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A monthly podcast in which Stuart Carlton (a native New Orleanian) asks smart people to teach him about the Great Lakes. Co-hosted by the awesome staff at Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant.
Carolyn Foley 0:00
Are fish ever cannibals? What is fish stocking? And how does one become a doctor fish? Let's get to it and ask Dr. Fish bear per burner, burner, burner, burner, burner, burner. Burner, Burner burner proof. Okay. Welcome to as Dr. Fish everybody as you can see, we do not have Stuart Carlton today so you have Carolyn making horn music instead. Let's introduce our hosts first Dr. Katie O. Reilly who is a doctor fish, and is the aquatic invasive species specialist for Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant. Katie, how are you doing today?
Katie O'Reilly 0:44
I'm doing great. Even better being serenaded by a lovely a lovely horn. Horn solo. So thank you, Carolyn.
Carolyn Foley 0:51
You're very very welcome. Our second ask Dr. Fish is Dr. Titus. I'll hammer who is a fishery specialist with Wisconsin Sea Grant. Titus. How are you today?
Titus Seilheimer 1:02
Good morning. It is a wonderful this is you know, my favorite day of the every other month. So great to be here talking to you, too. Hey, you know, Stuart, he's great. But we're gonna have fun without him too.
Carolyn Foley 1:18
And, of course, I am not a doctor fish. I am not a doctor anything. I am the research coordinator with Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant. My name is Carolyn Foley. And I will be popping in and out also trying to help run things behind the scenes today. So as a reminder, if you have not joined us before, this is Ask Dr. Fish where we can take your fish question science questions or live questions live. The easiest way to ask questions of the doctors during the show today in particular is going to be to type them into the chat if you're watching us on Facebook, or YouTube. But otherwise, we're going to start having a conversation about some topics anyway, because there are cool things that come up. So Katie, I believe you said nothing better to talk about on a Monday morning, let's talk about cannibalism in fish. Exactly.
Katie O'Reilly 2:06
I mean, there is no better way to kick off, you know, a busy workweek than talking about cannibalism. So this was inspired, there was a news article that came out about some fossils that had been, I think re examined. And what they found is this ancient fish species had some younger, you know, younger members of the same species in its digestive system. And, you know, this is kind of cool, because it shows that, you know, this ancient species was was doing cannibalism of younger members of its own species. But that's something that's actually pretty common. Even in the fish. We still have, you know, swimming in the Great Lakes today. I think Titus, you talked a little bit about northern pike being cannibalistic. But really, I feel like a lot of predatory fish species really abide by the seafood diet, meaning if they see food, they're going to eat it. Yeah,
Titus Seilheimer 3:01
that's absolutely true. Katie Yeah, you know, they are out there they are eating and you know, really imagine that you're, you know, if you are a fish that eats other fish, and in general, from what we know about, you know, the, the life strategy, you know, kind of reproductive strategy for a lot of these fish, they're kind of usually not investing a lot of resources. Like you're, you're putting out a lot of eggs, a lot of reproductive material, and just kind of, you know, leaving it out there. So even if you are, you know, say you're eating and other fish of your own species, you know, as a little fish, it's probably not your kids. So if you're eating someone else's kids, you're actually helping. Yeah, you're you're helping your your offspring. So our little video here, just showing, you know what, you know, fishing together fish and that's a really big muskie eating a slightly smaller northern pike.
Katie O'Reilly 3:56
Oh my gosh, yeah. I mean, I like that. He's just kind of swimming around with it. Like you know, okay.
Titus Seilheimer 4:05
This is mine. I'm gonna try this. I don't know what the logistics are on getting that rolling that but you know, and you know, I have seen pictures of like, you know, a giant lake trout with slightly you know, just slightly smaller fish that they've been able to swallow and you know, the tail sticking still sticking out of the mouth. So, yeah, fish like to eat other fish.
Katie O'Reilly 4:27
They do. And I I'm glad you brought up Titus. You know, the idea that a lot of times it's fish eating younger, younger, not their children. But even in some cases, you know, parents will eat their offspring, which I'm sure you know, any stress parent has probably thought about once or twice, but the example I really like is a species that lives in the Great Lakes called the fantail darter. So darters are typically these you know, small little guys that hang out at the bottoms of streams. Doesn't seem too too frightening or anything but The males actually will eat their own eggs. But what's weird about it is they eat the eggs if there's only a few of them, so like, if they have a big egg mass that they're protecting, they typically won't eat as many of those eggs. But if it's only a few eggs, it's basically this kind of trade off for them. They, they don't want to expend that much energy for what would be kind of like a not great return on investment. So it's, it's interesting that they'll eat all of the eggs because they're like, this is outweighing the benefit, or outweighing the energy I would spend protecting them. So yeah, so this came from a study. It's a couple decades old now. 1997. But you know, I think when
Titus Seilheimer 5:44
I was in college and 97 could have contributed to something like this. Exactly. You know, what's the what's the cut off on eggs? Like, what's your? What's their under? Yeah, like, what, what's too few to make it worthwhile?
Katie O'Reilly 6:02
That's a really good question. I think, you know, from what I read in the study, all of the fan mail, fantail darters, delete some eggs, but it really, you know, really comes down to is this going to be worth my time? So you know, maybe it's a clutch of less than 100. Because, you know, sometimes a lot of fish will have to lay a lot of eggs, as you talked about, with the assumption that not many of them will survive. Yeah,
Titus Seilheimer 6:27
I mean, I have I have the same problem with things. Like, we just had a lot of Valentine's Day candy, and now on sale, and it's like, I'm going to eat all of it. And yeah, so g here.
