Fish Chat and Slam December 2022

Fifty-seven fish biologists from 12 organizations participated in a three-day Fish Chat and Slam event in South Florida on December 6-8, 2022. The one-day Fish Chat, held at the UF/IFAS Miami-Dade facility auditorium in Homestead, provides an opportunity for folks from different agencies and institutions to discuss ongoing and future projects. Topics presented included:

• Early detection rapid response update for nonnative marine fish
• Snakehead diet summary compared to largemouth and peacock bass
• African clawed frog control
• Revisiting risk assessment procedures
• Increases in spotfin spiny eel populations in Everglades National Park
• Updates to the state permitting process
• Impacts of Asian swamp eels on trophic dynamics in Everglades National Park (Pintar et al. 2023)
• Roles for fishery professionals in predicting how Everglades restoration will impact fish communities
• Preliminary results for fishing license holder’s opinions of nonnative fish.

The two-day Fish Slam event took place in Broward and Miami-Dade counties where 34 freshwater sites were sampled for nonnative fishes. Sampling gear included electrofishing boats, backpack electrofishers, minnow traps, cast nets, seines, dipnets, and hook and line. Twenty species of nonnative fishes were collected or observed. This is the fourteenth Fish Slam event since the program began in 2013.

Notable collections included spotfin spiny eels, Macrognathus siamensis, collected from a waterbody 42.6 km (26.5 mi) north of known established populations. To follow up on our previous eradication of the bay snook, Petenia splendida, from Pinecrest Gardens in south Miami (Schofield et al. 2019), we surveyed the location and confirmed there were no specimens in the gardens five years post-eradication. Native species such as mountain mullet, river goby, and bigmouth sleeper have recolonized the main pond of the garden.

Fish Slam events link research institutions such as museums and universities with federal, state, and local government agencies that possess expertise and field equipment to collect nonnative fishes, providing unique access to specimens for these institutions. Representatives from the Florida Museum and the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology participated in this Fish Slam. Nonnative fishes were tissue-sampled for DNA collections, and then preserved for future research. Data from these collections are available in publicly accessible databases, such as Florida Museum Specify Web Portal.

Native species, along with two nonnative species (grass carp, Ctenopharyngodon idella and butterfly peacock bass, Cichla ocellaris), that were caught during Fish Slam were returned to the wild alive per the requirements of our scientific collectors’ permit. All field observations of nonnative species were entered into the USGS Nonindigenous Aquatic Species database (http://nas.er.usgs.gov)

Participants of the November 2022 Fish Slam

The participants of the November 2022 Fish Chat and Slam were: Lad Akins (Frost Museum), Elizabeth Anderson (FIU), Josh Bauer (USACE), Arthur Bernhardt (FWC), Dion Bert (Miccosukee), Jesse Blanchard (FIU), Ken Blick (USFWS), Chelsea Bohaty (USACE), Michael Borbolla (FIU), Tony Brady (USFWS), Mary Brown (USGS), Jorge Buening (USFWS), Wes Daniel (USGS), Andre Daniels (USGS), Emily Dean (CNSS), Cedric Doolittle (USFWS), Kevin Donmeyer (NPS), Jake Edwards (USACE), Katie Everett (UF), Skippy Fair (USACE), Zach Fratto (NPS), Jonathan Freedman (CNSS), John Galvez (USFWS), Aaron Gavin (Frost Museum), Kelly Gestring (FWC), Nick Gonzalez (Miccosukee), Zoey Hendrickson (UF), Jeff Hill (UF), Brian Hutchinson (FWC), Natalia Hidalgo (FIU), Steven Jackson (USFWS), Howard Jelks (USGS), Audrey Jordon (UF), Christian Julianni (Frost Museum), Jeff Kline (NPS), Jon Lane (USACE), Ian Markovich (USACE), Jordan Massie (FIU), Ashley McDonald (UF), Chad McKendrick (Frost Museum), Sam McPherson (FWC), Barron Moody (FWC), Cayla Morningstar (USGS), Matt Neilson (USGS), Dan Nelson (FWC), Alex Nunez (Frost Museum), Eddie Perri (USFWS), Jonathan Pinkas (Miccosukee), Kristen Reaver (USGS), Rob Robins (FM), Ned Rose (VIMS), Jeff Shelton (FWC), Randy Singer (UMMZ), Randy Singer Senior, Patricia Torres-Pineda (UMMZ), Nick Trippel (FWC), and Quenton Tuckett (UF)

Institutional acronyms:  CNSS – Cherokee Nation System Solutions; FIU – Florida International University; FM – Florida Museum; FWC – Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission; Miccosukee - Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida, Fish and Wildlife Department; NPS – National Park Service; UF – University of Florida; UMMZ – University of Michigan Museum of Zoology; USACE – U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; USFWS – U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; USGS – U.S. Geological Survey; VIMS - Virginia Institute of Marine Science

We are grateful to our professional colleagues who volunteered their time and efforts to make Fish Slam successful. Special thanks to Barron Moody (FWC) for assistance with permits and the UF/IFAS Miami-Dade facility for hosting Fish Chat.

Click the photo below to view the Fish Slam slideshow.

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