):
So if you're calling them, I'm not it's not meane,
they're kicking off.

Speaker 10 (01:28:03):
Maybe it's than can be converted into oxygen and other
chemicals like carbon dioxide and water through oxidation, which is
often a highly exothermic reaction that requires high temperatures or catalysts.

Speaker 2 (01:28:17):
Or ice.

Speaker 3 (01:28:20):
Or yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Maybe the turtle's doing something.

Speaker 2 (01:28:26):
I never heard that one. Yeah, no, I'm not.

Speaker 1 (01:28:28):
You're not heard that.

Speaker 3 (01:28:28):
But you know they're surviving somehow.

Speaker 2 (01:28:30):
So it's just one of the things that like sticks
in your head your whole life, and you just wind
up telling everybody about it.

Speaker 3 (01:28:36):
Oh, I know, I got But is that yeah.

Speaker 10 (01:28:41):
Here inertness of methane. Methane is a very stable and
inert molecule, and breaking the strong carbon hydrogen bonds requires
significant energy input or specific catalysts.

Speaker 2 (01:28:57):
Is there a chance that he's that that is there?
It's like when you when you stir in the bottom up. Look,
you know, you walk like you duck hunt every step,
like bubbles come out of there. Is there a chance
there's oxygen high.

Speaker 3 (01:29:08):
Yeah, that's the thing. I'm like, it may not.

Speaker 6 (01:29:10):
He might be talking about methane, because that's what he knows.
But you're probably stirring up all kinds of other gas
or byproducts of that, you know, of the bacteria and
all the muck on the bottom.

Speaker 3 (01:29:19):
So I think the story holds. It just may not
be methane that I might have made.

Speaker 6 (01:29:24):
So that sounds legit, then, I mean, if you've got
your own editions of the story, I can't.

Speaker 2 (01:29:29):
I know I didn't make up. What I know I
didn't make up is him talking about turtles, Yeah, disturbing
the bottom in his mind. And I remember, and I'm
the bubbles would come up. He talked about that. He
explained something that he thinks happens, but I don't remember what,
and then the turtles would sip it.

Speaker 4 (01:29:51):
That part sounds We were trying to get that turtle
expert on the show Krinn might have been before your time,
and we wound up getting a kid.

Speaker 2 (01:30:01):
We didn't get his kid.

Speaker 4 (01:30:02):
We couldn't get the old man.

Speaker 10 (01:30:04):
We could have got that probably wouldn't have gotten teld
me the kids said, I like turtles, you do we
need it? Do we need to revisit.

Speaker 2 (01:30:11):
Well, there's two things that have evaded us. A neanderthal expert,
I know, I'm I haven't pitched that on THEO Von's
show and got that. One guy reached out a neanderthal expert,
and someone who's real good on turtles, like real good and.

Speaker 3 (01:30:26):
Understands that I can get you some rex too.

Speaker 6 (01:30:30):
Yeah, like real good, especially snapping turtles, even alligator snapping turtles.

Speaker 10 (01:30:38):
Okay, okay, I'm talking to a neanderthal guy at some point, hopefully.

Speaker 2 (01:30:50):
I'm not going to ask you nanderthal question. So they're
active and they feed. Yeah, and then let's take an
alligator guard. How many eggs is he kicking out?

Speaker 3 (01:31:00):
I mean hundreds of thousands, she's kicking out, you know, sorry?

Speaker 2 (01:31:04):
Right?

Speaker 4 (01:31:05):
And then how are those getting fertilized?

Speaker 2 (01:31:06):
What happens?

Speaker 6 (01:31:07):
It's external fertilization, so you know, you get you have
what you call polyandrees. That's more males than females. You
might have one or two females, it's usually one big
female and a bunch of males look kind of cluster together.
And that's also usually over terrestrial vegetation. So they need
that flood pulse to do that, so they're creating.

Speaker 2 (01:31:23):
A cloud of milk. Yeah, and she's laying her eggs
and they're just fertilizing by being in the color.

Speaker 6 (01:31:28):
The eggs as they are being laid are very sticky,
so they actually adhere to that vegetation, so it's not
necessarily broadcasts and it's just going into the water column.
It's basically attached to that veu she's applying them.

Speaker 2 (01:31:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:31:41):
Yeah, and then you know with that spawning though, and
part of our other research is that we found down
in Texas and other places, long nose gars, your apparent
favorite gar, get into that mix and you get hybrids
between long nose an alligator long alligators. Yeah, yeah, so
you get an alligator gar that's got a longer snout
kind of nickname crocodile gars, you know, because it's a
little bit longer snout action there.

Speaker 3 (01:32:04):
But that's across genera.

Speaker 6 (01:32:05):
So you've got two species of gar that are producing hybrids,
which happens in fish. But not only are they two
different species, they're two different genera that diverged about one
hundred million years ago, so they split from each other
a long time ago.