Katie O'Reilly 6:39
Same strategy. Exactly.
Carolyn Foley 6:40
That's hilarious. So um, so I just, I'm certainly not thinking about how I've, I wouldn't eat my children it like what I'm like trying to think like, we're gonna happen. We do have a question, though, from Stuart Carlton.
Titus Seilheimer 6:58
Our guest, our usual host, occasional guest question and answer when he's not available
Carolyn Foley 7:06
yet. So don't some male cat fish carry young in their mouth? If so? Do they ever eat them? And maybe I'll throw that to Katie first to see if you have some thoughts there.
Katie O'Reilly 7:18
Yeah, so there are a ton of species of fish that were either the males or the females will basically carry the young in their mouth as a sort of protection mechanism to protect them from other predators that might eat them. I'm not entirely sure. Like how often consumption happens in that case, you know, it's very possible and there, like I said, there's a whole range of species that do it. So I don't know to what extent it is. Maybe it's an accidental swallowing. It's like, oh, you know,
Titus Seilheimer 7:49
yeah, you got you got all these kids swimming around. Exactly. They could, you know, they, if they swim the wrong way, they're really persistent about it. You know, evolutionarily, that's probably not a behavior that you really want to support in your mouth brooding young, so, right, yeah, probably, you know, take care of that. And
Katie O'Reilly 8:09
one other that I mean, this is, you know, not specific to the ones that carry them in their mouths, but a lot of species that do parental care, especially with the father is providing care. Once this, basically the children get too big if they keep hanging around and don't swim off. You know, then the dad might eat some of them basically, like a way of kicking them out of the nest. Like you're old enough now get off
Carolyn Foley 8:34
fly for your baby bird fly for you. Oh, wild. Okay, um, so I don't see So yeah, let's get going on the cannibalism and just to be clear, the videos we were showing so that's not all cannibalism, like the pike eating the and the Messiah eating each other. But it is kind of wild that like fish that are gigantic, we'll go after each other. Okay, seasonal question. We are switching to so I saw a story admittedly, you know, we're all in the Great Lakes region. We're in the Midwest we are not in Florida unless people well it's spring breaks are coming up so maybe people are going there for that. I saw a story. It was somebody who was on the dock talking and they were down in Florida and they were talking about how the cooler winter was really pumping fish up and it made me think like okay, what what the heck does that even mean and I think what they were they were talking about was that the temperatures when they had kind of cooler temperatures when you bumped back up to warmer temperatures it like got the fish excited somehow. So can you guys explain like does anything like that happen in the Great Lakes? Are there things where like you kind of have a colder winter and makes the fish really really excited later on in life or something like that. Maybe I'll throw that one to Titus first.
Titus Seilheimer 9:55
Yeah, you know, I can see that. You know, I wouldn't. I watched The video too, and it's, you know, it's kind of a from, like an angling perspective, I think they're excited to eat. And you know, maybe that's what we're seeing here, you know, they, especially in a place like Florida, where it's generally warmer, you've had, you know, you had kind of a few weeks of colder, maybe less activity, maybe you're not feeding as much. And so, when it warms up, you're like, hey, my metabolism says I need to eat, and I haven't been eating a lot. So, you know, going out and, you know, really starting to feed, and I, you know, I think we could have a similar thing here in the Great Lakes. And, you know, really, right, you know, especially this winter, like we're getting into the fish are pumped up for spring spawning. And, you know, that's, that's on its way to, and you know, lots of, if you're say, a, you know, a spring run sucker or a northern pike, that's queuing on temperature, like you're gonna queue on it, even if it's, you know, say in in February or early March, and we're actually, with our sock responding monitoring, we are going to set up basically, three weeks earlier than usual, just because this is such a winter, like a mild winter. So, you know, you don't want to miss it, because it's gonna when it happens, it happens.
Katie O'Reilly 11:17
Yeah, and that's a really good point, Titus, you know, we just have had a very strange winter here. And, you know, fish are exothermic, or cold blooded. So they're, you know, all of their body functions, their metabolism depends on the temperature of the water. So any change in temperature, you know, is going to affect them, probably more than us, as you know, warm blooded mammals who can regulate our body body temperature. And, you know, speaking of the Great Lakes, we've seen really low ice cover, like historically low this year, I think, the NOAA Great Lakes, environmental lab, that folks focuses on basically everything happening in the Great Lakes recently, yeah, just this past week came out with some some numbers about how historic and how historically low that ice coverage is. And I think Lake Ontario and Lake Erie are basically near or tied with some of their lowest historic ice coverage on on record, which is just wild to me. So that yeah, Titus is totally right, that's going to have a big impact on when, when everybody starts spawning when things start picking up again, for sure.
Titus Seilheimer 12:25
Yeah, it's definitely something we've seen up here in northeastern Wisconsin, you know, big kind of Green Bay has really developed into really well, it's developed recently in the last decade really targeting Lake whitefish, but you know, ice fishing is definitely it's a part of the culture of the Great Lakes states and in the northern, you know, northern hemisphere like people get out on frozen water it's you know, I, I like to think of it as the great equalizer like you can go to those places that you don't need a boat, you know, to get out there like you can walk pretty much anywhere and this winter, the ice hasn't been great and like Green Bay barely barely had ice cover. It didn't really have any good ice at all. And you know, now we're, we're kind of into Yeah, here's a, you know, a story about about ice fishing being canceled and, you know, lots of different different tournaments, different activities. You know, the burqa binder, the biggest 5050 If Berkey binder, this this winter, is going to be this little five kilometer loop instead of the, you know, they're still going to have it but it's not the real regular one. So
Katie O'Reilly 13:38
that's a good point. Like the the story that was just up on the screen was about Houghton Lake and Michigan, which originally had scheduled their ice fishing tournament for January. And then we're like, well, like maybe let's push it off till February because oftentimes, like our ice maximums, and the Great Lakes happened, you know, kind of mid late February, but they it was rescheduled for this past weekend. And that article was just saying it got canceled again, and they obviously didn't reschedule it this time around. And we've seen something similar, you know, the sturgeon season and Black Lake was canceled, which is you know, typically a very, like important cultural event. So it's just there. We're seeing kind of the effects of this definitely in in the the angling around the Great Lakes this winter.
