NARRATOR: On a cold morning in Northeast Texas,
these biologists are assembling a radio tower on land
to help restore a rare fish to the water.
(water flowing)
MIKE MONTAGNE: Today we're putting up a radio telemetry
tower at one of our cooperating landowners' ranch.
NARRATOR: Helping the fish has required no small amount
of effort from a number of players.
BOB SANDERS: We have two point six miles of river frontage.
We are in the cattle business, and we're changing our
management scheme to help the fish here in the bayou.
(clanking)
MIKE: This is one of the three towers that we're putting up.
Each tower has antennas pointed both upstream and downstream,
so we're able to tell which direction the fish
are coming from.
(power tool whirs)
That way, high enough, or you can roll it....
(wrench clicking)
NARRATOR: So why would ranchers, non-profits,
and government agencies go to all this trouble for a fish?
BOB: I've never seen a paddlefish.
NARRATOR: Especially a fish most folks have never seen?
Well, the paddlefish is one of a kind.
WAYNE HEATON: Paddlefish are very unique.
They're kind of the hodgepodge of the fish world.
They have no scales like a catfish, they have a skeleton
made completely out of cartilage like a shark,
but yet they're a filter feeder like a whale.
(adding machine)
(bell dings)
NARRATOR: They may look like mythical creatures.
But Wayne Heaton sees paddlefish every day,
at the Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center,
just down the road in Athens.
WAYNE: I love these fish- they're my favorite fish here,
and most people when they walk up to this exhibit
have no idea what these fish are.
(music)
When they open their mouth and it looks like a giant net,
that's exactly really what it is, is those gill-rakers form a
net to catch all the plankton, which are basically
small bugs in the water.
Now they're still on the threatened species list here in
Texas, but in rivers like the Mississippi River, they still
have seasons for them and actually still fish for them.
They can actually get over seven feet long and 200 pounds.
Paddlefish are the oldest living species of fish
that we have in North America.
They're over 300 million years old.
They can date these guys back to the time of the dinosaurs.
And when we dammed up all of our rivers, unfortunately
these guys lost a lot of their spawning habitat.
(sledgehammer pounding)
NARRATOR: So, in part to keep paddlefish from going the
way of the dinosaur, groups are working together to restore
the fish to Caddo Lake and Big Cypress Bayou.
TIM BISTER: Paddlefish were in this system at one time,
and they're not here any more because of the
river fragmentation.
NARRATOR: Paddlefish evolved with seasonal flooding,
so restoring more natural flows to the bayou was a first step.
KEVIN MAYES: In the springtime, during their spawning season,
they need a high-flow pulse to find their spawning grounds
and to lay eggs in the fast current in the river.
(rushing water)
ANDY WARNER: The average Corps of Engineers dam is more than a
half century old and the guiding plans for operating those dams
have not been updated since they were originally built.
(rushing water)
TIM: Really for about 10 years many groups have been working
on mimicking these natural flows.
RICK LOWERRE: Lake O' the Pines has done great as a flood
control structure, it's kept Jefferson from flooding,
provided lots of water supply for many of the cities.
So now we're just asking to add a third feature,
which is releases for fish and wildlife.
NARRATOR: To gauge how the fish respond to these releases,
a transmitter is implanted in each fish at the hatchery.
PETE DIAZ: The tag is in, and we will sew up the fish.
TIM: Fish and Wildlife service, working with other groups like
Caddo Lake Institute, The Nature Conservancy, Corps of Engineers,
USGS, Parks and Wildlife, they've actually implanted
radio transmitters in 47 paddlefish and they're going
to release them and track them for about six months.
PETE: Mid-channel?
MIKE: Right in the middle of the river.
NARRATOR: So, the flow restoration, tower installation,
and surgical procedures have all been leading up to this
particular moment, as the transmitter-implanted paddlefish
arrive at Caddo Lake State Park.
TIM: I think if we just came and put paddlefish back in the river
with nothing else happening, chances of their success
would be low.
(pump starts)
TIM: There are a lot of pieces to this project,
and a lot of different groups working on it.
RICK: Today we're going to release about 50 of them.
ROBERT SPEIGHT: You do not forget them when you see one.
WOMAN: Amazing!
TIM: All the incisions look good.
PETE: Everything's going great-the fish look really good.
TIM: They're going to find things to eat
and they're going to grow.
And hopefully thrive.
(splashing)
NARRATOR: One by one, paddlefish are reintroduced to the bayou,
at the state park and several miles upstream in Jefferson.
No one can know if the fish will be lost downstream,
if they will thrive or even survive, but hopes are high.
WOMAN: Oh, that is so exciting!
ROBERT: It's really gratifying to see this day come.
We've all been working at it for many years, and to see this
release happen today, it's just a good day for the fish
and a good day for East Texas and for Caddo.
(applause)
(motor starting)
(music)
MIKE: It's been about four months now.
Since the release we've contacted 46 of the 47 fish.
The towers that we put up, they've been doing the
majority of the work for us.
But the idea when we go out in the boats is we're trying
to find where those fish are between towers.
TIM: This is where we've seen fish before.
MIKE: You never know!
NARRATOR: With months to spread out over 60 miles of waterway,
the fish can be tough to locate.
MIKE: Yeah, we've gone several miles.
We haven't heard anything yet.
That's kind of how tracking goes.
NARRATOR: Hours of searching may not yield a single signal.
MIKE: But you know, not finding fish there
is actually data also.
For whatever reason that is, none of the fish are choosing
that habitat at the moment.
NARRATOR: Where paddlefish are being found is a bit
of a surprise.
(beeping)
Many have traveled as far as possible
in the opposite direction.
TIM: The one interesting thing that we've seen is a lot of
fish, attracted by the flow coming out of Lake O' the Pines,
have been identified as being present there at the spillway.
MIKE: The unanticipated result was that half the fish
went up to Lake O' the Pines.
We see little glimpses of things we think might be important
but in another two months we might say well this is
why that happened and now they're doing something else.
So we've got a little snapshot of what the paddlefish needs,
and we really need the bigger picture of what the
paddlefish needs.
We're about halfway done.
NARRATOR: But as the tracking and data collection continue,
it is already clear this cooperative effort will benefit
more than just one fish.
ROBERT: I think the paddlefish is a means to an end.
I mean we like to see the paddlefish in here obviously,
but that in turn helps a lot of other species, a lot of other
things in the environment, so it's a win-win.
NARRATOR: It is also a win-win if one threatened fish can teach
us how to better manage such a complex and beautiful ecosystem.
TIM: Caddo Lake has the most diverse freshwater
fish species of any system in the state of Texas.
(music)
All the other species that rely on natural river flows
and good river habitat are going to benefit from this project.
MIKE: It's just one part of a much much bigger picture.
(music)
NARRATOR: To learn more about paddlefish research
or to track them online, visit caddolakeinstitute.us.