[boat accelerates]
[music]
- NARRATOR: Matthew Acre is searching for a blue ghost.
It's here on the Colorado River where this team spends days,
weeks, months of the year looking for a rare
and threatened fish called the Blue Sucker.
[water splashing]
- Currently, the Blue Sucker, its status is somewhat unknown
in the lower Colorado River,
so we are not 100% sure how the Blue Sucker is doing.
[action music]
- DAKUS GEESLIN: Whew!
Come on Blue.
- NARRATOR: So they are here electrofishing...
- DAKUS: Carp.
- NARRATOR: ...to try and find them.
- So we are about ten miles east of Austin on the
Colorado River, we are looking for that faster water,
and some type of structure, they are really adept
at swimming in fast water, they are great swimmers.
What was that?
- A Smallmouth Buffalo!
- NARRATOR: Blue Suckers are very rare today.
They used to be found throughout North America,
but dams and poor river quality have led
to their dramatic decline.
- MATTHEW: This is the coolest fish, most people think
it is a carp, but it is in fact a catostomid, a sucker.
It's unique in that it has this really elongated body
and it hangs out in these fast flowing waters, shoots,
and riffles, that most fish tend to avoid because they just
don't have the energy budget to stay within that riffle.
[music]
- DAKUS: Bass!
- NARRATOR: While the Blue Sucker is elusive, the team
has another fish on their radar.
Jess Pease his here studying the Guadalupe Bass...
- DAKUS: Whoa, is that a bass!
- NARRATOR: ...the state fish of Texas.
- JESS: Along with tracking the movements of the Blue Sucker,
we are also tracking Guadalupe Bass movements.
- DAKUS: Wow, that's a good one, Jess!
- JESS: Previous studies have shown in the upper tributaries
which are smaller systems that they are pretty sedentary
and don't move that much.
[boat motor revs]
And down here with this bigger river system we are seeing
larger movements by these Guadalupe Bass to very
specific habitats.
- DAKUS: Oh wow!
Wow Jess, that's what we are talking about!
[laughs]
Yeah!!
- JESS: Little Guad, two seventy nine.
- NARRATOR: While Guadalupe Bass are here, these big
Largemouth Bass are all the buzz!
- JESS: His flow number is 2304.
- DAKUS: This is just another indicator that the
Colorado River is gaining quick notoriety as a trophy
Largemouth Bass and a Guadalupe Bass fishery.
[action music]
- DAKUS: It is highly productive area,
there's lots of food for these guys to eat.
Lots of cover.
So we've seen a real increase in the utilization by anglers
coming out here and fishing for specifically targeting
Guadalupe Bass and our bigger Largemouth Bass.
- NARRATOR: As for the Blue Sucker search,
no luck so far today.
But Matthew knows this is where they like to hang out.
- What we have noticed the past couple of years doing this work
is that the stretch between Austin and La Grange
tends to have the most Blue Sucker.
It is very diverse, it has lots of twists and turns,
and it is a little bit narrower.
Biologists agree most fish prefer the natural flow
of a river.
[rushing water]
- NARRATOR: And fish do best when dam releases mimic the
seasonal high and low flows that they are used to.
- DAKUS: In any river ecosystem what you are hoping for is a
natural flow regime, and what that means, is just a natural,
natural hydrology.
Those are essential to not only the Blue Sucker
and the Guadalupe Bass, but to a lot of critters.
[boat engine revs, water splashes]
[splashing]
There is your Buffalo.
[splashing]
Shad hole!
- JESS: Geez!
- DAKUS: Come on Blue!
- MATTHEW: We typically find Blue Sucker in large
woody debris, lots of cobble, and boulders,
so it's generally somewhat dangerous to be shocking
these fish out of when we are doing these mark
recapture studies.
But um, for the love of the fish!
[action music]
- JESS: Hey, hey, hey, Dakus!
- DAKUS: I missed him!
[action music]
Right there Matt, right there!
Agh!!
[action music]
- JESS: There we go!
- MATTHEW: Nicely done everyone!!
[music calms]
- DAKUS: Nice!
[laughter]
Wow, finally!
He was in that fast water just where we expected him to be!
It just took us a couple of passes through there.
You just have to be on your game.
That is awesome dude!
- MATTHEW: So this is an adult male Blue Sucker.
He's in great shape, very healthy looking.
He's about six hundred and ninety six millimeters,
which is twenty seven and a half inches.
So this is a PIT tag, a passive integrated transponder.
It allows us to uniquely identify individual
Blue Suckers.
We'll PIT tag it, right here just under the dorsal fin.
We take the scales and the scales we use to age the fish.
Put them in a certain class!
So we know how many fish were spawned in a certain season.
Oh, it's so exciting to catch a Blue Sucker, we put four hours
of work into catching a single Blue Sucker, so fantastic!
Now we are going to release him.
[splashing]
[calm music]
- NARRATOR: Using an antenna and a receiver, these two are
out again, with radio telemetry they monitor some of the
170 Blue Suckers that are now tagged.
- JESS: One hundred and fourteen at sixty two.
- MATTHEW: There he is!
The telemetry work that we do, we are able to tell where that
fish at that particular moment, and we can use that data
in conjunction with flow data.
To determine when Blue Sucker are most likely to move,
and this gives us a better idea of what Blue Sucker prefer.
- NARRATOR: This study and the scientific data will hopefully
help ensure that the Colorado's natural flow continues.
- DAKUS: So what we are really hoping for out of this study
is to develop the science for the Blue Sucker,
so we as resource managers can better inform some of the
water policy decisions, and the management of our
Highland Lakes there above Austin.
And how we can manage the river and the lakes as one system.
- NARRATOR: As for Matthew, he's not going to stop the
science anytime soon!
- Too often I think that natural resources
and ecosystems as a whole kind of get overlooked.
And what we need to do to gain that seat at the table to help
influence those people actually making the policy,
we need science, we have to have the data.
- DAKUS: Let's get us a Blue Sucker out of here!
- MATTHEW: So that's why I do this every day!
[dramatic music]
- NARRATOR: This project was funded in part by a grant
from the Sport Fish Restoration Program.