Titus Seilheimer 14:25
Yeah, and I you know, on a sturgeon note to here in north northeast Wisconsin, I mean, we have the biggest lake sturgeon population in Lake Winnebago system the kind of two week sturgeon spearing season for us is a it's a huge, like, cultural, you know, piece of the culture. It's a huge tourism draw, and the ice on Lake Winnebago and Lake Winnebago. It's a large lake but it's also really shallow. So, you know, it should it has the potential to produce some ice and it has been, you know, like they can't cancel the season because of the you know, just the rain lations but hardly any, you know, very few people out there. I think opening weekend, it was like 100 shacks out on the ice, compared to two to 3000 shacks in a typical year. So you know, very different. You know, I get these daily emails about, you know, here's because it's one of the reasons we have this great sturgeon spearing is because they, they manage it so well. And so you get like, every day, you can get these emails that are like, you know, this number of males were harvested this number of females, you know, this number of immature females too. So, and the numbers are really small. It's, you know, 2025 I think 24 fish were harvested yesterday, which is not a lot, not a lot of surgeon from the 2500 to 3000 that you can harvest in total. Wow.
Carolyn Foley 15:52
That's crazy. So and just to be clear, the pictures we were showing there were of past years, 2012 2014. And this year, you know, and there's like some language in some of those stories, like, in good conscience, we can't send people out when it's not safe and things like that. So yeah, so I will note that there were a couple of comments on the cannibalism front. So we'll back up to there
Katie O'Reilly 16:19
to cannibal So, back to
Carolyn Foley 16:24
happy things all around this Monday morning. Okay, so there was a Aman Kohli said I'm in pretty cool. He said, sharing an observation from our lab have seen this in rainbow trout as well. We would bring eggs to hatch in our lab and some from each batch would grow to be big and cannibalistic. I feel,
Titus Seilheimer 16:42
you know, another example with that like from aquaculture, like I know, people are trying to raise things like walleye in, in hatchery environments. So that's definitely, you know, walleye are fish that eat other fish, and they really need to be very, very active in grading them by size. Because if you get, you know, a small walleye in a tank with a larger walleye, they're gonna eat they're, they're, you know, basically brothers and sisters and cousins, pretty, pretty quickly. So, you know, one of the one of the challenges here with trying to grow, you know, essentially walleye, rainbow trout, you know, these are our predators, and we're trying to grow them in these these controlled environments. You know, sometimes they're like, Hey, I think you know, that fish feed you're thrown in is great, but I'd really rather be eating, you know, some of these wiggly fish that are swimming around. So definitely, cousin Harry.
Carolyn Foley 17:35
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, that's really funny. Okay, I mean, sorry.
Katie O'Reilly 17:43
It makes the family reunion a little bit awkward. So yeah.
Carolyn Foley 17:48
And so, Stuart, again, had said, the dang fish in my aquarium, keep reproducing, reproducing will needs will need some to turn to cannibalism soon, or it's going to be an issue. However, I did want to ask, like, based on what you were just saying, Titus, you know, that people need to be active in sorting things by size. So basically, if you want to grow a fish like that, in aquaculture, you kind of have to go out and like, like, every, like, every day, every couple of days and be re tanking them is like, it's, I don't know, that's probably not a verb, but like moving them to other tanks. Is that how it goes?
Titus Seilheimer 18:23
Yeah, basically, you know, one strategy is you can give them kind of a space to hide in that, you know, kind of like if you imagine like a, you know, like a cage basically, where they could swim in but their larger siblings and cousins can't, you know, that kind of gives them a place to escape from predation, but really, a lot of it is yeah, you were kind of sorting them as they grow. And, you know, really, if you're, you know, you're growing them for say an aquaculture food market, you know, you you want to select out, you know, certain genetics there to like, you know, fish food is money and you know, you want to you know, kind of select the ones that are gonna grow faster and you know, really like any any agriculture. You know, that's fish farming is farming and yeah, so it can be very active, you know, it does depend on you know, that kind of growth rate of different different individuals different, you know, genetic kind of combinations.
Katie O'Reilly 19:21
Cool. I just had this horrifying vision as Titus was talking about farming and I'm like, Oh my God, these cows eating other cows, but you know, not everything in the aquatic realm translates perfectly.
Carolyn Foley 19:35
Don't kid yourself. Okay. All right, so we'll do a reset really quickly here, and I won't go down those Simpsons rabbit hole. This is as Dr. Fish a show where our two Doctor fishes answer your fish questions, science questions and life questions. If you have a question for our doctors put it into the chat right now, and we will be able to answer it during this episode. Um, if you have a question that you'd like to be answered in a future episode, you can email us at ask Dr. fish@gmail.com. Okay, so we had an email from Niall Clancy, a member of the Montana Chapter of the American Fisheries Society, or as those in the know, college, which I'm not always in the know, with acronyms, AFS. So they have a new book about becoming a fishery biologists that they were sharing with us. So let's go maybe to Titus first. So like, how can one become a doctor fish?
