A Deep Dive into Fish Collections
Part 1 – Fish School
A fish school is a collection of like species of fish swimming close together in an organized way. Similarly, the Oklahoma Conservation Commission has an annual Fish School in which we come together as scientists to review standard operating procedures and make sure our data collection is consistent and repeatable. During Fish School, we receive training on fish taxonomy, identification and sampling. Water Quality specialists who work within OCC’s Rotating Basin Program and Blue Thumb staff members Rebecca, Candice and Kim attend, as do OCC data administrators and quality assurance staff, and sometimes seasonal interns.
Each summer both Rotating Basin and Blue Thumb Programs take to the streams for fish collections. A stream’s fish community says a great deal about the condition of the stream, and because the OCC has been collecting fish data for over 30 years, there is a great deal of historical data. Fish school sets the bar that allows OCC to build a solid foundation of baseline data.
The large amount of high quality data OCC has collected over time has made it possible to designate “high quality” streams within all of Oklahoma’s 12 Level III ecoregions. There are two primary ways to consider the meaning of a stream’s fish community: 1) how does the stream compare to high quality streams within the same ecoregion and 2) how does the stream compare to itself in years past?
Every person who leads a fish collection has to pass a rigorous test on fish identification at the end of the Fish School week. Fish identification is important, but maybe even more important is learning to photodocument large fish and knowing when to keep fish as opposed to identifying and releasing. Blue Thumb’s two primary field educators, Kim Shaw and Candice Miller, both successfully passed their fish tests, as they have in previous years.
In July, watch for Part II of “A Deep Dive into Fish Collections.”
Thirty Years of Blue Thumb
The Blue Thumb staff decided in 2022 that the best way to celebrate 30 years of Blue Thumb was to have a series of celebrations all across the state. These events have been well attended and fun, and the big celebration at the Oklahoma Aquarium in Jenks on May 20 was a big success.
What makes a successful event? In this case it was a good turnout, lots of time to visit, hearing some stories about creek experiences, having retired Blue Thumb friends and staff members show up, winning a cool door prize, and then getting to wander through the amazing aquarium. Having a nice meal thrown in was a bonus too.
If you didn’t make it, perhaps you can look at the Facebook post. Also keep in mind there are some more events coming up that will pull together staff and volunteers for fun outdoors. Volunteers are the heart of the Blue Thumb Program.
Cheryl Cheadle
Volunteer Coordinator
How does a fish known from large streams and rivers in the Mississippi River basin find its way to extreme SE Oklahoma? It would seem that it doesn’t do much good to tell a fish where it can or can’t go. The Golden Silverside isn’t necessarily a new-to-science species, rather it was split from another species, the Brook Silverside, by researchers from Auburn University in 2015 when they analyzed genetic diversity in the larger Brook Silverside population and determined that there was enough genetic differentiation between the two to warrant the creation of a new species. Thanks to genetic analyses we are coming to realize that the world as we know it is more complex than we realized.
So how did we find it? As part of the OCC’s standard operating procedures each of our employees responsible for completing fish and habitat collections must complete an intensive training each spring consisting of fish identification and habitat assessment affectionately know as Fish School. During Fish School we sample sites that offer a variety of fish species to prepare for the summer’s collections. During Fish School 2022, our field crews sampled a small costal plains stream on the Red Slough Wildlife Management Area in SE Oklahoma. During the training, several crew members remarked on the odd looking Silverside being collected. Photographs were taken and voucher specimens were preserved and kept for reference. Word travels fast among fish nerds and those samples and yours truly wound up in a small laboratory at Oklahoma University where, with the help of Dr. Bill Mathews and Dr. Eddie Marsh-Mathews, the first documented occurrence in Oklahoma of the newly described Golden Silverside was confirmed.
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