Maintaining a healthy heart

[ applause ] >> chris lowe: well,good morning. thanks for gettingup early and coming to hear what we have to say. so from a standpointof fisheries, i have kind of apassion for this. i grew up on martha's vineyard and there was really nothingelse to do but fish and dive. and i come from a familythat has a long history

in commercial fishing. my grandfather's acommercial fisherman on the vineyard for 65 years. and my mom's family have been on the vineyard forabout 200 years. so it was thought that i waseither going to be a carpenter or a commercial fisherman. and i crossed overto the dark side when i actually was thefirst to go to college

and actually get adegree in marine biology. i've still some family membersthat don't like to talk to me because they thinki'm the enemy. but the important thing is, isthat when i started my studies in marine biology i realizedthat fisheries were something that i was truly interested inand passionate about because one of the things is, ireally -- i love to fish. and i want to see people tobe able to continue to fish but that's gettingmore and more difficult

because of the stateof our oceans. so one of the things that i'vefocused a lot of my research on in great -- working withkelly [assumed spelling] because kelly can helpme answer some questions that i couldn't answer myself as dr. livingston [assumedspelling] was pointing out. okay, so the bottom line isfor the last 40 or 50 years, people have recognized thatseafood is good for you. it's healthy for you.

it's a great source ofprotein that's low in fat. it's loaded withomega-3 fatty acids. it's good for your heart. it lowers the risk ofobesity, heart disease, stroke, all these things. so we've been told inthe last 40 or 50 years that seafood is good to eat. and you know what? people have listened.

but not only that, the greatthing about seafood is it comes in all differentvarieties, tastes, flavors. so the great thingthere's something for everybody in seafood. so not only is ithealthy for you, there's something for everybody. and it all comes down to -- thebottom line is we have a love for fish: a genuinelove for fish. this person as youcan see has a greater

than normal love for fish... [ laughter ] ...but the bottom line is,over the last hundred years, the technology that we use togo out and harvest the fish that we love, hasgreatly expanded. and not only that, thereare now billions of people on the planet, allof whom love fish. so what this has meant is that we're now seeingsignificant increased pressure

on many of our livestocksof fish. and remember, it was only 200years ago - 150 years ago - that marine biologists saidit was absolutely impossible to fish out a marinefish species. a hundred and fifty yearsago the most prominent marine scientists in the worldsaid it was impossible. and we're there. we're there. so the bottom line is,

human populations haveincreased dramatically over the last 50 years. we can see human populationgrowth, but we also see that the number of landingsof fish have now increased, we're now landingsomewhere in the neighborhood of over 7 milliontons of fish per year. so with this increasedhuman population growth and increased demand becauseseafood is good for us, we are now starting to seeproblems in our oceans.

and many of the populationsand the things that we like to eat -- in fact rightnow fish harvest is increasing at a rate of 13 percentper year. that's unbelievable. so the thing is, is that originally peoplefished to live. we fished for subsistence. that's how we survived. and then, interestinglyenough there's some people

who got really good at fishingbut they were horrible farmers. so what happened is thisled to the evolution of commercial fishing. you could trade yourfish for corn if you were reallygood at catching fish. so what happenedwas, we see a shift from subsistence fishingtowards more commercial. and over the last 100 years, commercial fishing has explodedlargely based on technology.

we have ships thatcan span the ocean. we have ships that don'thave to come into port. they can fish 365 days a yearbecause they have fuel ships that come out to supply them. they can or freezefish right on board. they offload it. they're constantly out at sea. so as a result thetechnology has enabled us to keep boats fishingall the time.

but what we're beginning tosee - particularly in the state of california - is a lossof our commercial fisheries. now what we're seeing is ashift from more commercial to recreational fishing. and in southern californiawith 22 million people, you'll be shocked at howmany people sport fish in southern california. so trends in world fisheries? marine fisheries now are landing

about 70 million tonsof fish per year. it's estimated that the firstsale value of that fish brings in over 50 billiondollars worldwide. so we're talking major, major contributionsto worldwide economy. fish dominant the landings. they account for 80 percent of everything that'slanded in terms of seafood. so we're talking fish here: notnecessarily crabs or lobsters

or all those other mollusksthat we like to eat. and of the 17 thousandspecies of fish found in the marine environment,believe it or not 50 percent of the 7 million tonscomes from only 20 species. that's it: 20 speciesconstitute 50 percent of that. so presently, there are fewenvironments of the ocean that is vast on our planet that are not currentlybeing exploited for some marine resourcefor food.

