Research inspired by anglers’ curiosity was recently featured in Great Lakes Echo…
“Scientists had been tagging walleye in the region with trackers for six years beginning in 2011 and began receiving the pictures not long after, said Richard Kraus, a supervisory research fishery biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, stationed at the Lake Erie Biological Station in Sandusky, Ohio. Tagging required an incision in the belly of the fish.
Commercial anglers, many of them from Ontario, captured the majority of the fish, Vandergoot said. They often returned the fish to officials with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, who provided photos of the captured fish to the Geological Survey.
Kraus, Vandergoot and other researchers wanted to find out whether the fish they’d captured were healing well. If they weren’t, then their behavior would change, Kraus said, and efforts to determine the movements of a normal fish would be fruitless.”
