National Fisheries Laboratory Category 2 parasite guide

This report provides a guide into Category 2 parasites affecting freshwater fish and salmonids. First a brief summary is given of distinctions between parasites of Category 1 and 2. The Guide then provides a list of category 2 parasites, highlighting damage they can cause, species of fish affected, if it can be treated, how widespread the parasite is and how it is transferred.

Modification of the biological intercept model to account for ontogenetic effects in laboratory-reared delta smelt (Hypomesus transpacificus)*

We investigated age, growth, and ontogenetic effects on the proportionality of otolith size to fish size in laboratory-reared delta smelt (Hypomesus transpacificus) from the San Francisco Bay estuary. Delta smelt larvae were reared from hatching in laboratory mesocosms for 100 days. Otolith increments from known-age fish were enumerated to validate that growth increments were deposited daily and to validate the age of fish at first ring formation. Delta smelt were found to lay down daily ring increments; however, the first increment did not form until six days after hatching. The relationship between otolith size and fish size was not biased by age or growth-rate effects but did exhibit an interruption in linear growth owing to an ontogenetic shift at the postflexon stage. To back-calculate the size-at-age of individual fish, we modified the biological intercept (BI) model to account for ontogenetic changes in the otolith-size−fish-size relationship and compared the results to the time-varying growth model, as well as the modified Fry model. We found the modified BI model estimated more accurately the size-at-age from hatching to 100 days after hatching. Before back-calculating size-at-age with existing models, we recommend a critical evaluation of the effects that age, growth, and ontogeny can have on the otolith-size−fish-size relations

Foreword and Acknowledgments: Woods Hole Laboratory Centennial

The year 1985 was one of celebration for the Woods Hole Laboratory of the National Marine Fisheries Service's Northeast Fisheries Center. The reason was the one hundredth anniversary of the completion and occupation of the first facility in the world dedicated to marine fisheries research. Spencer Fullerton Baird, Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, and newly appointed first Commissioner of the nascent U.S. Commission of Fish and Fisheries visited Woods Hole in the summer of 1871 to establish a base from which to begin the investigations mandated by Congress when they established the "Fish Commission." During the following three summers (1872-74), operations were conducted from several other localities along the New England coast. During the course of those four years Baird determined that Woods Hole offered the most suitable natural and physical amenities for the investigations being conducted by the Fish Commission at that time, and for those envisioned for the future. The base for Commission operations was returned to Woods Hole in the summer of 1875 and has remained there ever since, through times fair and foul and several agency changes.

Centennial Lecture I: History and Contributions of the Woods Hole Fisheries Laboratory

The genesis and the early history of the Woods Hole Laboratory (WHL), to a lesser extent the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), and to some degree the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), were elegantly covered by Paul S. Galtsoff (1962) in his BCF Circular "The Story of the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachusetts." It covers the period from the beginning in 1871 to 1958. Galtsoffs more than 35-year career in the fishery service was spent almost entirely in Woods Hole. I will only briefly touch on that portion of the Laboratory's history covered by Galtsoff. Woods Hole, as a center of marine science, was conceived and implemented largely by one man, Spencer Fullerton Baird, at that time Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian and who was also instrumental in the establishment of the National Museum and Permanent Secretary of the newly established American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was appointed by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1871 as the first U.S. Commissioner of Fisheries. Fisheries research began here as early as 1871, but a permanent station did not exist until 1885.