so fishing technology used tobe limited by the technology that we had, how fast yourboat was, could you refrigerate or prepare fish at sea? now that's no longera limitation. the only limitation that we haveare the economic costs of doing that because when it comes toyou going to the supermarket and buying the fish, once fishgets over 20-30 dollars a pound, you're not goingto buy it anymore which means it becomestoo expensive

for somebody to go catch. so we've seen a shift in fishingpressure from what used to be "it was the commercialfisherman that were responsible for the decimation offishing in our oceans " to now with all the people we haveon the planet we're saying, "increase significant pressuresby recreational fishers." something that people neverthought could happen before. so the bottom line is, it'shard to just point our finger at the commercial fisheries

and say they've been thesource of the problem. recreational fishinghas become very popular. and after world wari and world war ii, there was actuallyfederal initiatives to encourage people coming backfrom the war to go fishing. it was a great way for themto reunite with their families to get back to the things that were inherentin being an american. so in southern california,it's estimated there are

over 1 million sport fishersin southern california alone. they generate over abillion dollars in revenue to the economy fromsport fishing alone. so you can't tell people thatthey can't sport fish anymore because it's actuallypart of our culture. for many of us, our most fondestmemories come from fishing with our fathers orour grandfathers. so now we're seeing a state where our fisheriesare being depleted,

our resources arebeing depleted, commercial fisheries aregoing out of business because they can nolonger be viable, they over capitalizein many cases. recreational fishers are beingtold they can't fish anymore in their favorite spotsbecause we've depleted many of the resources. but these have important effects on not just our economy,but our culture.

so california fisheriesare not immune. we've seen this notjust worldwide, but in california as well. so we've had a hundred years of heavy exploitationhere in california. and here we just havea really basic graph. on this axis, we have fish size. these are the sizefrequencies of the various fish. so this is from 1984 to-- oop, i'm losing --

we're losing juice kelly. there we go. to 1995. and what you see isthat fish are getting smaller and smaller and smaller. that red line that you see isthe size at sexual maturity which means now for rockfish- this graph is for rockfish - most of the rockfishthat are being landed in the fishery haven'treached sexual maturity yet. they haven't had a chance tospawn which means their chances

of replenishing thepopulation are going down. this for a fisheriesbiologist is not a good sign. in addition, we've lost a lot ofthe critical habitat that many of these species usein the last 100 years. we've filled in manyof our wetlands. we've filled in manyof our estuaries to build marinas,to build condos. and as a result, theseare critical habitats for many of these species.

so these species aregetting a double whammy. we're not only taking theadults out of the population, but we're taking awaycritical nursery habitat for their larvae. we have pollution: bothchemical, thermals, siltation as the resultof coastal development. we have shifts from commercialto more recreational impacts which changes theway managers go about managing these fisheries.

so this -- remember just sportfishing alone contributes a billion dollars toour local economy. so it's not so simpleto come in and say, "we have to protect fish. we're going to tell everybodyyou can't take them anymore." that is not a viable solution. one of the thingswe've been focusing on at cal state long beach in our fisheries researchis providing solutions

that keep peoplefishing but help mitigate for some of these problems. so i'm going to talka little bit about the live fishfishery in california. this fishery evolved to supplyprimarily asian seafood markets, both in california andworldwide with fish. and the way it works isyou go into the fish market and you actually pick outthe fish that you want, they'll take it outand they'll cook it

for you right there on the spot. so this fishery evolved incalifornia in the late 80s. it peaked in 1997 and ittargets primarily rockfish, flatfish, california sheephead. and generally whatthey're looking for is a fish bigenough to fit on a plate. so when they cook the fish foryou, they cook the whole fish. it's beautifully displayed. but the fish has to be bigenough to fit on a plate.

so it's the result for everysingle one of these species because of the demand, wesaw a significant decline in catch rates forall these species. and when we see thatsign of decline, that's usually a bad sign. now to give you an idea ofhow much these fish are worth, the average value of livefish is 18 dollars per pound. they typical fish landedranges between 2 and 4 pounds: so you're talking 36to 72 dollars per fish.

