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Phone: 573-234-2132 |
Activities
Map courtesy of MICRA.
MICRA Paddlefish Stock Assessment Database
Mississippi Interstate Cooperative Resource Association (MICRA) is an organization of 28 state natural resource departments organized in 1991 as a partnership to improve interjurisdictional river resource management in the Mississippi River Basin. MICRA established a Paddlefish/Sturgeon Committee in the fall of 1992 to address the needs of paddlefish and sturgeon species inhabiting the Mississippi River Basin, and to provide guidance for their future management.
One of the goals of this committee was to establish a large-scale stock assessment program for paddlefish. This study began in March 1995. Biologists collect and tag adult paddlefish in the field and tag any hatchery released fish with a special binary, coded wire tag carrying a special numbering system. The microscopic tags are placed in the fish's rostrum, the long paddle-like structure used to locate zooplankton prey. This project was designed so that recaptures could be used to identify different paddlefish stocks and to document movements, growth, mortality, harvest, and overall condition of the paddlefish.
Columbia FRO and Carterville FRO staffs assist MICRA by managing the large dataset and reading the recaptured tags with a microscope. Our offices, along with the LaCrosse FRO, also run nets to collect and tag paddlefish. Through 2002, 18,000 wild adult paddlefish and 1.5 million hatchery fish have been tagged by 22 participating state fish and game agencies and the FWS. Tag returns are increasing each year, and preliminary information indicates that these amazing fish are highly migratory and may be more effectively managed by agency teams than by individual state agencies. We are hopeful that as more adult paddlefish are tagged and as hatchery stocked paddlefish mature and begin entering the sport and commercial harvest, that new and progressive management schemes can be developed for these important big river fish.
For more information on paddlefish life history, see the Region 3 paddlefish brochure.
1997 MICRA Paddlefish Report
1998 MICRA Paddlefish Report