Titus Seilheimer 20:36
Yeah, that's, that is a great question. It's also a really, you know, I talk, you know, I get to talk to a lot of kind of young professionals and graduate students, you know, one of the great things about going to, like a Montana chapter of AFS, or we just had our Wisconsin chapter meeting of AFS last month, and there's always kind of a really good setup for connecting professionals with, you know, like grad students and undergrads. And, you know, I think one of the one of the things that I always like to say is that, you know, we have kind of our individual experiences. And, you know, I think we all have our own path, like the way I got to where to hear right now, you know, talking to everybody about fish is different than the way that Katie got here. So, you know, we all have our kind of own own paths. But to me, I think one of the really big things to really follow is, you know, experiences and trying different things, and really being able to demonstrate that, hey, you know, I have handled fish, and I've spent time in boats, and those kinds of things can be really helpful. And, you know, generally within say, if you're an undergrad, you know, there are usually opportunities to do that within school as a volunteer, or, you know, in the summer, it's a, you know, what a great summer job is writing, along with some biologists and I love working with undergrad students in the summer to you know, given them lots of these experiences to, you know, set some nets in the Great Lakes and maybe fill some waiters in a wetland, which is an essential experience, getting stuck in mud, actually getting our boats stuck in Green Bay and how everybody had to get out of the boat, we had to push it, it didn't work that well, you know, that's, that's what happens when I'm in charge, we get stuck.
Carolyn Foley 22:38
How about you, Katie, I feel like a lot of us have stories about boats failing, or asked me like, but anyway, I'm
Katie O'Reilly 22:44
gonna say, you know, we could have a whole episode of Ask Dr. Fish on fieldwork fails and tell you about the time, you know, the thunderstorm was coming in our motor died. So that will be another episode. But yes, I 100% agree with everything Titus said in terms of, you know, getting diverse experiences, you know, maybe fieldwork is what you really like to do. But maybe you more like working in a lab or doing something more kind of computer based, like Mottet modeling and figuring that out. So I think research especially like, if you're in the undergrad stage, it's just so valuable to figure out what you like doing and what you don't like doing in terms of research. I'll also add that, you know, everyone's path to becoming a doctor fish is different. But the science part of our job is only one aspect of it. And there are a lot of skills that aren't necessarily always taught in grad school, that are really valuable to being a doctor fish things like, you know, communicating your science, working with non scientists, kind of leadership skills, like Titus said, you know, leading the research crew out in the field. And so I really think that, you know, yes, obviously, you need to be involved in research and building those skills. But you also don't want to forget some of your other kind of more people skills, because the working with the fish is easy. Working with the people is difficult.
Titus Seilheimer 24:14
Yeah, it's definitely true. And yeah, I mean, I was just talking to I did three presentations last week. So talking to all kinds of different people, and it's like, hey, you know, I would love to have it just be the science like, you know, this, we're going to show you the science because it's going to convince you but really, that is that is you know, one step but it's also you know, it's relationships, it's communication. I I'm going to plug this book, which is called Lessons in leadership. And I just, I'm going to plug it because I got to write a chapter in here, which is, you know, it's basically three pages long but it's, I called my little chapter leadership for generalists because I of course, am a fisheries specialist who has never had any formal education in like fisheries biology, but hey, you pick it up over the decades, and now that I'm 20 plus years into my, my scientific career, I guess I can claim to be a fish biologist at this point. But, you know, just kind of what I got to write write about, you know, it is it is taking the skills that you've, you've brought, like, I grew up on a farm, and I was a beekeeper, and, you know, not necessarily water related, but, you know, the types of like, running a crew, and, you know, organizing things, and getting the work done is definitely, you know, those types of things are very useful if you're, you know, running a field crew. So, and also fails, lots of fails there that, you know, learning lessons along the way.
Katie O'Reilly 25:50
Yeah, and that's a great point to Titus about, you know, highlighting your other experiences, even if they're not necessarily as you know, fisheries based or even science based, but highlight, you know, if you're interviewing for a position, or trying to get a research spot, you know, saying I have these skills, you know, that I've developed in these other experiences I've had, and I can bring these to the table, I think, is something that sometimes we think about, okay, well, I haven't had any, you know, research experience, but you do still have kind of those other things like I have attention to detail. And so that will help me, you know, be be conscious in the lab and, you know, be able to mark all of my tubes correctly, and keep track of everything in a spreadsheet. So I think you can definitely capitalize on experiences you've had, but always, you know, keep trying to get new experiences. So you figure out kind of what you like doing like, for me, I realized early on in undergrad, I didn't want to be in a lab 24/7 I wanted to be out on a boat. So that was helpful when it came time to like, figure out what I wanted to do for grad school.
Carolyn Foley 27:01
Wearing your flippy floppies were my flippy floppies.