that is a valuable resource. so as you can imagine, this fishery was hammeringthese populations pretty hard because it was verylucrative for fishers. so one of the key species wewant to look at that differs from all the rest is thiscalifornia sheephead. so the californiasheephead is a local species. those colors. i'm colorblind.

does that look rough to you? okay, so about the font. they range from baja tomonterrey, california but a heart of theirpopulations are found they're found at depthsof about 150 meters which is about 300 feet. they're typically found overrocky reefs and kelp beds. they eat things like seaurchins, crabs, brittle stars, amphipods, eating primarilythe little invertebrates

that live on the reef. males can reach 3feet in length. so most of these -- only thebiggest individuals will get that big. most of them stayaround 12 inches or so. so there are 2 fisheries forthis species in california. one is the sport fishery whichtargets primarily using hook and line or spear fishers and they target primarilythe big, large males.

and as a result ofdepletion of the stocks, california state fishing and game implemented a minimumsize limit of 12 inches in 1999. but there's also acommercial fishery - this is the live fish fishery - that targets thespecies using both traps and what's called stick[inaudible]: hook and line gear. and they're generallytargeting the females which are plate size: smallenough to fit on a plate.

so they also implemented aminimum size limit in 1999 at 12 inches andthen they raised that to 13 inches in 2001. so the state wastrying to mitigate for the population decline. so if we take a lookat this graph, you can see that thecommercial landings - total commercial landings - were actually verylow up until the 80s.

and recreational fishing of sheephead was the mostprominent part of the fishery. but starting in the late 80s when the live fishfishery took off, commercial fishing exceededthe sport fishing landings. and these 2 fisheriescombined were landing over 370 thousand poundsof sheephead a year. problem was, we didn't reallyknow anything about the biology of this species so fish and gamewas scrambling to get a handle

on how to manage this when wedon't thoroughly understand its biology. so one of the ways they go about doing this is managerswill implement bag limits. a fisher can only take x numberof fish per day, per angler. or they'll set quotas forthe commercial fishery. they can only take so many tons and then the fishery getsclosed for that year. they'll implementrestricted access

which means onlya certain number of commercial boats canactually fish in the fishery. or you'll have season closures. you can say, "oh you canonly take them outside their breeding season." and then of coursethere are size limits. so the bottom line is all of these harvest controltechniques require a catch a release which was somethingthat we were very interested in.

so the way size limits workis you have small females; those small females reach a size where they reachsexual maturity. so at minimum size atsexual maturity you want to allow all the fishin the fishery to have at least 1 season to spawn. so if you're going toset a minimum size limit, you want to set that justbeyond that minimum size. that will allow all theindividuals in the population

at least 1 season to spawnbefore they can be harvested which means any of thefish below that size, you have to throw back. but all the fish biggerthan that size you can keep. question is and theproblem is fish and game was implementingthese minimum size limits and they did not know whetherthe fish that were caught by anglers and thrownback actually survived. so fishers are going,"wait a minute.

you're going to make me throwback fish that could die? why can't i just keep those? that doesn't seem right." so we figured this would be avery fruitful area of research. so catch and release is basedin this concept of survival. so if you force fishersto throw back fish, some of those fish may notlive because of the impacts of actually catching andbringing it up from the boat, measuring them and saying,"oh they're too small.

throw them back." but some of them may survive. fisheries managersgo, "that's good." but there can be problems. just because they survivedoesn't mean there aren't sub-lethal effects. there could be physiologicaleffects that could impair growth, thatcould affect their reproduction, that could impairtheir immune function.

so even though they live,they could be set back as the result of this practice. and in addition, these physiological impactscan influence their behavior. and these behavioral things caninfluence how fast they move, how much they eat,all sorts of factors. these are things that wedon't know before fish and game is implementingthese regulations. they didn't know theanswer to these questions.

