Electroshocking

Another week has flown by! One of the coolest things I got to experience this week was having the opportunity to do some electroshocking. Although I have seen others do it many times before and helped with it, I had never had the chance to try it out myself until this week. The concept behind electrofishing is relatively simple, it uses direct current electricity that is flowing between an anode and a cathode that are in the water. The type that I used consisted of backpack you wear that contains a battery and transfomer. Attached to the backpack is a wire tail that drags in the water behind the wearer of the backpack and a circular probe that the operator holds in the front. The tail is the cathode and the probe is the anode. The current provided by the the anode and cathode stuns the fish slightly and causes them to move toward the anode, allowing the operator to catch them with a net. Usually the operation consists of one person wearing the backpack, and holding the probe and a net. A second person trails behind with a bucket and net, to collect the fish from the person shocking. Since there is a current running through the water, it is important that you don't stick your hands in the water or you will get shocked! When I was putting on the backpack I was surprised to feel how heavy it is, with most of the weight coming from the battery. Once I had my waders on, my tail dragging behind, the probe in my left hand, and a net in my right hand, I was ready to go. Once I was in the stream, the backpack was turned on and the current started running through the water. As I was moving further upstream, I started to realize how much harder electroshocking was than what I had previously thought. The fish do move towards the probe but are only stunned for a short period of time, so I ended up missing a lot of fish with my net. Additionally, we were shocking in a pretty deep part of the stream so often times I would end up sticking part of my hand in the water when desperately trying to net the fish. The shock was not too bad and was more like a dull buzzing rather than big shock. After shocking a fair portion of the pool, I had collected around 10 fish and probably missed twice as many! This was definitely more difficult than I thought, requiring a lot wrist and shoulder action but it was a really neat experience and with more practice hopefully I will not miss as many fish!

This a picture of the backpack that I used to shock this week! Until next time!