Titus Seilheimer 27:05
I mean, that's amazing. Like, we can actually, you can have a job where you get to be outside all the time. It's great. And, you know, and you can also get stuck or, you know, if you move up the ladder in a fisheries career, you know, I know a lot of kind of senior fish biologists who, you know, they're there in the office all the time. So, you know, even that, it's like, you know, you can you can and maybe you know, over time, that becomes the thing you also want to do, you're like, I don't know, I don't want to spend my whole summer out in a boat. I want to you know, send other people out. So
Carolyn Foley 27:37
cool. So, thank you. And I just want to make a plug for, right, learn how to write read lots of different things and be I feel like there's nowhere that writing won't help you. So even though I'm not a doctor fish, so. Okay, thanks so much. And apologies if anyone's joining us on Facebook, sorry that the first feed didn't work. We had like some kind of mess up. And the easiest thing for me to do was just start another feed. So if you were planning to come, we'll try to post the link for this afterward. We apologize. We're doing better every time but we still make mistakes. Okay. We have a typical spot during our episodes. That is who's spawning out because there's always someone who's spawning. So we're gonna throw it over to Dr. Titus and ask Titus who's spawning now in the Great
Titus Seilheimer 28:32
Lakes. Yeah, so not a lot of spawning going on. We do have fall spawning. So we do have eggs that incubate over the winter. But this is the time of year February, mid February Burba. Teen day it is of course, when the burbot spawn one of the few fish that is spawning under the ice as it were, maybe not this year, because there isn't as much ice on the lake but they are you know, they are one of the few fish that will spawn right in the middle of winter. You know, and I love bourbon. They're one of my favorites. You know, look at our logo. That's a bourbon in there with me. That was my one fish for this show that I got to pick and you know, Bourbon are really cool. They actually make noises. They've discovered that through the science. They also
Carolyn Foley 29:23
can play the noises here. Let me try. That's right. All right
Titus Seilheimer 29:34
yeah, it's a burbot beat
Carolyn Foley 29:43
Oh my goodness.
Titus Seilheimer 29:46
So excited burbot there. So, you know, probably males, I think the idea is they're actually kind of like drumming on their swim bladders with the muscles that run along those so burbot really cool fish. species freshwater a member of the cod family, the only freshwater species for the cod family and also delicious ethos if you get a chance, so keep an eye out for it. They're tasty.
Katie O'Reilly 30:14
They also have some great names other common names like lawyer eel pout, I think and then is it Poor Man's lobster?
Titus Seilheimer 30:22
Yes, yes. I well, I like to think of lobsters poor man's bourbon. That is my, you know, lobster. Yeah. Anybody can get a lobster. But can you get a bourbon? No.
Katie O'Reilly 30:34
Yeah, we don't care about those invertebrates. You know? No, no.
Carolyn Foley 30:39
Y'all are killing me.
Titus Seilheimer 30:42
And of course, we will be talking about food later. And if you you know, it's so simple. You take some burbot you, it has this loin along the back kind of along the spine, you get these really just kind of nice medallion of meat. And you can I've deep fried those. But I've also you can just boil them and the dip them in butter. And they're delicious. You know that? That's kind of the poor man's lobster kind of way to prepare it. Because, you know, you dip anything and butter. It's delicious. Everything's
Katie O'Reilly 31:10
better with butter. Absolutely.
Carolyn Foley 31:13
So I'm actually going to going to flip to that right now. I'm going to double check that there are no comments or questions. Okay, I'm going to flip to our fish challenge because we're talking about eating, we're talking about enjoying things. So if you followed our show, maybe two episodes ago, Stewart introduced this segment like the Ask Dr. Fish challenge. So I think in December, we were supposed to celebrate fish miss. And then during December, we had a conversation about the Feast of the Seven Fishes and things like that. And so the challenge that I issued was a try a new to you fish dish. And so right now I'm gonna give my update about what I did. And then if anyone in our audience actually participated in the challenge, please be share your experiences in the chat. I guess I will say for me, it was actually on Christmas Eve, we had some leftover halibut that someone had given us, like brought us back from Alaska that I found in the freezer. And so we made orange halibut, it was like really, it was really nice. We learned a new like weight of cooking the fish. It was kind of like poaching it a little bit. My kids loved it. They're like eight and 10. And so they're actually trying different foods now. It's very exciting. So it was really, really nice. And it was nice to have like a, you know, kind of special Christmasy dish with the oranges and the herbs and things like that. And it was really tasty. So Titus, what did you try? Or did you try? Did you have a chance to try anything? And if so, what did you try?
Titus Seilheimer 32:47
I did. So I actually, this was my mom was visiting and she doesn't get a lot of seafood. So we've got a lot in our freezer. So I was like, I'm gonna try this. So I pulled down the recipe books. And this is from the the America's Test Kitchen. It's called Sicilian fish stew. Their recipe used swordfish, which I didn't have, but I did have I had two different kinds of Atlantic or Alaskan salmon here. So that's kita and Sockeye. I also threw in some Pacific Cod. And then up on top are some Georgia wild caught shrimp. So just a nice kind of tomato based, we keep seeing Katie's Katie's recipe too. But, you know, fairly simple, I think, you know, I, in my house, like people aren't necessarily into fish most of the time or some of the time. But if you can get enough flavors in there, you know, there's a lot going on, and it's, you know, kind of a tomato based thing is really good. And then I had leftovers and I actually boiled up some pasta, and it you know, it turned really well into a pasta sauce later on. So it's it's a pretty dynamic dish. And you know, it was tasty. So give it a try.
Carolyn Foley 34:09
That's really awesome. Just this past week, I'll go back to invertebrates that we made shrimp creole because it was Mardi Gras. And we did the same thing with the leftover sauce. We were putting it over rice and it was it was pretty awesome. So Katie, did you try something and if so, what did you try?
Katie O'Reilly 34:28
I did and so I will say mine was kind of a cop out. You know, I really had a busy January and one would think you know, maybe hors d'oeuvres that's more of like a holiday thing. I was just like, Well, I'm really busy but I want to try something new. And so I'd come across this recipe or smoked salmon pinwheels which are a typical like you know, party snack where it's basically pieces of smoked salmon with sort of cream cheese filling Can you wrap it up in a little pinwheel shape. So I tried this one recipe that was really, really straightforward. So I bought some smoked salmon from the store. I bought kind of like a cream cheese that I mixed in some herbs with, rolled them up and then just had these little pinwheels as nice little protein based snacks that I could pop in my mouth. Every now and then. It probably is more like I said, appropriate for a holiday party, but it could just be you know, me and my apartment, you know, knocking on some smoked salmon and cream cheese, which was good.
