Hi everyone! It’s Hannah and last
week we had another day at TNACI! Today, the condition factor of the sturgeon
was measured. The condition factor includes the length and weight of each fish.
We took 30 sturgeon out of each tank (grouped by size) and placed them in
buckets of water. Next, we took the fish and measured their length in
millimeters. We also massed each fish in grams and took a sample of their fin
for later genetic experimentation.
We recorded all of the data in a chart and the
fin clip of each fish was matched up with the length and weight. We repeated
this process for each of the three tanks and became very efficient (or e-fish-ent) at measuring the fish. Kathlina explained that the scutes of the 2014
fish will also be cut in a particular way to identify them as 2014 fish. This
is a less expensive method of tagging the fish. A scute is an armor plate similar
to a scale.
This was a
nice goodbye to the sturgeon. All of the sturgeon were released on the French
Broad river near Knoxville on October 23rd. It has been such a great
experience watching these fish grow and helping take care of them! Stay tuned
for our next visit when we help spawn trout!
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