7784

• UCREFRP Catalog Number: 7784
• Author: Snyder, D. E.
• Title: Impacts of Electrofishing on Fish.
• USFW Year: 1992.
• USFW - Doc Type: \
• Copyright Material: NO

6 Review

The extent of concem over electrofishing injuries
in North America is exemplified by the fonnation of
an infonnal working group on electrofishing injuries
within the Western Division of the American
Fisheries Society (AFS), special sessions on the
matter held during annual meetings of the Western
Division in July 1991 (Bozeman, Montana) and 1992
(Fort Collins, Colorado) (abstracts of papers
presented at these special sessions were reprinted in
the falUwinter 1992 issue of the AFS Fisheries
Management Section Newsletter, vol 12, no. 2), and
plans for an Electrofishing Injury Network through
the AFS Fisheries Management Section. In Europe,
a workshop on the hannful effects of electrofishing
was planned for spring 1991 in Hull, England, but
was canceled due to the Iraqi conflict. It was
rescheduled by the EIFAC Working Group on
Electric Fishing and held on 21 and 22 May 1992 in
conjunCtion with the 17th Session of EIFAC in
Lugano, Switzerland (for details, contact Dr. Ian
Cowx. Humberside Intemational Fisheries Institute,
University of Hull, Hull HU6-7RX). Until the matter
is effectively resolved, electrofishing injuries are
likely to be the topic for many more special sessions,
workshops, and organizations in the near future.
Manufacturers of electrofishing gear are
obviously concemed; they have a vested interest in
the technique and have begun developing and

Impacts of Electrofishing on Fish

marketing equipment intended to help reduce
electrofishing injuries. As examples, see the
advertisements on both sides of the back cover of
Fisheries 16(6), November-December 1991. One is
for Coffelt Manufacturing's CPS or Complex Pulse
System (a patented pulse train of three rectangular
pulses at 240 Hz repeated 15 times per second)
which was specifically developed to reduce spinal
injuries. The other advertisement is for Smith-Root's
P.O. W. or Programmable Output Waveforms unit
which is not intended to reduce injuries itself but
allows users to select from a very wide range of
patterns or wavefonns, including pulse trains, some
of which are likely to be less hannful than others.
Even hypotheses regarding the causes and
mechanisms of fish responses in electric fields are
being re-examined in an attempt to identify and
explain specific factors associated with injuries.
During the aforementioned session on electrofishing
injury held last summer in Bozeman, Sharber (pers.
commun.) introduced the "Bozeman Paradigm." His
hypothesis is that the observed responses of fishes in
electric fields, including muscular seizures resulting
in spinal and related injuries, represent essentially the
same phases of epilepsy observed when humans and
other animals are subjected to electroconvulsive
therapy. As will be discussed later, Sharber
correlates these epileptic phases-automatism, petit

Fi&Ure 1. Bent back in rainbow trout caused by electrofishing. (Photograph provided by and reproduced
with the pennission of M. S. Quinton via W. A. Fredenberg).

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