so what we want to know iswhat are the effects of catch and release on sheephead? fishers have to throw themback but do they even live? do they survive that process? so we wanted to quantify theirbehavioral stress that comes from being caught in eithera trap on a hook and line. we wanted to quantifytheir physiological stress and i'm a pseudo physiologist. i have to collaborate with folks

like kelly who's areal physiologist or kevin kelly [assumedspelling] who's our fish endocrinologist. and i think he'll be talkingat the next fellows' breakfast. so i enlisted their help tohelp me with the physiology but i was working on thebehavior and i got some help from them to do the physiology. and we wanted to compareboth the commercial practice of catching fish in trapsand the recreational practice

of catching themon hook and line. if you catch them, if you throwthem back, are their impacts? so and the question was todetermine how many survive? fish and game didn't even know that before theyimplemented these regs. so to measure thebehavioral stress, what we do and what my lab specializes inis we put acoustic transmitters on fish or in them - spytechnology i call it - and we can let the fish goand we follow them around

and see where they go. so of course the problemis when you catch a fish and you surgically implant thesetags, you affect its behavior. so we needed a control for that. so the control that we use for that is sometimes we hidethe bait - we hide a transmitter in a piece of bait - andthen we feed it to them. we don't have to touch them. fish doesn't knowit has a transmitter

and we can followthe fish around and we can compare thebehavior that we see from fish fed transmittersto those that we handled and then surgicallyimplant transmitters. and then we can measure thingslike how fast they move, how much area they use to determine the impactsif catch and release. and then using kevinkelly's tools, we can take a blood samplefrom these fish and we can look

at things like some oftheir endocrine responses or biochemical assays to determine theirphysiological stress as a result of catchand release. so one of the things that wecan do is we can rapidly catch a fish, take a blood sample andbefore the stress hormones begin to circulate, we candetermine its pre-stress level. and then we can hold fishfor 10 to 15 minutes. those hormones beginto circulate;

then we can get a measure onhow stressful that practice is. so what we did was we wentout and we caught fish on hook and line and we used the samemethods that most anglers use. and then we'd pull the fishup and take a blood sample, we'd take a measurement, puta transmitter in the fish, hold it for 15 minutes, take another blood sample,and let the fish go. some of the fish we actuallycaught in commercial traps just like commercial fishermen use.

we'd bring those up andsample the exact same way. so we're comparingboth recreational and commercial type fishing. so the fish were brought up. we would anesthetize them. we'd do surgery. many of my students have beentaught how to do surgery. we can make an incisionin the body wall. we can insert thesetransmitters which cost

about 300 bucks a pieceso they're not cheap. we'd stitch the fishup, roll the fish over, put an external tag in itsback so we could identify it if we saw it again underwaterand then released the fish. and then the students could thenfollow around and track the fish for periods of up to 72 hours. in addition, while the fish was out we could take a small bloodsample from the caudal vein. this is like goingto the phlebotomist

and getting a littleblood sample. we would take a blood sample assoon as we brought the fish out. and then after the surgery, we'd take another bloodsample and hold that fish. then we'd release them. so here's a fish that wewould -- done surgery on. here you can see the tag. the fish is swimming around. and then we can evenfollow fish underwater using

underwater hydrophones. so quite often not only couldwe track the fish from the boat, we could follow themaround underwater and make sure they looked okay. so the bottom line is thetracking part is very laborious. i have a student herethat's doing this now. she spends a lot oftime in this boat. so the bottom line is you putthe transmitter in the fish. the fish is underwater.

the transmitter producesan acoustic signal that can be detectedby a hydrophone. somebody has to follow thefish around but by doing that we can know theexact location of the fish over a period of 24 to 72 hours. so here is a locationover at catalina, where we did all this work. and this is an areacalled big fishermen's cove and it's a marineprotected area.

so this red dottedline you see is part of the marine protected area. each one of these polygonsrepresents a neighborhood of a california sheepheadthat we tracked. so the first thingthat this indicated to us was these werefish that we tracked over periods up to a month. we noticed that all thefish that we caught, surgically implantedtransmitters in, all survived.

no problem with survival. even though we usedthe same practices that normal fishers use pluswe did surgery on those fish. so these representthe home ranges. and the other thing i wantto point out is that most of these fish spend most of their time inside thislittle marine protected area. so of the 24 fishthat we tracked - somebody out in the boatfollowing them around -

we detected all the fishand the average time of the battery length of thetransmitter is about 40 days. we detected all fishfor at least 34 days. we also used long term acoustictransmitters that last a year. and we had underwater receiversthat are constantly listening for the fish in the area. we detected up to 16fish for 318 days. that was the lifeof the transmitter. so we were able to confirmbasically a hundred percent

survival regardless of thefishery method that we used and regardless of the fact that we actually surgicallyimplanted transmitters. fishers don't do that. we wouldn't encouragefishers to do that. so despite we do all thesethings to these fish, we know that they're surviving. so when we look attheir behavior, we see some interesting trends.

