Condition and postrelease mortality of angled Northern Pike temporarily retained on stringers
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Objective Anglers typically use stringers to keep fish intended for harvest from spoiling or for high-grading purposes (i.e., culling). However, relatively few studies have examined the effects of temporary stringer retention on the physical condition and postrelease mortality of fish. In this study, our objective was to investigate the lethal and sublethal effects of temporarily retaining Northern Pike Esox lucius on stringers. Methods We evaluated the blood physiology, reflex impairment, injury, and fate of 168 Northern Pike that were exposed for 2 h on one of five treatments: (1) cord stringer through the operculum, (2) cord stringer through the lower jaw, (3) metal stringer through the operculum, (4) metal stringer through the lower jaw, and (5) aerated tank control. Result Immediately after retention, blood lactate concentrations of stringer treatments were on average 42% greater relative to controls. Fish from the stringer treatments exhibited injuries of varying severity, most of which (e.g., gill lesions, expanded puncture wounds, swelling) were still present on surviving fish 48 h later. Reflexes were impaired for all stringer fish, whereas control fish tended to have all reflexes intact. No fish died during the treatment period. The highest occurrence of mortality was within the first 8 h following retention for the cord–operculum (48%), metal–jaw (15%), and metal–operculum (19%) treatments. Stringers placed through the operculum had a higher mortality rate (37%) compared with stringers placed through the lower jaw (17%), regardless of stringer type. Overall, 27% of fish placed on stringers died and 68% of the remaining fish showed injuries related to stringers, while control fish showed low mortality (7%) and no meaningful injuries. Conclusion Our results suggest that holding fish on stringers causes stress and injury levels that can result in postrelease mortality. As such, fisheries managers should consider restricting the release of fish placed on stringers, and once placed on a stringer, fish should be regarded as part of the daily harvest limit for a given angler.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".