May 16, 2008 Lingcod with Anne Beaudreau · 20 May 2008, 05:31 by Julie Loyd
Anne is sampling Lingcod stomachs at the marine reserve and Brown Island, both near Friday Harbor Labs.
She, her squid specialist friend Mary, and I slathered up with sunscreen and went out in a little whaler. We had three fishing rods with big hooks and squiggly black rubber lures. The idea was to let the line down until it touched bottom, then “jig” it up and down until a cod leapt for it. I spent the day wrestling with my rod, but Mary kept pulling fish up; some Puget Sound Rock Cod, a greenling, and Lingcod. She caught the largest one of the season, over three feet, because she’d hooked a one-footer which then was almost immediately caught by the bigger one.
Anne had two coolers, one with anesthesia-filled water and another for recovery. She put the fresh-caught fish into anesthesia. When they passed out, she weighed and measured them. She had a nifty cod cradle made out of foam core, where she put them on their back. Lingcod lavage is done by holding the sphincter between their throat and their stomach open with a forceps, then feeding a large plastic tube in through which seawater is pumped. Most of the fish had empty stomachs. One had a 5” partially digested fish, the other had the freshly caught Lingcod mentioned above. Afterwards, Anne clipped a bit of fin off for DNA analysis, took some blood from the caudal vein, and tagged them with a wire tag in the fleshy part of the back. After some time in the recovery cooler, the fish were returned to the same spot where they’d been caught.
Data will be used to decide whether marine sanctuaries work, as well as to determine what Lingcod eat at various times of year and at various sizes. There are other components of the study too.
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