Seine Fishing With TNACI Scientists
After our arrival at GPS in early August, we immediately got on the bus to go seine fishing. Seine fishing is a type of fishing using a giant net with floats on the top, and lead weights to sink the bottom half of the seine to the bottom of the creek. After the seine net is in the water a person on each side of the net drags the net through the water to capture fish inside of the net. The second way to use the seine is to hold it in place and have people kick up the rocks and the fish around the rocks are forced into the net.
The scientists use the seine fishing method to inventory the fish and water life populations to see how healthy the water source is. They also take a few animals back to TNACI to be hosts for endangered mussels and to use as brood stock.
When we got back to GPS we ate our lunch and shared our findings about the day. We learned that this year was the first year in 6 years that had found Hog Suckers and a couple years ago the River Fellows group found Gar, which is a large fish with a long snout. We found that each year the river fellows group went seine fishing, different species of fish we found. This means that the creek we went to has diverse species of fish.