Speaker 4 (01:32:20):
And are their offspring sexually viable.

Speaker 3 (01:32:22):
That's the thing.

Speaker 6 (01:32:23):
So that's what makes it also, you know, unique or
relatively unique, is that their offspring are fertile.

Speaker 3 (01:32:29):
So you've got these two species that.

Speaker 6 (01:32:31):
Can produce fertile offspring that split over one hundred million
years ago. The next closest organisms that can do that
is two species of ferns that split sixty five million
years ago. So what that suggests to us is that
their DNA is that compatible over splitting that long ago.
So their evolutionary rates being that slow, and that goes
into some of the work we've done looking at gars

(01:32:52):
actually have the slowest rates of molecular evolution of any
vertebrate with a job. So you rule out your lamp
rays and your hagfish slower the next closest to sturgeons,
but they are changing slower than seala, cants, lungfish, to titars, crocodilians, sharks,
any of those things. So with that hybridization, though, that
suggests to us that their DNA is that compatible, So

(01:33:14):
something might be maintaining that compatibility the DNA, something might
be correcting it. So you know, evolution happens by mutations, right,
so something a couple base pairs change, so changes, you
might get something that's advantageous or deleterious whatever. With gars,
it seems like that DNA code has been staying pretty
consistent for millions and millions of years, and what we

(01:33:35):
hypothesize that there might be something like a DNA repair
mechanism that when a mutation pops up, it's correcting that mutation,
just setting back to what it's supposed to be. So
think of like a game of telephone where you've got
message on both ends. One's very different at the end
of it from the beginning, right, think of almost a
perfect game of telephone where something's correcting it over and
over and over again. So one of the things we're
looking at is like, can we isolate or identify with

(01:33:57):
these potential DNA repair mechanisms could be because think about
even in human health, how many diseases are based on
out of control DNA replication or damage to DNA, whether
you're thinking about things like even in skin cancer other
types like that. So that's very far off in the future,
but that hybridization between alligator gars and long nose gars
or actually any gar species can hybridize is a potential

(01:34:21):
biomedical value as well.

Speaker 2 (01:34:23):
So what prevents it from becoming a Why hasn't it
just become a unispecies.

Speaker 3 (01:34:28):
Right exactly? That's a great question.

Speaker 6 (01:34:30):
So we kind of joke that like either there's one
species of gar or there's maybe a hundred species of cars.
But you think about with dog breeds, right, dogs all
one species, but look at all the variation there. Gars
are just changing at such a different rate relative to
our way of thinking that you know, to them, maybe
they are one species. They're just slight variations on a

(01:34:50):
basic blueprint. We don't know what that is, but that's
just another area of research we're looking into.

Speaker 3 (01:34:55):
But that adds value to these fish.

Speaker 6 (01:34:57):
You take buffalo, I know you all Alec Lackman on
one of the previous shows with fishing and stuff. The
buffalo can live for over one hundred years. We know that,
but since then, since twenty nineteen when you're O were
talking to.

Speaker 4 (01:35:09):
Him, Bultiple Soccer could live on hundred years.

Speaker 3 (01:35:11):
Rofolo socucer live over one hundred years.

Speaker 8 (01:35:13):
Ones at Minnesota.

Speaker 6 (01:35:14):
One's in Minnesota, you know, Saskatchewan, one hundred and twenty
five years.

Speaker 3 (01:35:17):
There's one.

Speaker 6 (01:35:18):
So buffalo story I can tell you is that some
of the buffalo. During World War One, they wanted to
you know, ship more meat products, food products overseas, and
so they wanted people stateside to eat less meat because
they need all those resources to go towards the war efforts.
So they wanted to encourage people to eat more fish.
And so in order to get people to eat more fish,

(01:35:38):
they're building all these new reservoirs in the southwestern United States,
the you know, Roosevelt Reservoir down southwest, and so some states,
including Iowa, shipped a bunch of game fish, including some
non game fish like buffalo, over down to the Apache
Lake down in Roosevelt Reservoir that area around nineteen seventeen.
Some of those fish are still alive today, No, and

(01:36:00):
they've gone back and looked at some of the offspring,
which are from born around the nineteen twenties, still alive today,
and they've done all kinds of aging with the otol
its radiocarbon dating. So sure those are introduced species there,
but we introduce them, but some anglers go there. They
know them by the different spot patterns and stuff. But
what they've also been able to find looking at their physiology,

(01:36:20):
their health has actually improved with old age, their immune
system function, sin essence, the sort of DNA breakdown that
we all.

Speaker 3 (01:36:29):
Have as we get older, they don't show that. So
you've got these.

Speaker 6 (01:36:32):
Native rough fish like gars that they've got this DNA
that's been staying coherent for millions and millions of years.
Potentially with the DNA repair mechanism. You've got buffalo which
actually are improving with age. You're trying eighty year old
one hundred year old fish just kicking as just yeah, yeah,
So you know there's a lot to about these Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:36:51):
You know, combined the two you can live forever and
get better with age.