so remember, these are the fishthat we caught on hook and line. these are fish thatwe caught in traps. so these fish had transmitterssurgically implanted into them but those fish over there arefish that we fed transmitters. we didn't touch them. so the first thingthat we noticed, if we look at theirrates of movement, how fast they're movingover the course of the day. fish that were line caught

and trap caught movedsignificantly slower than those that we just fedtransmitters to. so this indicated to us that there are somebehavioral impacts of this catch and release and thesurgical implantation. if we compare that with howmuch area or space they use, we noticed that fishthat we caught and handled used less spacethan - not only swam slower - but they used less area.

now as you can imagine whenyou get out of surgery, you're not going to berunning marathons, right? you're going to take a dayor two off and you're going to be moving a little slower. so we do know that thereare behavioral impacts as a result of this. however, if we take the fishthat we did surgeries on and we look at theirfirst 6 hours of tracking, we see that they'removing significantly slower

than 48 hours later. so within 48 hours after surgical implantationthese fish are moving at the same rate as the fishthat we fed the transmitter to. so within 48 hours, thosebehavioral effects of catch, release and surgery are gone. so if we compare that tokevin kelly's physiology, we see some reallyinteresting trends. so one of the things that dr.kelly was looking at was -

and my access labelshave disappeared - on this access, wehave cortisol. so everybody knows thatwhen you get stressed out, cortisol is a stress hormonethat enables your body to deal with the stress. if you want experience stress,come here during finals. you'll see studentscoughing and sneezing and experiencing allsorts of immune depression as a result of cortisol spikes.

so what kevin's studentsdid was we took these fish, we brought them up and thatfishing practice stresses the fish. we take a blood sample. we hold them for periodsof up to a month in tanks. this is what most people do when they measurephysiological stress. what do we see? cortisol spikes andit remains elevated

for prolonged periods of time. it actually takeseven after a month, they're still showingsigns of chronic stress. if we compare that to lactate --so remember, we're catching fish on hook and line,they're fighting against the line,they're struggling. remember, just like goingout and running really hard. you build up lacticacid in your muscles. we see a spike in lactate butthat spike in lactate is gone

within 12 hours evenin captive holding. now here's the interesting part. if we take fish that we capture- remember we held these fish in captivity so we couldserially sample them again and again - look attheir cortisol levels. they're stressed out. so we know that not only isthis contributed by the process of catch and release, butsome of it's being stressed out by being held in a tank.

here's that same curve. we took some fish that wecaught, took a blood sample, stressed them andthen let them go. then we went out fishing againand again and again trying to recapture those fish. we didn't keep them. we didn't hold them. we let them go. here are the fish thatwe recaptured over time.

so what -- this is 18hours after we captured and stressed the fish. remember according to our data, this is where thatfish should have been: within 15 minutes after holding. so what this means is within 18hours after catch and release, physiologically cortisol'sback to baseline. and it remains there. these are all the fishwe caught and released.

this has never been done before. every study that'slooked at stress in fish have keptfish in captivity. we now know thatcauses chronic stress. you can't use that asa sign of recovery. so this is the first studythat's actually demonstrated both behavioral andphysiological recovery from a catch and release event. so our conclusions?

first of all, this catch andrelease practice implemented by fish and game works becausewe know even despite the fact that we were doingsurgery on these fish, a hundred percent survival. in addition, there'sboth a behavioral and physiological impact ofcatch and release but it appears to be fairly short lived. within 18 hours, fish are back to normal both behaviorallyand physiologically.

angling has slightly higherstress levels than trap but not significantly,and behavioral and physiological recoverywithin 12 to 24 hours. so seasons, size limits, quotas,things that require fishers to throw back undersized,immature fish actually work. it should help thepopulation recover. so with that, i'm going to turnthings over to kelly who's going to talk about the otherhalf of the story. >> i have to apologizefor my voice.

i'm really sorry. before i start, is this betterif i have a microphone on or do you -- does itmake any difference? >> keep the microphone. >> keep the microphone on? okay. i normally have like i said a verymelodious voice so i'm sorry. chris has told you quite a bitabout the california sheephead. he's told you where they live.

