Members of the Port Tobacco River Conservancy and Coastal Conservation Association took the opportunity to seine the river to sample what life exists in the river. The PTRC enjoys a wonderful working relationship with CCA and has worked with PTRC to seine the river several times beginning in 2004, at the request of MD DNR. By sampling the life in the river, we get an understanding of what our environment is doing to the aquatic life in the Port Tobacco River. All samples were returned to the water after they were counted.
Most of the pictures are self-explanatory,
but the pipefish is unique enough to bear special mention. Our references are kind
of sketchy on these so we can't be sure which one we caught but are leaning toward
the dusky pipefish. As usual, the pictures aren't detailed enough to count dorsal
fin rays or even rings. They are related to seahorses and the males carry
the eggs. One book says the dusky version may be able to change color to match the
surroundings, which could explain why we couldn't find this exact color in the books.
Again, we caught both yellow perch
on the same haul right at the Chapel Point Park beach access point. The smaller
one is clearly from this year's hatch - good news for Yellow Perch in the Port Tobacco
River. The eel was a nice touch as well - we don't have enough of those either.
We kept the Yellow Perch in a bucket to keep from catching them again and made another
pass but didn't catch any on the second haul.
We had to pass on the site at "snake
beach" due to lots of grass that would have just rolled our net and we didn't want
to damage the grass either. Suffice it to say there were
more white perch than we could count (translate to many hundreds) and the large
number of alosa were apparently alewifes.
Results:
1. First haul - near old pier pilings near mouth of river.
1 carp (huge)
41 atlantic silversides
5 striped bass
96 white perch
1 mud shad
64 alewifes
2. Second haul, fourth point
1 crab
1 croaker
2 mummichugs
27 atlantic silversides
11 spot
2 striped bass
100's white perch
1 bluefish
2 spottail shiners
6 bay anchovy
12 alewifes
many small jellyfish
3. Third haul, Chapel Point Park
6 banded killifish
7 striped killifish
3 pumpkinseeds
46 atlantic silversides
2 striped bass
1 spot
65 white perch
2 yellow perch
12 spottail shiners
3 mud shad
4. Fourth haul, repeat at Chapel Point Park with YP held
back
1 crab
3 banded killifish
1 striped killifish
2 pumpkinseeds
42 atlantic silversides
1 spot
3 striped bass
163 white perch
2 spottail shiners
1 pipefish (dusky?)
3 mud shad
1 shrimp
1 eel
1 alewife