Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 15, 1990 TAG: 9007150027
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: D7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: ATLANTA LENGTH: Medium
The trademark of this fugitive from the age of dinosaurs is its snout, which looks like a narrow paddle and often is more than a foot long. The fish get 8 feet long and can weigh 160 pounds, making it one of America's larger freshwater species.
Already hassled because dams destroyed much of their spawning ground on the Mississippi-Missouri river system, the big, docile fish are being slaughtered because their eggs look like Russian caviar.
As overfishing in the Soviet Union and war in Afghanistan and Iran cut the world supply of Asian sturgeon caviar, the price soared. It didn't take American poachers long to realize it.
Gill netters went into operation. A female with 8 to 15 pounds of eggs suddenly was worth the risk of getting caught when those eggs could fetch $500 per pound on the world market.
"The local guy is probably getting $25 to $30 per pound" for paddlefish eggs. "So an 80-pound female with 12 to 15 pounds of eggs makes it worthwhile," said Kent Keenlyne, Missouri River coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
"The illegal harvest is probably hurting us worse than anything. Paddlefish are very vulnerable, easy to catch," Keenlyne said.
Much of the illegal harvest probably is sold to the Orient, he said.
Poachers mark concentrations of paddlefish with depth sounders during the day then, at night, "go out with a monster gill net and either surround them or catch them as they move out to feed," Keenlyne said.
"A gillnetter in the right place could take a lake's entire breeding size population of paddlefish in a couple or three days."
One poacher admitted to taking 5,000 pounds of eggs from Missouri's Table Rock Lake.
That, the FWS said, meant 1,000 to 1,200 fish probably were killed by that one poacher.
The paddlefish is a primitive fish with a cartilage skeleton and no real bones. It is a distant cousin of the shark and catfish and has only one close relative, a paddlefish that lives in China.
They live about 30 years, making their living swimming slowly on the surface filtering tiny one-celled organisms from the water.
They reproduce slowly, not reaching sexual maturity until age 10 or 12. A female may spawn only 10 times in her lifetime.
With many of the free-flowing streams the paddlefish needs to spawn now covered by reservoirs, hatcheries are helping out. States are conducting radio-telemetry studies on the fish's movement.
The paddlefish has been wiped out in Canada, New York, Maryland, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. It is found in 22 states, but populations are declining in Alabama, Illinois, Kansas, Ohio, South Dakota, Texas and West Virginia, and possibly others.
The FWS received a petition July 6, 1989, to list the paddlefish as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. It found there was reason to do so but missed the July 6, 1990, deadline for a complete report on the potential listing.
Keenlyne said that was due in part to a shortage of personnel and the problem of gathering data from 22 states that use different monitoring and management techniques.
Listing would give conservation rangers a new threat to use against poachers. That's important, Keenlyne said, because a $1,000 fine represents only "the loss of one fish" to a poacher.
"If you make your bust, and don't fine them enough to put them out of business," he said, "they'll be back next week."
by CNB