he's shown you someof their home ranges. and he's told you a little bit about the fishingpressure on these fish. but what he has graciouslyleft for me to do is to tell you what i findthe most compelling part about california sheephead and that is theirreproductive biology. sheephead are sexuallydimorphic. that just means males lookdifferent from females.

so here we have atypical female. she's got a salmon colorthroughout with a white chin. and the typical male with thesalmon color in the middle with a black headand a black tail. males also develop amore prominent forehead. we call it a nuckle [assumedspelling] hump that they develop as they mature as males. so they look different. these fish are also haremic andthis means just like it sounds.

the males retain aharem of females. depending on the social statusand the size of the male, he may maintain a harem of 1female, 2, 4 maybe even 15. he had sexual access tothose females but he also has to defend them from other malesthat may be in the population. finally, sheepheadare protogenous sequential hermaphrodites. i know it's early but yesi said hermaphrodites. typically as humans, when wehear the word hermaphrodite we

think "oh, genetic malfunction." and it's true. hermaphrodites of course whereyou have both testes and ovaries in the same individual,that can happen in humans. it's extremely rare and thoseindividuals are sterile. they're not fertile. this is a result ofgenetic malfunction. but in fishes thisis not the case. in fact, there'sabout 21 families

in fishes includingthe [inaudible] family which sheephead are a part wherehermaphrodism is quite common. hermaphrodites in fishescan be either simultaneous or sequential. simultaneous hermaphrodites haveboth ovaries and testes working in one individualat the same time. so they're producing eggs, they're producingsperm at the same time. sequential hermaphroditesare all born one gender

and then transition orsequence into the next gender at some course of theirlifespan or they can do this. if the hermaphroditesare sequential, they can either beprotandrous or protogenous. protandrous or protoandro: so first male. they're all born maleand then at some point in their life they cantransition into female. that means those testesturn into ovaries. the most typical example orthe most common example of this

that i've seen at least are theanemone fish of the clown fish. so it's true, the rumors you'veheard, nemo was a hermaphrodite. we can also have protogeny. so proto [inaudible]:so first female. this means that the fish areall born female in a population and at some point that ovarythat was producing estrogen, that was producing eggs,transitions and becomes a sperm and testosteroneproducing testis. a great example ofthis are the sheephead.

so here you see thisgorgeous male who - just to clarify this one -that used to be a female. right? he was born a female. and at some point transitioned. this is why i find thisfeedback so interesting. how they can switchtheir sex like this. so you now know what thisphrase means technically: protogenous sequentialhermaphrodites. right? but let's think aboutthis for a minute from the point

of view of managing the fishery. chris told you that the fishery, the population levelsare going down. to manage this fishery- sorry about my voice - to manage this fishery,usually you use models with a male and a female. so you have 2 genders. but remember here in sheepheadwe have males, we have females and now we have a thirdgender: and intersex fish

that we call transitional fish. this throws a lot of thosecomputer models out the window. you can't manage thisin a traditional way because now you have thisadditional gender to deal with. now if you were managing afishery you might also be interested in what induces afemale to transition to a male? what would cause this? in fact, this has beenvery well studied. it's not age.

it's not size. in fact it's changesin social structure. changes in the populationstructure. here we have our harem. so we have a large male. he's got a largeharem of females. if that male were to die or tobe removed from the population, then the most dominant femalewould transition into a male. so that same individualwould become a male.

so here she's got her harem. her ovaries become testes. her female sex behaviorbecomes male sex behavior. she becomes a male. now sheephead have beendoing this for centuries: this is what sheephead do. right? this has beengoing on with no problem. but now we have to havethis added lens when we look at this population change

through the lens offishing pressure. now chris told you about thetwo different types of fishing: sport fishery and thecommercial fishery. so -- and their differenttargets of large males or plate size females. so if we look at this haremagain, in an area with a lot of recreational pressure where they're targetingthose large males and you would see largemales being removed

from the population at a veryrapid rate during the fishing season, what you might findhappening as this continues to occur that the females mightnot have time to gain the size and the body mass that theywould have before transitioning. and you might see changes inthe size of males at transition. because of this, this idea that fishing pressure mayactually be changing the population structureof sheephead. in addition to the fact that thesheephead fishery management is

based on data collectedin the 1970s. excellent data but datacollected in the 1970s. and as chris showed you,fishing pressure has changed substantially since then. this really led usto this collaboration to understand whatdo sheephead -- what does the populationlook like now? what's out there right now? so our object -- whoa, whoa.