Speaker 7 (01:36:54):
You know, I got an angling question.

Speaker 9 (01:36:58):
Sure, maybe not for alligator gar because they have a
you know, they have a degree of popular popularity for fishermen.
But the other species, if if one was wanting to
set a world record, our gar one of those species
that just kind of get ignored.

Speaker 7 (01:37:14):
And there's a bunch of like open line class records.

Speaker 10 (01:37:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:37:18):
Yeah, even in Minnesota, they've got catch and release records
that are open to a bunch of non game native fish.
I think the bof in one was just set this
past summer. It was like a thirty one incher.

Speaker 4 (01:37:27):
Yeah, because no dudes would ever put in for it.

Speaker 6 (01:37:30):
Yeah, I mean, you know, not as much anyway, but yeah,
down south you get some big long nose guards. We
actually got the biggest long nose I'd ever seen with
my students out at Nicols State when I was on Louisiana.
It was a sixty incher and later that summer, I
think somewhere else in Lousing they got a sixty five inches.

Speaker 3 (01:37:44):
But that is right along the records.

Speaker 9 (01:37:46):
Because for those guys, some fishermen that just look for
unfilled Yeah, yeah, nine class world records.

Speaker 6 (01:37:51):
That's a good spot to go for, you know, the
line classes, the difference size overall.

Speaker 3 (01:37:55):
Yeah, and that's that's worth you know, going after.

Speaker 6 (01:37:59):
I would say, if you do shoot it, find a
way to get us the odolfth because we want to
we want to age that fish.

Speaker 5 (01:38:04):
So they got some.

Speaker 7 (01:38:05):
Skulls getting their odolith. That's got to be a process.

Speaker 2 (01:38:08):
Yeah, to this skull I can't stop messing with.

Speaker 6 (01:38:10):
You have to use a hammer and a chisel for
alligator gars. I mean, it's just and we're working with
skulls that are huge too.

Speaker 9 (01:38:15):
It's like, what are your buddy up up at the
shack when he was chopping open those yellow eyes to
get their lift.

Speaker 7 (01:38:22):
That was work.

Speaker 3 (01:38:23):
Yeah, it's a it's messy business.

Speaker 2 (01:38:24):
But let's do this skull the school is amazing.

Speaker 3 (01:38:26):
Yeah, that's with some formalde hyde. You probably get maybe
maybe some that's good. That's good.

Speaker 2 (01:38:32):
So you did what Now we get the skulls.

Speaker 3 (01:38:34):
So we got it from Aligator gar Rodeo down to Louisiana.

Speaker 2 (01:38:38):
So that that was great.

Speaker 3 (01:38:39):
It's another opportunity to work with stakeholders there.

Speaker 4 (01:38:41):
Well, they shoot twenty two because they.

Speaker 6 (01:38:43):
Jug line for him first. So when you get the
fish and it's live, they want to find ways to
dispatch the dark knight.

Speaker 2 (01:38:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:38:49):
Yeah, I'm always curious as to how they're doing that
on a boat and not misfiring and hitting the bottom
of the boat or something. But they use the twenty
shoot edge of the boat, I guess, so I've never
seen it. We get them where they bring them in.

Speaker 3 (01:38:59):
So but you know, oh, you got to figure you
got these big fish.

Speaker 6 (01:39:01):
You're not usually hanging a big that kind of gar
you might hang over the edge of the boat, but
for hanging the head of a six foot or seven
foot over the edge of your boat, you might.

Speaker 9 (01:39:09):
I told you earlier I've got a lying cod head
do But like the general public can't just get their hands.

Speaker 2 (01:39:17):
Did you buy from aldehyde like a jugger from albehinde?

Speaker 3 (01:39:20):
That's a good question. I can buy from Aldie, but
I don't know. I think.

Speaker 8 (01:39:25):
It once and yet, Yeah, what don't they want people
to have from.

Speaker 6 (01:39:28):
A I mean it's a it's a carcinogen. I mean,
so you take your guard's head fresh off the gar, yeah,
and then you do what we Well, those we eventually
put on ice. We could storm for a bit, we
saw them out, and then I once we thaw them,
we pry the jaws open, usually wedge something in there,
because you know, the natural state of the gar isn't
with the jaws wide open like that, And then we
put them in a fromaldehyde bath for like maybe two

(01:39:49):
three days, depending on the size of the fish.

Speaker 3 (01:39:51):
And then we take it out.

Speaker 6 (01:39:52):
We put in a cooler with water, and we just
change that water bath a few times and we just
let it air dry.

Speaker 3 (01:39:57):
But you can do that with a regular fishing.

Speaker 2 (01:40:00):
You could set nail like.

Speaker 7 (01:40:03):
I've salted pike cats and let them drive.

Speaker 6 (01:40:05):
But that looks that would work way better than piping
because pike are still they got a lot of flesh,
you know, along the skull, whereas a gar skull.

