[ music and rushing water ]
[ music ]
Dana Bethea: Today when we were working
with those young of the year
and you flip them over and you can see their veins.
They're so small and see-through
and they'll have an umbilical scar in between their pectoral fins on their underside
and that's how you can tell they've basically just been born.
It's really exciting to know that there are
large females that out there that are still pupping
and contributing to the population.
[ music ]
The smalltooth sawfish was listed as endangered
in the U.S. in 2003.
The primary threats for listing the species were its bycatch--
it was captured in commercial and recreational fisheries
and also secondarily it was the habitat loss
that has occurred throughout the species range,
which was historically from North Carolina down the coast to Texas
and currently now is restricted to southwest Florida.
As the species coordinator for smalltooth sawfish,
my role is to help manage the species and determine
what is necessary to conserve and recover the species.
And the initial research that's ongoing for smalltooth sawfish
has been focused on juvenile smalltooth sawfish.
Dana Bethea: We've learned sawfish like shallow, muddy flats
that are mangrove lined.
So mostly we go out into the backcountry areas,
which is areas in the backwaters, mudflats,
mangrove lined habitat, relatively untouched.
We set a net out across that mudflat
and the sawfish swim up right into the net.
And then we carefully remove the animal from the net,
usually it's just entangled around its saw.
We bring the animal to the boat and
we have several measurements that we take
including saw length,
pre-caudal, fork, and stretch total on the animal.
We count the teeth on each side,
the left and the right side of the animal
to get a total tooth count.
If it's a male, we measure the claspers inside and out.
We tag them externally with dart tags.
We also have an internal pit tag.
I tell people it's like what you tag your cat or your dog with.
It just gives the animal a little bar code.
And then we take a small fin clip for genetic sampling.
We photograph the top of the animal
and the bottom of the animal for identification purposes.
And then we release the animal back into the wild
and it swims away.
[ music ]
Today was a really great day on the water.
It's the beginning of March.
We caught several just-born young of the year sawfish
in the same general location that we caught several age one animals.
And the age ones that we caught today
were actual recaptures from last year.
Hey guys, it's a re-tag."
"Okay, awesome!"
"The tag number is T-0-2-7-2"
"T-0-2-7-2"
Dana Bethea: We've determined that these small juveniles
and young of the year hang out in these certain sites.
And we've also determined that the same mom will have pups
at the same site every year.
And we've also used the genetic analysis to determine
that animals found on the same small mudflat
are either full siblings or half siblings.
So that makes these very specific sites
very important for the species.
Shelley Norton: In 2009, NOAA Fisheries designated critical habitat
for the smalltooth sawfish.
Critical habitat is what habitat that is needed
to conserve and recover the species.
And in order to designate critical habitat
we used all the available information that we had on the species
to identify features that are important to the juvenile.
And those features are red mangroves;
they're shallow water that's less than three feet in depth;
and it's also a euryhaline, a fluctuating salinity habitat.
I feel like it's very important that we continue this research.
We just finished up our first five years
under our first Endangered Species Permit.
We were granted a second Endangered Species Permit
so we've got another five years.
We've learned so much in the first five years:
site fidelity, the sibling stuff.
We still need to focus on how much habitat
these animals need as they grow
in order to kind of balance out development
and the habitat needs for an endangered species.
Shelley Norton: And one of the areas
that we are just now starting to look at
is on the adult smalltooth sawfish life stage.
We're just now starting to find where those adults are
and just now starting to discover information on habitat use
and prey and where they're breeding.
Those are all types of questions that we still need to answer.