Titus Seilheimer 35:31
So Katie, there is nothing wrong with that. I was looking at that. It's like smoked salmon and cream cheese. You know, you can't go wrong. It's a wonderful combination. You know who even needs a bagel like just you're using, you know, instead of the bagel, you're just rolling it up in.
Katie O'Reilly 35:49
Yeah, just a little little salmon stack. So
Titus Seilheimer 35:52
yeah, and I'll throw in just some upcoming eat Wisconsin fish related stuff that Sharon Mone and I are going to be doing my colleague who is our, our was eat with Scott or our fish, Wisconsin food fish coordinator at Wisconsin Sea Grant. So we're, in a couple of weeks, we're going to be heading down to the Milwaukee sports show in in Milwaukee, and it's the it's a big kind of regional at our State Fairgrounds. And we're going to do a couple different demos of cooking. Basically, something I've been dreaming about for several years is creating the new summer food of the of the Great Lakes and it should be a lake whitefish roll. So you know, you've had lobster rolls out east. Actually, you can get them everywhere now. But we're going to prepare a cold Charan is going to make a cold lobster or white fish roll, I'm going to make a hot white fish roll kind of with a butter all over it. So that's going to be delicious. And then later on in March, we're going to be heading up to the Wisconsin aquaculture Association meeting, which is going to be hosted in Redcliff, Wisconsin, Minnesota aquaculture association is going to be there too. And we're going to do a little kind of Wisconsin fish demo on the Friday night. So that'll be fun. You know, preparing some, some. So we've got a month of Great Lakes fish, we've got a month of farm raised Wisconsin fish as well. So you can tell I mostly just think about what food can I eat? And how can I do that at work?
Carolyn Foley 37:30
That's so I mean, you saying like white fish roll kind of thing. I was like, oh, yeah, that's all Yeah. That's great. So another thing that's coming up in the next little bit, you know, and you talking about Wisconsin makes me think about this, too. So first off, I'll share that Stuart's new to him was he was going to try some smelt, which is so Wisconsin it's kind of like I don't know some I almost a cliche. Yeah. Um, so we'll try to maybe we'll try to add a link to his video in the show notes for this for when we release the recording of this down the line. But it is fish fry season. This is an awesome t shirt that Titus shared this Friday fish fry in Wisconsin choice of potato coleslaw and rye bread. Over in Michigan there are lots of really awesome fish fries too. So I believe that our next doctor fish challenge Am I right that it's try a fish fry?
Katie O'Reilly 38:32
Yes. So our next Dr. Fish challenge is going to be kind of a little open ended. We are going to say try a fish fry but you know, maybe we'll have some some subcategories like you know, best fish fry how many fish fries you've been to, you know between now and the next Ask Dr. Fish episode. So it's a little open ended but basically getting out there and trying trying some fish fries in your area.
Titus Seilheimer 39:04
Yeah, try that local local fish and you know, see what see what the options are. And you know, it doesn't have to be a Friday. Hey, you got a fish friend Tuesday. Once you have fish fish tacos, I mean delicious. Yeah,
Katie O'Reilly 39:19
it doesn't doesn't have to be fried fish you know, maybe it's a beach fish. Yeah.
Carolyn Foley 39:24
Awesome. Okay, so that's our ask Dr. Fish challenge for next time. And again, you know, we encourage you to share with us if you if you participate in this we like sharing stories and people's comments.
Katie O'Reilly 39:36
Sure, just share your favorite fish fry and you know, in your area, get your fish. Yeah.
Titus Seilheimer 39:43
Cool. Yeah, we love the Insider. Better knowledge Yeah, we
Katie O'Reilly 39:47
need the scoop on where to go.
Carolyn Foley 39:51
So, once again, this is Ask Dr. Fish a show where our two Doctor fishes answer your fish questions, science questions and life questions. If you have a question what that will we'll try to answer before the end of today, please go ahead and put it into the chat. Or if you have comments, we'd like to share those too. If you would like to have a question answered in the future, please go ahead and email it to ask Dr. fish@gmail.com. So one final question, something that comes up a lot in the Great Lakes in particular, but it happens all over the world is fish stocking. And so for those who, who maybe haven't grown up thinking about this, or haven't been in a position and things like that, so Katie, maybe I'll throw it to you first, what, what is fish stocking? And why do it? Yeah,
Katie O'Reilly 40:40
so fish stocking is really just, you know, the idea that you raise fish, kind of, artificially, you know, whether that's in a place like a hatchery or a pond, and then you take those fish that you've raised, and put them into a water body, whether you know, that's to increase the fishing opportunities for anglers, or to reintroduce a species, maybe that has been, you know, the numbers have been down because of any number of factors, something that's threatened or endangered. And the idea behind that is, you know, kind of supplementing fish in an area. It can be, you know, either native fish that are raised and stocked in systems, but sometimes it's non native fish, which one example in the Great Lakes are some of the Pacific salmon, like chinook and coho. And, in some cases, you know, some of these fish do have some natural reproduction, but to maintain the levels that, you know, kind of anglers expect, it's supplemented with stocking from various, you know, state agencies, like Department of Natural Resources.