Speaker 3 (01:40:12):
I mean that's yeah.

Speaker 10 (01:40:15):
We may have to communicate with Montana State University. So
purchasing a jug of formaldehyde solution requires a specialized chemical supplier.
It's not available for purchase at retail stores and is
regulated by the e p A and OSHA due to
health risk, including cancer. We need to demonstrate a legitimate use,
so you might need to. Yeah, like anyone at m

(01:40:38):
s U, get some contacts there you go, well trade
in formaldehyde.

Speaker 2 (01:40:42):
I was gonna bring this up with your cren. You
still have those tuna heads in that freezer. You need
to deal with them or get your formal I.

Speaker 10 (01:40:52):
Thought Alec got some and made made soup with them.

Speaker 7 (01:40:55):
Are the collars attached? Yeah, I take I.

Speaker 5 (01:40:59):
Don't think no.

Speaker 2 (01:41:00):
Is it just the head. We've also got those, we
cleaned them up.

Speaker 10 (01:41:03):
We've also got those fetuses in there too.

Speaker 6 (01:41:07):
This is a work art, I mean, you know, hope
you all appreciate that. You know, we couldn't bring a
big one in the suitcase or anything. Show me a
big one work you know, it was with your hands
what's a big one.

Speaker 3 (01:41:16):
When you're looking at how about that big?

Speaker 2 (01:41:18):
Really?

Speaker 3 (01:41:18):
I think we had some pictures in there. I'll send
them to you.

Speaker 6 (01:41:20):
But that eight footer has a was a pretty big skull.
It got trapped in the nets, so that one had
unfortunately died. But we're able to get the otolitz I
was fifty six years old. But there you're looking at
a eight foot long fish that was fifty six It
could have easily been one hundred. When they get that big,
they aren't growing, you know, very much each year. But
this is out of the coastal Louisiana. So we had

(01:41:41):
six footers that were twenty years old. I want to
say we probably had a six and a half footer.
There might have been, you know, twenty twenty one.

Speaker 3 (01:41:48):
So they get they get big.

Speaker 6 (01:41:50):
But that's where working with the rodeo was very helpful
because we could get all the data we wanted.

Speaker 3 (01:41:55):
They let us just have at it. They were cutting
the heads off for us.

Speaker 6 (01:41:57):
They're getting, as you know, any of the samples of
the muscle tissue, the fins, and then they also clean them.

Speaker 5 (01:42:04):
There.

Speaker 6 (01:42:04):
It was at a bar is at Manny's Bar on
the Mara Para off Lake marpod Amy River and people
come from all over that general region and they'd be
eating this fried alligator gar.

Speaker 2 (01:42:13):
They make gar balls, which like hush. That's why I
like Cajun's man, those Cajun doozy everything.

Speaker 3 (01:42:18):
I mean, you know, but gar's good. They got the
big backstraps.

Speaker 6 (01:42:21):
And the thing is they invited us back year after
year because they wanted to know what we were finding out,
and we wanted to you know, work with them and
share that info with them too. So you've got multiple stakeholders.
We weren't there to say, like you got to stop
doing this. We're there to like learn about the resource.
How can we figure out about the health of the population.
We've been invited back every year. I couldn't make it
this year because coming down from Minnesota is a little

(01:42:41):
bit tougher, But next year we plan on going back
down there. So if everyone to, you know, send somebody
to jump in on a gator gar.

Speaker 2 (01:42:47):
Rodeo, you know, we'll be there.

Speaker 6 (01:42:48):
But I think that's a good opportunity to again work
with stakeholders, work with the people that are using the
resource for different purposes.

Speaker 2 (01:42:57):
Uh, it's my last question for you. They might have more.
You know when you have like like Trout Unlimited, Ducks Unlimited,
Rocky Mountain Olk Foundation. Right, Uh, they put tons of
money into habitat where they put tons of money into research.
Who like, like who out there? What what NGOs are

(01:43:23):
put any money into into GAR? Right?

Speaker 6 (01:43:26):
As far as the definite enngy of nobody, I think
we're we're lucky that we can try to go after
grants from different organizations. Minnesota has a lottery tax that
goes into their Environmental and Natural Resources Trust Fund, and
so we apply for that. We've been lucky to get
support from the state. Then to look at these native
rough fish that's been extremely beneficial, and a few other

(01:43:48):
states have you know, stuff like that too.

Speaker 4 (01:43:50):
But there's no GAR enthusiastic group.

Speaker 3 (01:43:52):
I mean, you're you're looking at it, Steve, I mean,
you know, it's a you know.

Speaker 6 (01:43:56):
And then there's a Native Fish for Tomorrow, which is
a nonprofit group that is promoting.

Speaker 3 (01:44:00):
The value of these fish. But we're all going to
cobble together out of Minnesota as well.

Speaker 4 (01:44:03):
Native Fish yep.

