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Lessons from SCUBA
Posted by Michael Strahan on Nov 03 2005
Dreamcatcher;
Excellent article; thanks for posting it. Anything we can do to mitigate the damage to our rockfish stocks is a good thing. Of course the problem is that we have no real means of assessing whether any of this really works in the wild, because dead rockfish usually sink (except the ones with overinflated swim bladders).
I'm a Divemaster and like everyone certified for SCUBA, I learned some things about pressure. Simply put, a fish's float bladder will be TWICE the size on the surface as it was at 33 feet. If you bring the fish up from 99 feet, the bladder will be THREE TIMES the normal size (no wonder their eyes bulge out!). Fish can withstand a certain amount of pressure differential, and under normal conditions they equalize naturally. But rapid ascent (which is what happens when you reel one up from deep water) closes off the natural venting process and you have problems. Uh... the fish has even more serious issues.
In the past, all we did was let them back down to sixty or seventy feet for a few minutes to equalize, then slowly reel them back up to release them. Sometimes it works. That said, I like the barbless method I saw in the article, but it seems to me that it would take a few minutes to rig up. During that time, the fish will be experiencing massive tissue damage. I don't know about the long-term survival prospects in that case. Maybe it's best to fish barbless and just let them back down so they can shake loose?
-Mike
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