From On The East End (2015) by Clarence Hickey
I am a retired marine biologist. Early during my career, after graduate school
in the early 1970s, I worked at a coastal laboratory on Montauk, NY. I was a busy field biologist studying and
sampling the fishes and fisheries of Long Island and Long Island Sound, Block
Island Sound and southern New England, and the Atlantic Ocean. In 2015, I published a book recalling my work
there with the fisheries and the fisherman.
On the East End (Long Island Nature Organization and Harbor
Electronic Publishing, NY; HEPDigital.com) contains a few of my mea culpas,
including my struggles with catching so many fishes during my field research. I have excerpted a few stories from the book
here.
I recall one
particular day of beach haul seining for fishes near the a power station on
Long Island sound when we took a small school of striped mullet (Mugil cephalus) a pretty shimmering fish
filled with energy and speed. As we were
about to haul in the bunt, several of the mullet swam around in circles, at the
surface, within the entrapment of the net.
At one point they swam straight toward where we were standing on the
beach holding the net, then they turned abruptly and quickly swam straight
offshore and leaped over the float line, just as pretty as you please,
shimmering silvery white in the sun.
Never having seen striped mullet before, I stood motionless watching. I could not help but smile with awe and
respect. Striped mullet are visitors to
Long Island waters, being natives and spawners in more southern waters of the
East Coast. There they are called
"jumping mullet" or simply "jumpers", as they are known to
escape capture in commercial nets by doing just what I observed. We did catch several of their cohorts that
day, however, and I recall some displeasure at having to preserve in formalin
(for examination later) such beautiful and spirited animals.
The practice and principle
of releasing fishes alive to the environment would become a challenge for me,
and my ethics of involvement with live fishes would be challenged and tested,
especially on Long Island Sound. I
participated in the field studies and sampling of the fish populations all
around Long Island, using many methods, including bottom trawl, beach seine,
mid-water trawl, gill net, plankton net, and even by monitoring the fishes
impinged on the cooling water intake screens of an electricity generating power
plant. I also worked with local commercial
baymen and observed the fishes caught in their trawls, pound nets, and beach
haul seines. I am sure that I
participated in the capture and sampling of, literally, hundreds-of-thousands,
and probably even millions of fishes.
Many fishes I counted and
identified while they still were in the nets, some were tagged, and then
returned alive. I could not even begin
to estimate how many fish I removed for study.
Those fishes kept for study later were caught by net, removed from the
water, and packaged for eventual transport back to a laboratory for analysis,
and for use as reference samples. At
times, a good portion of the fish taken in those field samples were not needed
for later study, died on deck, and sometimes were returned to the water dead. There was a time
toward the end of my tenure at the Montauk Lab, in the mid-1970s, during which
I handled so many fish of every description and condition (alive, dead, iced,
frozen, rotting, injured, diseased, preserved in formalin or alcohol) that I
lost my appetite for fish. It took a
couple of years away from that work to fully regain my taste for good fresh
fish. I cannot now eat fish (or any
seafood, for that matter), without recalling this.
My idealism and old-fashioned sympathy were
enlivened on Long Island Sound, and I began to feel badly about catching and
killing so many fishes for study. So, I
tried to do a better job of keeping the netted fish in water while they were
being sorted, counted and sampled, so that they could be returned alive. I also tried to be more efficient at figuring
out, beforehand, what portion of a netted catch would be needed for later
study, so as not to take back to the Lab more than were actually needed for
analysis. I consulted a biological
statistician for help in sample design.
I began to feel a bit guilty about all those fishes
we caught by trawl that were being counted and sorted while they were
suffocating to death on the deck of a dragger, or in our 800 foot seine net on
the beach. So, I tried being
"kinder" to those fishes that would be taken back to the Lab. I thought that perhaps a possible quicker
death than suffocation on the deck of the boat would be better and more humane
for those fish that were needed for later study. On one sampling trip aboard the dragger, I
took several jugs of a pre-mixed preservative called formalin (a solution of
10% formaldehyde) into which I would place the fish immediately upon capture,
thinking that this might be an easier death for them than suffocating on deck
while I sorted and counted the catch.
With the first retrieval of the bottom trawl, I placed a few fishes into
one of the jugs, thinking that I was being more humane than in the past. One of the first fish that went into the jug
was a cunner, the species that I had studied for my master's thesis, and a
species I had come to admire for its hardiness and resourcefulness, the species
I had taken pains to return alive to the bay after studying it in the lab. Upon being put into the jug of formalin, the
cunner swam furiously and nervously from side to side, crashing into the glass
of the jug. It bumped its snout against
the glass and beat its body furiously as if to try to push its way out through
the glass, all the while facing me and looking straight at me. I swear, it looked as if it was trying to
tell me that I had not done the humane thing there. After several minutes, it went belly up and
died. I felt as though I had tortured
it. That night at home, I had a dream, a
nightmare actually, that I was caught by some fishes and thrown into a jug of
formalin to be tortured to death. True
story. I still remember that dream and still
can see that cunner, facing me in the jug and giving me its body language that
I had done ill by it. To this day, more
than 35 years later, I still feel that way, and I shiver as I remember it. But, I did receive that cunner's message! I didn't use the formalin approach again in
the field and I tried to be a responsible sampler of live fishes, taking only
what was needed and returning alive as many as possible.
I have a few special 35mm color slides (now in
Powerpoint) in my collection that I use during talks and seminars on fisheries
and conservation, especially in public school science classes. One such slide shows several cunners in a
fish tank, those fishes I studied for my masters and then released alive. There is another slide that is a close up of
a small live killifish or mummichog (Fundulus
sp.) looking through the glass of a laboratory fish tank in which I housed it,
many years ago. It is looking at me
head-on, much as did that cunner in the formalin jug. When I would enter the laboratory in the
morning and flick on the lights, that killifish would look at me head-on and
follow my movements all around the lab.
I always wondered what it might have been thinking, if it could do
so. Perhaps it was wondering what sort
of experiment it would be subjected to each day. I returned it to the bay. The title of the 35mm slide, I hand wrote on
its border, is "who's watching who?"
I learned a great deal from that killifish and those
cunner. I pass on that learning to
students and other fishery scientists as a charge, whenever possible, to first
do no harm, be careful, and avoid undesirable or unintended consequences from
their work. I've shared those ethical
experiences with my fisheries colleagues through newsletters of professional
associations such as the American Institute of Fishery Research Biologists and
the National Association of Academies of Science.