Speaker 6 (01:44:05):
So Tyler Winter is one of their main spokespersons. He
also had a response to that article, but again promoting
eating the fish, fishing for the fish. But again that's advocacy.
I mean through the grants that we're getting, we're partnering
with them to provide them funding. So we're kind of
trying to get what money we can to work on
that stuff. But doing things like this, the work you

(01:44:25):
all do gets that message out more about the value
of these fish. But again being able to convince it
was the National Fish and Wilife Foundation. They support our
work down on the Mississippi River flood Plain in Mississippi,
working with Nature Conservancy, US Fishing Wildlife. So it's a
bunch of partners usually coming together. So I've been kind
of selling the idea of like we can use gar
to answer these questions or to get this type of restoration.

(01:44:48):
But it really is advocating for the species and then
trying to fund the funds to or find the funds
to back that research and then show that these are
again valuable organisms.

Speaker 2 (01:44:57):
Because it's the new fountain of youth, right right, Yeah,
figure out a couple of the little trips.

Speaker 6 (01:45:01):
I will say that the biomedical value of the fish
has bolstered that value. Spotted gar actually out of Michigan
is where we looked at that comparing them, and also
in Louisiana, the gar genome is actually organized closer to
the human genome than it is to.

Speaker 3 (01:45:16):
Other fish like your walleye and your trout.

Speaker 6 (01:45:19):
So because of that sort of ancient lineage, they've got
a lot of stuff that's in common with you know,
other sides of the evolutionary tree.

Speaker 2 (01:45:25):
Do got one more question, all right? What is the
toxin that's in those eggs?

Speaker 6 (01:45:29):
That is a great question. We've been trying to answer
that for well over a decade. We think it might
be sequestered from bacteria, but we don't know exactly. There's
actually current work being done at Nicols State and at
LSU on that right now. We did some preliminary work
on that a few years ago, so we think it
comes from bacteria mainly in the eggs. And what's also

(01:45:50):
unique about that toxin is it's toxic to birds, to mammals,
to arthropods like crayfish and crickets, but it's not toxic
to fish. So really, why you're a fish but you have,
you know, eggs that aren't toxic to the other animals
that are there.

Speaker 2 (01:46:03):
So suck that.

Speaker 6 (01:46:05):
I've got videos of bluegill eating long nosed gar eggs
as the long nose are laying them. So that kind
of brings kind of full circle to like this game
fish and non game fish. You're actually supporting these giant bluegill.
And what we think is because gars evolutionarily would I mean,
they live in these warm waters, right, they breathe air.
So most of your regular traditionally respiring fish like bluegill

(01:46:26):
and you know bass, aren't going to live in those
low oxygen waters. But you do have a lot of crawfish,
you have a lot of water birds, you got a
lot of camels. So it'll kill the crawfish, you'll kill
the birds.

Speaker 2 (01:46:35):
It'll you know, have you ever given have you ever
actually given it to a mouse and seen him die there?

Speaker 3 (01:46:39):
I haven't given it to him. There are experiments that
have been done.

Speaker 6 (01:46:41):
They've given it to turtles too, where it's like slow
down the heart rate, and so they have none experiments
with those eggs.

Speaker 3 (01:46:48):
With yeah, yeah, it depends on how much you're consuming
with that stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:46:53):
But like quicker days later with crayfish.

Speaker 6 (01:46:55):
It's pretty quick, like they basically see them eating them
and they just slow down and they just stop.

Speaker 9 (01:47:00):
What in parts of the country like now, like or
the Cajuns are eating these things?

Speaker 7 (01:47:05):
Is that like a no?

Speaker 6 (01:47:06):
Like people know Oh yeah, yeah, it's a you know,
they know how to clean them there. But and it's
it's available on the thing called the internet, right, but
you'll still see.

Speaker 3 (01:47:14):
Pop up every few years.

Speaker 6 (01:47:16):
These people got violently ill from eating a bunch of
gar eating the row. Yeah, they thought maybe I'm gonna
try to eat these because you know, you get a
big long nose guard.

Speaker 3 (01:47:24):
There's a lot of eggs in there. You can eat
both in caviar. They make that. They call it Cajun caviar.
I've heard it's not as good, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:47:31):
You know I've heard of that too. I forgot about that.

Speaker 3 (01:47:33):
Yeah, but you can't do that with the guards. So
I mean, you're not going to die, You're gonna have Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:47:39):
We're trying to get a caviar specialist.

Speaker 3 (01:47:41):
Nice specialist. You can double up.

Speaker 4 (01:47:49):
I got one question, are you from the north?

Speaker 8 (01:47:55):
I got I got two comments from earlier. We were
talking about the native range of an alligator guard. The
US g S says it goes following the Ohio River
almost to West Virginia. What and then the Mississippi almost
to Iowa, so like deep into the Midwest.

Speaker 3 (01:48:08):
Yeah, yeah, seriously, they're trying to bring them back in Kentucky.

