![]() ![]() He is an earnest speaker, lent gravitas by the touch of gray in his red hair. “Healthy fish have an 80% to 100% survival rate.”Īrchdeacon drops his posture, taking a moment to rest against the ATV. We’re getting between a 5% and 15% survival rate, which is bad,” he said. “The ones that we rescue don’t survive very well. Or they are sickened by other dead and rotting fish left behind when the water recedes. These rescues require a lot of work, but even so, the fish are often in poor health from being in shallow, hot pools with little oxygen. Archdeacon, right, has led the silvery minnow program at U.S. Mallory Boro, Lyle Thomas, Keegan Epping and Thomas Archdeacon often work extended hours in the heat to comb through more than 18 miles of riverbed that can dry nearly overnight. Fish and Wildlife service pull on their shoes before a fish rescue. Fish and Wildlife Service in Albuquerque, N.M., for the past decade.įour team members, left, at the U.S. “This is like slapping a Band-Aid on a severed limb,” said Thomas Archdeacon, who has led the silvery minnow recovery project for the U.S. And the people doing it know it’s not enough. Then, onward to the next pool to do it all again. The minnow is placed in a five-gallon bucket and then moved to an oxygenated rescue tank on the back of an all-terrain vehicle. Fish and Wildlife Service gently grasps a small fish with one deft flick of a hand. The fourth jots it down in a notebook.Īt the edge of the pool, the net is suddenly boiling with violent wriggling and thrashing. Another calls out temperatures and measures the pool. Two wade thigh-deep in the bank crook, a seine net strung between them, and tug it through the water. Four people walk the streambed, combing the pools in Socorro County’s San Acacia Reach. ![]() (Photo by Diana Cervantes for Source NM)Ĭlick the link to read the article on the Source NM website (Danielle Prokop): ![]() Fish litter the riverbed, inhabiting increasingly smaller ponds where the river breaks. Mallory Boro and Keegan Epping comb through the fine net for any silvery minnows left in the drying ponds of the Rio Grande at San Acacia. ![]()
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