Shocking Fish and Connecting with Nature
Ever heard of fishing with dynamite? Well, we fish with something that may sound just as crazy but is much less destructive, electricity! Mixing water and electricity sounds like trouble, but it is actually a widely used method to collect and monitor fish communities in freshwater systems around the world. Our boat-mounted electrofishing set up allows the driver to control the output of electrical current to temporarily immobilize the fish and give the netters a chance to scoop them up and place them in a livewell. Once the transect is completed, each fish is measured, weighted, and released with the exception of non-native species. Our work focuses on how community assemblage and species abundance changes with hydrology at the marsh-mangrove interface of Shark River, or Shark River Estuary (SRE). Shark River Estuary acts as an important dry season refuge for freshwater species driven out of the drying marsh and thus provides foraging opportunities for marine and est