sorry. our objectivewas multi-fold. first of all we wantedto get an updated report on the sheephead population. we want to know how many malesare out there, how many females, how many transitionals? because again, if we haveincreased fishing pressure, perhaps we have an increasein this transition rate. we wanted to compare this tothis historic study in the 1970s to see if anything haschanged with fishing pressure.

as a reproductivebiologist i wanted to know if they were functionalduring transition. what is that intersexgonad doing? and finally, we wanted to knowabout the different populations across the california coast. the historic study was done atcatalina island, but of course as chris told you therange of sheephead - at least in california - spansthe whole california coast up to the northernchannel islands.

so we got at the time ourundergraduate researchers out there and they set out toquantify the number of males, females and transitionals. and our initial part ofthis study was to start at santa catalina islandright off our coast. so here we are. so right off ourcoast because that's where the historicstudies were done. the first thing that ourstudents came back with us

after they started catching fishwas a little bit of a roadblock. you see, it turns out thatyes sheephead are sexually dimorphic, but just like humans who are sexuallydimorphic, there's a range. so it's not that textbookperfect female versus male. how many males doyou think are here? three. one male. oh, they're all male. turns out that there's 2 males,3 females and 3 transitionals.

so you see, our studentsactually became quite expert at judging this butit's very difficult. of the 116 individuals that wecaught during that first year, they sexed 59 of themcorrectly just based on this externalmorphology alone. and that's a percentagerate of 50 percent. any [inaudible] student herewill tell you that's not where you want to be. that that's not good.

so how were we able toknow what they really were? well, we went to the gonads. this is not a sheephead. this is a cross section of afish so you could see the gonad and see too what it lookslike in the body here. here's an ovary. gonads were removed andthen sections were taken from the gonad. they were embedded in wax

and the student sectionedthe gonads serially into 6 micron sections. this took thousands of hours. they did this for hundredsof fish to do this -- quite a laborious process. once they were able, they tookthe slices and they put them on slides so we could lookat what the gonad looked like under the microscope. and their resultswere beautiful.

they did an excellent job. it's clear the differencebetween and ovary and a testis. that's for sure. so here we have an ovary andhere we have a typical testis. in the ovary you can seethese pale circles here. these are the [inaudible]that will eventually combine with sperm to producea new individual. those [inaudible] aresurrounded by supporting cells and i've circled thewhole structure in blue.

it's called the follicle. so our ovaries arefull of follicles. in testes, you have developingsperm spermatocytes here: so less mature and more mature. and this is typicalof a testis -- of a fish testis wherethey develop in packets. the transitional gonads lookedsubstantially different. these are at thesame magnification so the first thing you can seeif that they're quite atrophied.

we do see follicles. we do see packets of thedeveloping spermatocytes but nothing is mature. so our students answered that -- one of those first questionsright -- well not right away. it took them a long time butone of the first pieces of data that we got was that thetransitionals are nonfunctional. there's not a --they're not ovulating and they're not releasingsperm which is important --

well, it may havebeen important. you might think, "well isthis something that matters to have the transitionalsnonfunctional?" you might even expect that. in fact, if you look at thehistoric data, the data taken in the 1970s, youmight not think that that's a big deal at all. because the historic data at catalina island showedno transitionals during the

breeding season. sheephead have abreeding season. they have a non-breeding season. when you're in breeding seasonand you are in the wild, you must seize the day, right? you have to take that chanceand you have to breed. this is it. this is your one shotto pass your genes to the next generation.

you don't transition. you don't have nonfunctionalgonads. you need to breed. so when would you transition? you would transition inthe non-breeding season and that's what they found -- warner [assumed spelling]found in the 1970s. however, our [inaudible]undergraduates found at catalina island whenthey collected in 2004

through 2006 a 26percent transitionals in the breeding season. these data are from the breedingseason only is this percent of the catch, immaturefish, females, transitionals and males. the females, transitionalsand males are all mature fish: 26 percent of thiscatch is nonfunctional for breeding season and that'sa big deal if we're trying to manage this fishery.

that's a really big deal. what we wanted to do thenis to see well you know, catalina has a lot ofsport fishing pressure. it's easy access to losangeles, to long beach, so maybe catalina was unique. so we wanted to expand our studythroughout the whole california coast to the northernchannel islands with different or less reduced fishing pressure or different [inaudible]pressures.

