December 2007
Last fall SEMA TU members assisted MassWildlife fisheries biologist, Steve Hurley in placing 80 PIT tags in Red Brook trout. The PIT tags are about the size of a grain of rice  and reflect information back to an electronic recording device in the same fashion that an Easy Pass works at the toll booth.. The tag will remain with the tagged fish until it dies. The size of the trout, along with the location of the trout's capture was recorded as each trout was tagged. Just as cars do for Easy Pass on the Turnpike, each trout will have its own number or signal and the tagging data will be part of the trout's information base.
The immediate problem that we were faced with was that we had no means of picking up signals from any of the 80 tags that had been implanted. While permanent recording stations had been placed on the Quashnet River and the Mashpee River (also salter streams) by Brendan Annett of WBNERR (Waquoit Bay National Estuarine Reserve) and Francis Smith of CCTU, the Red Brook partners did not have the $10,000 needed to set up a similar station.
On the Quashnet and Mashpee Rivers, the stations were set up to record the movements of brook trout to and from saltwater, and on the Quashnet in November (presumably after the spawn) over thirty trout were recorded passing through the station, over a period of a few hours, presumably in a downstream migration to Waquoit Bay.
The solution for us was to buy a wand, a portable tracking device that while not cheap at $4600, will, because it is portable, provide us with information about the movements of tagged trout that have remained in Red Brook over the winter. With luck, we can also use it to record the return migration of tagged brook trout to Red Brook in the spring, and to monitor their whereabouts in the brook during the summer and right up until the spawn in November.
The other advantage of the wand is that it can be used on streams other than Red Brook. For these reasons, the MA/RI Council decided to fund the purchase of the wand from the Council's Red Brook Fund. TU chapters were invited to defray the expense of the wand by donating back into the Red Brook Fund, with the understanding that they would, at some point, be able to use the wand for their own projects. In the mean time, the Red Brook partners are looking for the funding needed for a permanent tracking station for Red Brook. Obviously, the wand serves a different purpose than the permanent device, and information from both is needed if we are to understand the anadromous migrations of our salter brook trout. Although, if someone were willing to sit at the head of tide 24/7 for weeks at a time with the wand.... Any volunteers?
So far, the Cape Cod Chapter of Trout Unlimited, and the Greater Boston Chapter of TU have made large donations toward the purchase of the wand, each donating well over $1000, and we are expecting other chapters to step forward with donations as well.
Over my years of involvement with the MA/RI Council of TU, several folks have questioned me about the role of the Council and how it affects the work of individual TU Chapters. It is not always an easy thing to explain, but this inter-chapter cooperation to purchase a PIT tagging wand is a perfect case in point. We can all be proud of the work that we've done as TU members. And thanks to the member chapters of the MA/RI Council of TU, salter brook trout have gone from being a largely forgotten fishery, to a native trout on the verge of making a significant return to some of its historic habitat.
Late December Update: TU Council Votes to Fund Wand Purchase
| 