Speaker 6 (01:48:10):
They have found them in parts of Ohio and Indiana
along the Ohio River, so they think that the one
that was I think found in Indiana is part of
restoration either in Ohio and Kentucky.

Speaker 3 (01:48:20):
But yeah, they're parts. They're in the Ohio River.

Speaker 2 (01:48:22):
Are they maybe just not getting like five six seven
feet long? So people just aren't like noticing.

Speaker 6 (01:48:27):
That they had big ones down in Horseshoe Lake in Illinois,
Like I want to say, it was like it was
like early nineteen hundred's that biggest one that they got
like towards the end of their run before they're fully extirpated,
was like a five or six foot long fish.

Speaker 3 (01:48:38):
So they get big.

Speaker 2 (01:48:39):
I had just no idea.

Speaker 6 (01:48:41):
We've actually found gars in the north get bigger like
long term maximum size than the fish in the south.
Like that's looking at spotted gars. So they've got the
growth rate that has to be able to compensate for winter.
But we do find on average they live longer and
they can get bigger. Alligator gar we just don't know
enough because we wiped them out from the north, so
we'll have to see.

Speaker 5 (01:48:58):
It's almost like deer.

Speaker 7 (01:49:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (01:49:03):
Other comment was, Steve, you were asking about traditional use
of gar. When I would give tours at the hatchery
and we would get to the gar section and try
to make people think they were cool. Some native tribes
would use their scales for currency or jewelry, and then
some of the early white settlers would line the front
of their plows with gar skin because it could break
through tough dirt. So there's some historical use. It's super

(01:49:26):
tough question, Solomon. What is like an aquarium you really
like as a native rough fish man where you walk
in You're like, no way, they have a quailed back,
they have a river carpsucker.

Speaker 5 (01:49:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:49:38):
Yeah, I would say the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanoogat does
an amazing job with freshwater fish. They've got a whole
building it's all freshwater. They built another one that's marine,
which I think is cool. But I was there for
a conference last year. I visited the aquarium three times
during that conference, only went to the freshwater one. They
loved to feed the gars down there too, So shout
Tennessee Aquarium. Shout Aquarium is a postdoc there and so

(01:49:59):
they've we had a good fresh water set up to
Tennessee's better. But shed does have some of my gars
that I had in grad school that I couldn't rehome
when I moved to Chicago. So if you go to
Shad Aquarium you see any gars, most of those are
mine from grad.

Speaker 3 (01:50:12):
School, you know, over ten years ago.

Speaker 8 (01:50:13):
No good And I sent him peddlefish to the shah
Yah about a death way back in the day. Yeah,
in Minnesota. That's sort of like ground zero for these
wakeboard studies or wakeboat studies. Have you followed these at all?

Speaker 2 (01:50:27):
I've not.

Speaker 6 (01:50:28):
I just know it's a it's a topic that's come
up when you know they're looking at new management.

Speaker 3 (01:50:32):
That's you know, we got to look into it.

Speaker 4 (01:50:34):
Well, that's both they weigh them all down with ballast
and then make the big waves.

Speaker 8 (01:50:37):
Destroy the shore line you surf on them. Well, they're
now like putting cameras underwater and seeing what it does
to the bottom of the lake. And it appears to
be like pretty devastating, like a bomb went off.

Speaker 7 (01:50:48):
I love it if they got rid of those things.

Speaker 8 (01:50:50):
Yeah, I was going to see if you have any
thoughts on what those do to rough fish.

Speaker 6 (01:50:54):
Yeah, I think whenever you're taking out habitat like that,
that's problematic, And especially since a lot of the native
rough fish lake then your shore habitat. So when you're
scouring out the bottom increasing turbidity, that's bad for the plants.
And even if they're not in your shore, you're creating
that wave action that's going to have stronger impacts also
on the shore when you've got that vegetation. So I
think I mean, again not being an expert on that myself,

(01:51:16):
but I would say if it's damaging the habitat is
or describing them, that's going to be problematic for a
lot of these fish.

Speaker 2 (01:51:21):
Can you imagine can you just imagine the conversation, oh God,
in the board enthusiast community when someone says, hey, man,
you can't do that anymore because.

Speaker 5 (01:51:34):
Of the guard.

Speaker 2 (01:51:37):
Set me up.

Speaker 3 (01:51:37):
You're setting me up.

Speaker 2 (01:51:40):
No, I'd be like, yeah, you can't do anymore because
the guard.

Speaker 7 (01:51:42):
They just make my boat bounce around a lot when.

Speaker 2 (01:51:44):
I'm perch fishing.

Speaker 4 (01:51:47):
Yeah, they would be just like, oh my goodness, gracious.

Speaker 7 (01:51:51):
I don't think they're listening to this show.

Speaker 4 (01:51:53):
No, I don't think they are in Franklin.