Titus Seilheimer 41:52
Yeah, it's like, you know, I mentioned I was talking earlier about, you know, in our cannibalism section, you know, thinking about within an aquaculture system, because basically fish hatcheries and stocking fish, it's aquaculture, it's, you know, just the same as any other kind of fish farm, it's just, you know, growing these fish to release and, and what the, what, you know, the farming environment gives these fish is just the ideal conditions, you know, generally, lots of mortality for fishes is in this kind of first, you know, from the eggs, there's a lot of mortality where the eggs don't hatch, or they get infected with fungus, or they're eaten by crayfish or round gobies, or, you know, apparently other their parents, their parents, the Intel darters, potentially. So, you know, we have this, you know, the controlled environment really can, you know, aid success. And so there's lots of different considerations when you talk fish stocking like you can, and it's also a balance thing. So the longer a fish would stay in a hatchery, the more it's going to cost to maintain. But generally, the larger size, when it's released, the higher the survival. So you get a lot of, you know, it's all very species specific. So, say, for species like walleye, you can, you know, get those and you can release them as fries. So they're very small, like an inch long. So you've, you've kind of gotten them past the egg in the larval stage who really cements fry. And you can release a lot of them that way, because that's fairly easy. And it's a short time in the hatchery, or you can raise them to fingerlings size, so they're kind of the size of your finger. Or even longer than than that. So, you know, generally it's all these trade offs in, you know, deciding which species how much space you have, you know, how much it's going to cost. And then you know, what, like, what cost isn't going to be like, how many of those walleye that get stocked are actually going to be caught by someone down the road too. So you can actually kind of, you know, and we have lots of great science now where you can, you know, tag these fish and actually see, you know, for Katie's example of Pacific salmon, like we can look at these little, very tiny coded wire tags. So these tags that have a little number on them, implanted in these, you know, very small salmon before they're released, and then you can go to a fish cleaning station, collect that head and pull that number out from that little tag, and actually see, oh, you know, three years ago, this individual fish was released from, you know, this port and then, you know, you look at that all around the lakes and can actually make decisions about, hey, what's the best place to stock a fish? What's the, you know, maybe we shouldn't stock the fish here because they're not surviving. And, you know, that's just kind of good. Good management.
Katie O'Reilly 44:58
Yeah, and I'm really Glad Titus brought up balance too, because that's a big thing in the Great Lakes, not only in terms of balance of when to release the raised fish, but also like how many fish to release based because you want to make sure you're not releasing too many predators and not having enough prey to feed them, which is something that I know, you know, there's been a lot of work and a lot of research done to to understand, you know, we've had the lakes change a lot because of things like invasive species. And so that's changed how many prey fish are available. And so a lot of times, it's balancing, how many of these predators are we going to have, so that we can keep a predator prey balance that doesn't throw the whole system out of whack? And
Carolyn Foley 45:43
you shared this really cool resource that I shared the link in there? Can you tell us what we're looking at Katie? Yeah, so
Katie O'Reilly 45:48
this is a really cool interactive database that you can look and see where basically what species were released, and what different parts of the Great Lakes, and you can look by year, you can look by agency species, and you can kind of see like, okay, you know, last year, there were this many, like trout released in Lake Michigan, or, you know, wherever your, your location of interest is. So I find it just a really cool way to look at what's going on around the Great Lakes. I particularly was very interested in looking at, like, we're like surgeon or release, because I just think like, surgeon are the coolest, and I like seeing them, you know, I like seeing efforts towards restoring them, but you can look at whatever your species of interest is.
Titus Seilheimer 46:37
And I'd say this really captures you know, in this, this is a great resource to have, like, you know, looking at, you know, the science and the management of the Great Lakes like this is, it really shows the collaborative nature of how these decisions are made. Like, you know, we have two countries involved, we have multiple states, we have multiple tribal nations as well, and everyone is, you know, kind of working together, I think, to really bounce, you know, do those balance decisions, because, you know, the fish we stock in Wisconsin are going to swim, you know, they're gonna go everywhere, they're going to, you know, swim across state lines, they don't really care. They don't know those maps are there. So you really do need the kind of cooperative consensus based decision making and, you know, keeping it balanced and keeping it you know, we want sustainable, sustainable fisheries. So, you know, lots of work going on, I geek out over
Carolyn Foley 47:33
stuff like this all the time. So another way so Titus, you mentioned the tags that are kind of stable, but there's also galactose, the Great Lakes, acoustic telemetry observing system, I think, or something like that. I'm very bad with acronyms, as we mentioned before, but they have stations all over. So this is a map of some of them. And it's a super cool way, because like you said, the fish don't respect boundaries, the like legal boundaries that humans have been imposed. So so it's a really, really cool resource to to track things.
Titus Seilheimer 48:06
We've got a bunch of suckers that have acoustic tags swimming around Green Bay, right now. So that is something that hopefully will, we'll get to talk to Karen Mirchi someday at the Shedd Aquarium and get an update on, you know, what are those fish doing? And where are they going. And, you know, GLaDOS is such, it's such a great resource right now, because there's so much and it's again, it's about cooperation, like, I can buy a few tags and maybe get a receiver. But it's all this working together. There's so many receivers out there now, like you saw those green dots. If you're looking at the map, you're listening to this, imagine the Great Lakes covered on all these green dots like green chicken pox, and, but those are all, you know, basically receivers listening for the pings coming out of these tagged fish. And you know, there's all kinds of species tagged, and they're swimming around, and everybody's collecting data and sharing it. So it's really it's exciting times in the Great Lakes.
