Fish Over Here, Fish Over There, Fish Everywhere!
Ever since I’ve been here I’ve learned a whole lot about fish that I never knew in my life. I know almost all the names and parts of a fish, and how to tell fish apart even when they almost look alike. For the first week that we were here, we worked intensively in our fisheries class. After working in the classroom for a while, we went with our instructors on a hike to catch some fish for record-keeping. The first time we went fishing, we just set out small minnow traps to sit over night so that we could check them the following day to see and record how many fish we caught. That day only a couple of fish were caught. It was very exciting. Just by discovering the fish we caught in the minnow traps, we got to see where the fish like to swim and hide and what they like to eat. We measured all the fish, took pictures, drew some, and let them go.
The second time we went fishing, we caught fish by beach seining. Beach seining is when two people on both sides of the net drag it in the water. It’s just like scooping up the fish, or more like sweeping. We caught a whole bunch of juvenile fish and recorded them the same way we recorded the fish that we caught in the minnow traps.
Now that we had all the information about the fish and how to identify them, we started putting together little journals of fish that we caught here in Nash Harbor. One of the fish we caught the most was the three spine stickle back fish. It has three thorn like needles on its back, and a very slender caudal peduncle (the base of the tail), and a squarish tail fin. The Latin name for the three spine stickle back fish is, Gasterosteus aculeatus Linnaeus. The Yup’ik name is Quarruuk. The three-spine stickle back fish inhabits vegetated areas. They are also found in Europe, Mediterranean, Black Seas, Africa, North Pacific, Korea, Bearing Sea, California, and Mexico. They eat worms, crustaceans, larvae, insects, and other s mall fishes. The three-spine stickle back fish live less than fifteen months and grow to a maximum size of eleven centimeters. –Yvonne