Speaker 2 (01:51:57):
This is my message to the wakeboard. Good community.

Speaker 8 (01:51:59):
Have you delivered a message?

Speaker 7 (01:52:02):
Is your first?

Speaker 4 (01:52:06):
I need to refine my message.

Speaker 2 (01:52:08):
My message is I'm on the lake bottom side.

Speaker 4 (01:52:11):
I think, man, who else got a question?

Speaker 7 (01:52:19):
Do they regrow their teeth their whole lives?

Speaker 6 (01:52:22):
That is a great question. I think they can grow teeth,
but it's not like sharks. So we were, yeah, we
were at this rodeo and the little kid, you know,
parents brought them up to us as we're processing these fish.
And I'm there with the persona chocol Bardy, curator of
fishes at LSU S and our boath there he's Nick
the all just I'm you know, gar person there little
kid asks can I have one of the teeth? And

(01:52:43):
so I'm like sure, And so we take the pliers
and we go to pull the tooth out of this
jaw and it's like really hard to get out of there,
and we pulled it out and it just goes down
almost like a volcano underneath the water, like and you know,
we pulled that out.

Speaker 3 (01:52:56):
We're looking at it.

Speaker 6 (01:52:57):
Me and persona boath we've been studying fish for most
of our lives. We're just like huh, Like we just
we had no idea that that's what it looked at.
And you know, we gave it to the kid. It
made his day, right, and his little brother came up like,
I want a tooth too, So then we were starting
pulling teeth out of these things. So they do have
an interesting structure there, and they do have something called
dentine or place of dentine around those teeth, which is

(01:53:17):
similar to the you know, some of the developmental tooth
parts that we have as well. So there's a lot
of things from the fish that are kind of connected
to us.

Speaker 9 (01:53:26):
Yeah, because it seems like with those real long ones
over time, like fifty years, they'd get broken and need.

Speaker 3 (01:53:32):
Yeah, with some of the big fish they get they
get broken.

Speaker 6 (01:53:35):
But in Michigan, when we'd be doing our spotted guar work,
we we would get what we call the crocodile effect,
where you'd get gars where the teeth have grown from
the bottom jaw and pierced the top of the.

Speaker 4 (01:53:46):
Yeah, so he's got tooth holes in his jaw.

Speaker 3 (01:53:48):
Yeah, Well those some of those are nostrils.

Speaker 6 (01:53:50):
Yeah, I actually know you're right there, those two where
you can see the open hole going all the way down.
Those are the tooth holes for those lower fangs down there.

Speaker 10 (01:53:56):
Yeah, think piranhas are like rows of teeth in there.

Speaker 6 (01:53:59):
Like, yeah, they got they got a lot of teeth,
you know, and they don't have a lot of bite
force them, so they're more about you know, they grasp
and hold and then swallow the food as opposed to
piranhas and sharks, which are more of a cutting plane.
Barracudas as well, but again, you know, you look at
those teeth, that's gonna be you know, intimidating. So there's
a you know, an aesthetic to them as well when
you think about, you know, getting people interested in them.

Speaker 8 (01:54:21):
Alongside trout and walleye pass besides humans, what else are
killing alligator gars?

Speaker 6 (01:54:27):
Alligators to an extent, depending on the size, Once a
gator gar is full size, nothing's really messing with it.
Waterbirds will eat gars as well, other fish, other gars
will eat them. I mean that's not you know, we
find both in inside of bofen too, So typically it's.

Speaker 3 (01:54:43):
Gonna be other predatory fish. But usually like a bass
or a.

Speaker 6 (01:54:47):
Walleye, they're not gonna be able to take them down
once they get to once they get to decent sides.
Nothing's getting through those scales really either.

Speaker 2 (01:54:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:54:53):
You mentioned being of Indian descent, you're born in the US.

Speaker 6 (01:54:55):
Yeah, yeah, I was born in Washington State of Arlington Water, Washington,
kind of farmtown.

Speaker 2 (01:55:01):
Out far fish as a kid.

Speaker 3 (01:55:03):
I did you know? That's what I was going to ask.

Speaker 6 (01:55:05):
He's like, how we all got started fishing. I got
started fishing, you know, mainly on non game fish. So
I lived in Washington and the North Dakota for eight
years as a kid, and then Ohio is where I
grew up. Cut creek chubs out of some random creek
and we'd tie like ball up a piece of bread
on a hook and then catch them that way. But
I remember catching some perch in North Dakota going out fishing.

(01:55:25):
That was one of the first fish I remember catching.
The state capitol had a big Northern pike taxidermy there.
I remember looking down the mouth of that and thinking
those teeth are really cool. And I was into dinosaurs
as well, so always getting outside. My dad would take
me to the Stillguamish River in Washington State, so like
we chuck rocks in there. So there was that connection
to the water. So I enjoy fishing. I'm not good

(01:55:46):
at fishing. My buddy Tyler Winter takes me out so
you can take me. He can get me like, where's
the gar spot, where's the boat in spot?

