There’s a common fallacy that fish have a 3 second memory. But I hope we’ve graduated from that a long time ago.
The article below illustrates how scientists are using the fish’s memory and ability to learn to recapture them. This article also shows that the learned fish can teach others as well (“The total number of carp captured exceeded the number of stocked carp”).
I wonder if the reason why we no longer catch fish as easily when fishing is not because there are fewer fish in the sea, but we have clever fish in the sea (from anglers who catch and release)!
They don’t call groups of fish, “schools of fish” for no reason!
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| Aquaculture | |||||||||||||||||
| Volume 333, Number 7 (February 2012) | |||||||||||||||||
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Ranching acoustically conditioned fish using an automatic fishing machine | ||||||||||||||||
| Authors: | Boaz Zion, Ilan Karplus, Assaf Barki | ||||||||||||||||
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| Source: | Aquaculture, Volume 333, Number 7 (February 2012) | ||||||||||||||||
| Page Numbers: | 136 – 141 | ||||||||||||||||
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| Abstract: | Fish ranching using acoustic conditioning and an automatic fishing machine was tested in a reservoir as an intermediate stage between laboratory studies and future application of sea-ranching technology in the open sea. A self-operated floating fishing machine was used. Fish were conditioned to associate an acoustic signal with food and then were released into the reservoir. Reinforcement of the conditioned response by periodic training was used to maintain the trained behavior. Fish were captured by calling them to the fishing machine using the acoustic signal and automatically closing a net around them. In one experiment, fish responses to the presence of the fishing machine, the acoustic signal and the food were tested. In another experiment, 65% and 13% of stocked common carp (Cyprinus carpio) and tilapia (Oreochromishybrid) were recaptured, respectively, together with con- and hetero-specifics of the reservoir. The total number of carp captured exceeded the number of stocked carp (154%) in nine capture events over 3months. The experiments highlight the importance of choosing a competitive species for sea-ranching applications to be successful. | ||||||||||||||||
| Citation: | Boaz Zion, Ilan Karplus, Assaf Barki . Ranching acoustically conditioned fish using an automatic fishing machine. Aquaculture, Volume 333, Number 7 (February 2012), pp. 136-141, | ||||||||||||||||
| URL: | http://ejournals.ebsco.com/direct.asp?ArticleID=4FBD9C524E776EAEC184 | ||||||||||||||||
