Saffron Shiner is a species of ray-finned fish in the genus Notropis

Notropis

Notropis, commonly known as the eastern shiners or simply "shiners", is a genus of cyprinid fish found in North America, and is the second largest genus of freshwater fish on the continent. Most small minnows found in North American belong to Notropis. Not all small cyprinids commonly referred...

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Introduction

Saffron shiners are found only in cold, clear, and rocky streams and creeks surrounding the Tennessee River drainage. Characteristics of them are a relatively deep body, dorsal fin origin above back half of pelvic fin base,medium-sized eye, narrow rounded snout, sub-terminal mouth, elongate spot at base of tail fin, dark side stripe on back half of body, olive back, silver sides, white belly, fins pale except for black mark on tail fin, and breeding males will be bright red with blue stripe on the side. The adults grow to between 40-60mm in length and mature to reproductive status in 1–2 years. When spawning the females release 445-1,174 eggs and they either spawn over a chub nest or in gravel runs without a nest. Food sources for saffron shiners consist of insects, worms, spiders, plants, and algae. A direct way to monitor populations is through electroshocking streams this however puts the fish under much stress and may cause harm to the fish. Another way could possibly be creel surveys but saffron shiners are not normally caught on hook and line so it would be a very unreliable source of data. Larval fish drift nets could be placed in the streams to see the numbers of offspring for each year. Tagging is an option to study movement as well as population due to catch recapture data.as well as give you a count of individuals captured both adult and juvenile.

Body

This is a proposed monitoring to track the population and health of the saffron shiners, in streams, in the area surrounding the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The first priority is to select a stream in which the saffron shiner inhabits and make several 100 meter sample sites of random origin so as to pull an accurate estimate of the population size and fitness of the fish. For sampling the sites that have been established a three pass completion with Electrofishing equipment is a very efficient method of sampling and will be recommended for the monitoring plan. The Electrofishing should be conducted before mid-May to late-July so as not to disturb the fishes eggs during spawning which occurs between these two times. The first task when sampling is block off both ends of the site with a net that the fishes cannot pass through. This is to stop the fish from either all immigration or emigration from the site so as not to skew the results. The next task would be to measure the length of the stream and to take width measurement every ten meters along the stream. This gives an average area of the stream which is useful in several ways. One way is from this data find the average width one electrofishing unit will effectively cover four meters of stream, so for every four meters add another unit. Also Take discharge of the stream and the volume of the stream can be calculated. Now that these measurements have been taken and the upper and lower ends of the stream have been blocked off. Start with the one unit for every four meter of stream width and start at the bottom of the site. The units will line up beside each other and move up the stream staying alongside each other so as to make a “wall” that the fish cannot get around the units. For each unit there will be a backup netter that nets the fish shocked up and will place them in a bucket until the 100 meter site is done. At the end of each pass the fish captured will be measured and weighed to check fitness and numbers of fish will be recorded. Then the next pass will be performed until all three passes are complete and the fish are worked up. After all the fishes are recorded they will be placed back in the 100 meter section of stream were they were captured from. The three pass completion method has an average of a 70% capture rate so populations can be calculated from this, and average weight to length calculations can provide overall fitness. Repeat this procedure through multiple sites.