| 27 April 2009
Why Study Snook?
Dr. Ken Leber has 5 reasons.
- As juveniles, they tend to stay put in their nursery habitats, rather than wander about the bay. Thus, there is some predictability about them staying in a system long enough for them to be affected by environmental variables of interest (pollutants, effects of development on habitat, on snook growth, survival and behavior).
- Those nursery habitats are inshore, brackish water creeks, drainage ditches and tributaries, the very coastline sites that are highly vulnerable to anthropogenic impact (by development; from pollutants and runoff, which are collected and concentrated in these small waterways prior to flowing into the bay; by dredging to maintain boat passages; etc.).
- There is an emerging aquaculture capability for common snook, which will afford the means to place very healthy snook, free of pollutants in their tissues, into different aquatic environments to assess current uptake rates of pollutants by fish -- and use these fish like the miner's canary, to assay for current environmental 'health'.
- Snook are highly sought after by recreational anglers and one of the most valuable fisheries in Florida, which has the highest economic output from saltwater sportfishing in the world (>$5.4 billion per year, ASA 2002). Thus, when snook are affected by anthropogenic effects, it matters to a lot of people -- much more so than if some bivalve mollusk is affected when used as an indicator species; i.e., you get double duty with snook -- they can yield data on anthropogenic effects on fishes, which would be the primary value were it an indicator species, but they'd also yield data on anthropogenic impacts on charismatic megafauna, much sought after by sport fishers engaged in the most valuable sport fisheries in the world. And if "it" affects snook, then what other key sportfish is "it" affecting (lets see, tarpon? redfish? spotted seatrout?) when whatever is flowing in those creeks enters nursery and spawning habitats of these valuable species?
- Finally, because this animal can be aquacultured, and also can survive in fresh water, they could also be made available for testing inland water bodies, not just brackish and saltwater environments; thus they afford a multifaceted indicator organism.