Carolyn Foley 49:03
Genuinely, it really, really is so, okay, so once again, thank you to everyone who's joining us, toward the end of each show, we do a game. We have not played 20 questions in a while. So I think that's that's what we're going to do today. So, Katie, you pick would you like to be the asker or the person who picks the fish?
Katie O'Reilly 49:26
I'll pick the fish this time. All right, so
Carolyn Foley 49:29
Katie's gonna pick a fish. And then Titus has 20 questions, and I'm not going to do what Stuart normally does, where he has this go around, because I'm just a liability for your time. So I will just count how many how many questions, we have less. Okay, let us know when you're ready to go and those in the online feel free to put your guesses in and I'll try to share those questions. Katie can see your suggestions as well. And Titus can see your suggestions. Okay, Katie, good to go. I'm good to go. Titus
Titus Seilheimer 49:59
Uh, okay. Question one. Adults are large or small, large.
Okay, large adults. What's the number of doors door? Two dorsal fin or two? Yeah, two dorsal fins or one. Let me double check. One, one dorsal fin. Okay. Any dorsal spines?
Katie O'Reilly 50:28
I don't believe so. No. Okay.
Titus Seilheimer 50:30
Let's see. adipose fin presents present or absent? No. No adipose fan? Um, let's see mouth type, let's say is it a terminal mouth right off the end of the face?
Katie O'Reilly 50:50
I would say it's terminal, maybe a little sub terminal.
Titus Seilheimer 50:53
Okay, terminal sub terminal. Does it eat fish? No, not officiator. Okay. Does it see this? A lot of this a lot of pressure to ask all the questions. I know. And I have to like keep track of them to which is okay. I'm just Yeah, I enjoyed the the numbers to that I get to watch. out Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, let's see. Does it have is the is the dorsal fin or Okay. caudal fin. So is that tail square? No,
Katie O'Reilly 51:38
it is not square. Is the tail fork. Yeah, not like a sharp deep fork though. Okay,
Titus Seilheimer 51:44
but generally fork. Is does it? Is it a nest garter? Does it guard nests? No. Okay.
Carolyn Foley 51:54
Does it live in the benzos?
Katie O'Reilly 51:56
I would say you generally will see it closer to the benthos.
Carolyn Foley 52:00
That was a question from the audience. So we're at 10 now.
Titus Seilheimer 52:02
Excellent. Is it in the sucker family?
Katie O'Reilly 52:07
No.
Titus Seilheimer 52:08
Okay. Soccer. This is terrible. You guys. I don't need this. I need Stuart I need Stuart's bad questions to reset. We're
Katie O'Reilly 52:20
Stuart What do you need him? I know. What one hint. Ask about its native status. Oh,
Titus Seilheimer 52:27
is it native to the Great Lakes? Nope. Okay.
Carolyn Foley 52:32
That was very kind of UK. Yes.
Titus Seilheimer 52:34
For Good question. Definitely something to be aware of. Does it eat plants? Yes. Is it a grass carp?
Katie O'Reilly 52:44
It is a grass carp. We didn't do that. We didn't do the drum roll. That's to us.
Carolyn Foley 52:51
But okay, so Titus, your 62nd soapbox, because the winner of the game gets 60 seconds to talk about whatever they want to talk about Titus. Go. All
Titus Seilheimer 53:02
right. Hey, everybody. So 60 seconds to talk about something and you know, I am going to just reinforce our contest for this, this coming two months. And it is go try some new fish fries. And I want you to go out I want you to try a new fish. I want you to try fish fries. Different ways. I know that, you know, I actually I used to own that Wisconsin fish fry shirt. Until I it totally wore out because I worked so much. Because you know, it's sort of in line with what my job is. So it doesn't have to be just deep fried fish. There's lots of ways you can eat fish. Why didn't you whip up some of some fish on your own on Friday too. So you know, try some new things, go to some new places. Enjoy fish. Meet your neighbors. Yeah, have fun with it. So you know, definitely a time of year that that a lot of people are eating fish and hey, why it doesn't need to be just this time of year. You can eat fish all the time. So do it.
Katie O'Reilly 54:05
This Friday, every Friday,
Titus Seilheimer 54:07
make every Friday fish Friday that from Wisconsin. So that's basically that's sort of our culture here. Anyway, so.
Carolyn Foley 54:15
Okay, awesome. And in lieu of Stuart being here, thank you all for joining us. And this will be slightly less professional than it normally is. But you know, we'll just do our best All right.
Ask Dr. Fish is brought to you by the fine people at Illinois-Indiana. Sea Grant Wisconsin Sea Grant media. The show is produced and hosted by Stuart Carlton Carolyn Foley, Dr. Fish video Riley and Dr. Titus.
Stuart Carlton 54:51
The live broadcast is supported by Mo T goon beyond de and the podcast version of the show is edited by it's still me. It's still me somehow So me, the podcast artwork is by Ethan cosec. And you can view his portfolio at Ethan cosec.com. That is K OCA K.
Carolyn Foley 55:10
If you have questions for the Dr. Satish send an email to ask Dr. fisher@gmail.com. Use the Twitter hashtag. Yeah, we're
Unknown Speaker 55:18
still calling it Twitter.
Carolyn Foley 55:19
Ask Dr. Phil, or call our hotline at 765-496-4474. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on see you live on Facebook and YouTube at 11am. Eastern on usually the second Monday of every evening. In between now and then if you ask questions, questions, questions, just ask
Stuart Carlton 55:54
how long you're gonna make me do this
Carolyn Foley 56:02
there we go. Thanks so much, everybody for joining us. And please watch out for a future episode and send us some questions if you have them. Thank you. Bye bye.
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