[w
[crickets chirp]
- MIKE MONTAGNE: We'll do one more to make sure.
- NARRATOR: Alongside a bayou is an unusual place
for a surgical procedure...
- Okay, so I'm going to make an incision.
- NARRATOR: ...unless it is for a pretty unusual patient.
That patient is a kind of fish
more than 300 million years old -
a paddlefish.
- Go ahead and give him some anesthetic.
- NARRATOR: The surgeon is Mike Montagne
with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
And this
back to these waters.
- They are one of the most ancient fishes and species
that we have on the planet.
They don't look like any other fish, and they are super cool.
- NARRATOR: Paddlefish are living fossils,
a fish species older than dinosaurs.
[roar]
While they may be the oldest surviving animal species
in North America, they need some help surviving mankind.
Historic harvest for meat and caviar
has pressured populations,
but the greatest threat to paddlefish has been
how humans have altered their habitat.
[water gently flows]
- Paddlefish were originally in the Big Cypress system.
Once Lake O' the Pines was put in in the late 50s
and the dam at Lake O' the Pines really changed
the river's natural flow.
Due to the changes in the water flow,
loss of flood pulses throughout the year to cue spawning events,
loss of suitable spawning habitat,
over the years, populations declined.
So we get to that point where paddlefish
just don't exist here anymore.
- NARRATOR: Downstream, the loss of seasonal flows
impacted not only a threatened fish,
but an entire ecosystem.
- LAURA-ASHLEY OVERDYKE: After the dam, flows of water
almost ceased and we didn't have those natural variations.
We realized that a main problem for Caddo Lake
was the quantity of water.
The Caddo Lake Institute worked together with the
Corps of Engineers and with Parks and Wildlife
and many other partners over the years to try
and recreate what natural flows would look like.
[rushing water]
The paddlefish were the perfect poster child to explain
and test out our theory that more natural flows would help
the forest as well as all these fish and other animals -
help restore the habitat.
- TIM: Got it.
[fish splashing]
- MIKE: We've been reintroducing paddlefish
since about 2014.
We started off with about 50 fish that we radio tagged
and put inside the Big Cypress and Caddo Lake,
and we followed those around for about a year while the
battery in the tags worked.
[radar beeping]
One of the things we really wanted to find out is if the
fish would stay in the system of if they would go over the
dam at the downstream end of Caddo Lake.
- Well after that year, the paddlefish stayed
in the system, so we've moved on over the last few years
continuing to stock paddlefish.
We're stocking fish over the next 10 years
to try and build the numbers of paddlefish in the
Big Cypress-Caddo Lake system.
Now that we're four years down the road and we've seen fish
survive and grow to some larger sizes,
the next big question is just,
"Will they spawn, reproduce and help their own numbers grow?
- NARRATOR: To answer that question, a crew must
recapture some older fish to implant new transmitters.
[boat revs]
- MIKE: Today, we're going to be electrofishing
right below the spillway of Lake O' the Pines dam
because that's where they like to congregate.
- TIM: They are attracted to the flow to go upstream.
They can't go any further, so we can actually find
quite a few of them here.
To capture these paddlefish, we're going to use our
electrofishing equipment.
The fish get stunned by the electricity
and we're able to net them onto the boat.
- JOSH: Come on.
[energetic music]
- It's like a grab bag, you really never know
what you're going to get,
so it's Christmas every time a fish pops up.
- NARRATOR: The fish are not harmed, but not stunned
for long, so crews must stay alert.
- They come up from this murky bottom,
so you could see nothing for a solid minute and then,
all of the sudden, just this wave and rush
of fish species come up.
Largemouth
Bowfin!
- JOSH: Big flathead.
[laughs]
- MARGARET: Whoa!
No, nope.
Paddlefish.
We want paddlefish.
Come on fish.
Things go wrong every once in a while,
so it's great to have that other person to just reach over -
"You're coming back in the boat, buddy!"
- It's slippery on the boat sometimes.
- We have not lost anybody today.
We're going to keep it that way.
[music]
- JOSH: [sigh]
Give me another shot.
I'll get you, I swear!
- Whoa!
[energetic music]
- MARGARET: Yeah!
- JOSH: Whew.
Beautiful fish, beautiful fish.
And I'm glad that we're taking part in the restoration program
to bring them back.
It's really cool.
Whew!
- When the crew that's electrofishing catches a fish,
they'll bring them up to the surgical unit
that we're gonna have set up.
We're going to cut them open, implant a sonic tag
inside of their abdomen, and sew them back up.
And then release them back into the river.
This is MS222.
It's an anesthetic for fish.
It should knock him out in about 30 seconds or so.
These new tags can last anywhere from seven to 10 years.
So we're going to start getting some really good information
on some much older fish.
It's 47 inches.
Probably got stocked in about 2016.
Take the tag,
placing it inside the body cavity of the fish.
Now we're just going to sew him up.
The paddlefish doesn't start reproducing until they're
six to 10 years old.
But we're just now starting to be able to test that.
Let's put him in the recovery bin
and we'll release him back out into the river.
Surgery went well.
About as fast as I can do it.
These are just sutures that will eventually just dissolve.
We'll be able to really track what they're hopefully using
for spawning areas, and we're going to start looking
for eggs, we're going to start looking for little larval fish,
so if they're in there, we're going to know for sure.
So I'll trade with you guys.
You got one? - Yep.
- Let's trade and you can take him farther away
and release him.
- TIM: It's been really satisfying to stock small fish
that haven't been here for probably years,
and find paddlefish that have grown
to over three feet in length.
Because the ultimate goal is to get enough paddlefish
in the system, with the right environmental conditions,
where they're going to be able to spawn
and be a self-sustaining population.
- MIKE: Woo!
I am optimistic about the chances for the paddlefish.
The paddlefish is so charismatic that actually
more and more people want to get involved with it.
- I mean here's this prehistoric creature
that's right in our backyards.
- MARGARET: I love these fish.
These fish are fantastic.
They haven't evolved much from the time of the dinosaurs,
and they still exist, and they're just cool.
They're just absolutely fascinating.
- TIM: It's brought a lot of groups together.
- LAURA-ASHLEY: We're grateful that so many different layers,
federal, state, and local,
have come together to make this possible.
- NARRATOR: Some might ask if one old fish,
off-limits to Texas anglers,
could be worth all this effort.
But restoring this fish only happens by restoring
a more natural ecosystem.
[water gently flowing]
- TIM: The work that we're doing for paddlefish
doesn't just benefit the paddlefish.
It benefits the river ecology and probably more than
30 different species of fish that live in the river.
[uplifting music]
- MIKE: It's still early, but the optimism is there.
They are an excellent indicator of what's going on here,
and if we are able to keep a population in here because
we've changed the flows to a more natural state,
we're taking a huge step how we manage reservoirs and our flows
coming out of those reservoirs for our natural resources.
All good.
Exactly what we want to see.
Fade to black!
[laughs]
- NARRATOR: This project was funded in part
by a grant from the Sport Fish Restoration Program.