Speaker 3 (01:55:52):
So I can do that.

Speaker 6 (01:55:52):
He takes my kids out. They've caught red horse and
you know, some other non game fish. Of course, my
kids know gars, they've known that for their whole lot.
But I do think that's an important part of like,
you know, getting kids out into nature, getting them outdoors,
and so that's also what we want to do. I
would be remiss if I didn't say, like, my introduction
to gars was through Ranger Rick magazine, which is through

(01:56:13):
the National Wildlife Federation. Y. Yeah, so I got it
from my kids too, and so I mean that's what
got me started. And you know I thought they were cool.
But you know, now we look at that is that's
an opportunity to introduce kids to the outdoors. I'm also
just getting them outdoors. So again, I like getting my
kids out fishing and then you know, helping them maybe
reel it in. But I'm not a great angler. I
like to you know, count on folks like you all
for that in grad school. I'm also not a hunter,

(01:56:35):
but I am a consumer, so I just wasn't good
at getting up early in the morning.

Speaker 3 (01:56:39):
So they go out hunting, you know, for duck and deer,
but I would eat all the food they brought back.
We'd have game night and do that.

Speaker 6 (01:56:44):
So I'm I'm a participant on some level, but I
do recognize the importance. Married nine years as of just
a week.

Speaker 2 (01:56:52):
And a half ago, same burst.

Speaker 3 (01:56:54):
Yeah, we met at shatt Aquarium. So she she was
a great writer. She's not a fish person, but she
is bought into the gar you know, the the whole
gar thing. At our wedding.

Speaker 6 (01:57:06):
Instead of escort cards, you know, got the name tags
or the table, she made escort guards, which are gar
figurines with the name tags. I did not know about
it at all, So you know, she has all for
She's got the gar earrings. And so again we've got
some you know, fish connections.

Speaker 7 (01:57:20):
To park on your honeymoon, I know, right, you know, if.

Speaker 3 (01:57:23):
It existed, we would do that, Brody. So you know
that's where the DNA is really going. We're trying to
bring back guars, but then it'll just look the same
as what we have now. So it's gonna yea yeah, yeah,
millions of dollars. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, it's a
gar Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:57:41):
All right, well thanks for coming on the show.

Speaker 2 (01:57:43):
Thanks for having me tell people how to find your
work if they want to come find her, if they
want to send you a weird specimens or whatever.

Speaker 6 (01:57:49):
Yeah, if they look up a garlab, garlab dot org.
If you just look up gar lab, you'll find us.
And we're on the social media platforms, the garlab on
Instagram and on all the major platforms there. So if
you look up garlab you'll find us. There's not that
many of them. I think there's there's just one so far.
Come until we expand further, like the big test.

Speaker 2 (01:58:07):
So they can get a hold and send an email, yes,
say one time.

Speaker 6 (01:58:11):
Yeah, tell us the stories if you know, spots from them,
if you get a big gar like, we're interested in that.
It is again a broad spanning effort, and so we
want contributions from the general public place.

Speaker 3 (01:58:23):
Yeah, yeah, let us know. I'm always up for gar stories.

Speaker 4 (01:58:27):
Garlab org. Yep, garlab dot or Is that simple?

Speaker 3 (01:58:31):
Yeah, yep, that's simple. There was a lot a competition
for it.

Speaker 4 (01:58:33):
Step when he did a keyword search, Yeah yeah.

Speaker 8 (01:58:37):
Yeah, can I say one last thing. Yeah, we used
to do touch tanks at the hand tree a lot.
The most popular fish were always garu. They like really
appeal to children. There's something like a very basic level
we just love about garfish. Yeah, and they handle touch
tanks super well.

Speaker 3 (01:58:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:58:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (01:58:53):
A lot of fish can't handle that stress. Gar can,
So they're great for like introducing kids to cool prehistoric
rough fish.

Speaker 6 (01:59:00):
One of my favorite pictures that I've seen of kids
interacting with gars is one that Spencer took from that hatchery.

Speaker 3 (01:59:05):
So I've used that before in outreach activities, but it's
like these kids reaching and touching that long nose gars.
So I think that's uh, they don't.

Speaker 6 (01:59:13):
They don't see it as weird, they don't see as trash.
So I think that's that's hope for the next generation.

Speaker 4 (01:59:18):
You know what we didn't get into is cleaning them
ten snips.

Speaker 3 (01:59:22):
Ten snips is good.

Speaker 2 (01:59:24):
That's one of our books, isn't it, Brody? Peeling them
and you know, pulling their little.

Speaker 3 (01:59:29):
Back straps out save the head for us?

Speaker 2 (01:59:32):
Maybe well from now on, once we get our once
we get a jugger from Albert, all right, it's all
thanks a lot man, all right, Thanks for having

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Steven Rinella

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep. 793: The Mysteries of Gar Fish