but before we could do that, wereally needed to get a handle on the sexing of these fishbecause taking the fish, killing them, taking the gonads,going through serial section, that would be an enormous task. and also besides that i mean wehave students who would do it, but we wanted somethingthat would be applicable: something that we could taketo the california department of fish and game and say,"here's a quick test. here's something you could do."

not "well you could take outthe gonads and spend thousands of hours sectioning them." no, they don't want that. so the first thing thatwe needed to do was to develop an easier lessinvasive, less expensive method for sexing these sheephead. and this is what ourundergraduate student kari loak [assumed spelling] started and now she's a graduatestudent in our program.

she came up with a verycomplex series of measurements that she took on the fish. maybe we couldn'ttell at first glance, okay black head black tail, maybe that didn'twork for sexing. but maybe there'd be ameasurement like 4 head depth because remember, theydevelop that [inaudible] hump. or something else that ifwe just had a digital image of the fish would be easyto tell if it was male,

female or transitional. kari spent a lotof time doing this, digitally analyzing hundreds offish and she learned something that is true of sciencethat it doesn't always work. in fact she found nodifference for any measurement. and i'm showing you 5 -- she actually did 15different measurements. nothing worked. so this is standardlength on the bottom.

we have head, area head,outline, forehead length, forehead depth, body depth --she had tons of measurements. what these graphs are showingyou are symbols for males, females and transitionals allpiled on top of each other. nothing stood out. so kari set out to developan easier, less expensive, less invasive methodof sexing again. this time she went to theendocrine side of things. we had blood sampleslike chris showed you

from all of those fish. and you saw that bloodsamples could be withdrawn. you don't have to kill the fish. you could catch and release. and this will be a great thingfor department of fish and game. she set out to measure estrogenwhich is made in high amounts by ovaries and testosterone which is made inamounts by testes. and here she scored.

so this is a graphof 17-beta estradiol. seventeen beta estradiol'ssimply the most dominant estrogen in fishes and inhumans and most animals. so we have 17-beta estradiol and [inaudible] permil in the blood. you can see that immature, transitional maleshave very low estrogen but females have high amounts. and you would expect this.

for testosterone, shemeasured 11-keto testosterone, the most dominanttestosterone in fishes: not in humans but in fishes. and we see immatureshave a nominal amount: females have noneor virtually none. transitionals and malesboth have testosterone. so this is a good start. we can tell females. she would have highestrogen, no testosterone.

but we can't tell the differencebetween transitionals and males at this point withour endocrine assays. however, if we thinkabout this reproductively, this does give us an insight into this transitionof the gonad. number 1 it means that thosefemales, once they commit to transitioning, shut downthat production of estrogen and immediately crankout testosterone. this must be an early response.

so we're actually looking moreinto that study seeing how soon that this testosteronebegins as a possible clue to help us understandthe transition. kari and mike and anumber of undergraduates in our laboratories have shown that transitionalsare nonfunctional. during that breeding season,they're there at catalina and this is a big deal. they found that morphology -what the animals look like -

is not necessarily thebest way to sex them but that we can use hormoneanalysis to provide alternative, non-lethal methods forsampling the populations. kari has gone on. she's actually sampledsheephead from san diego to the northern channel islands. she'll be defending herthesis in a couple of months. i invite you all to comeand listen to her data. she's done a fabulous job.

and we've been able to reportour findings to the department of fish and game letting themknow about these transitionals and the breeding season. letting them knowthat the population out there is notwhat it appears. and that we've gottengreat feedback from them. and so this is exciting that ourresearch has been so applicable and will continueto be applicable. now i am out of timebecause we started late.

i have 4 minutes or 3 minutesof what you can do as a consumer to pick the besteco-friendly fish. if you'd like me to dothat, i can or i can stop. >> [ inaudible audienceresponse ] >> okay, okay, alright. let's go. so usually wheni start talking about - because i'm not a fish personeven though i guess it sort of doesn't say that - buti start talking about fish, gonads, and people start --they say, "okay, yeah, yeah.

you always talk about gonadsbut tell me what can i do? do i buy sheephead or not? do i eat sheephead or not?" that's what they want to knowso that's why i wanted to end with something that you guyscould take home a little bit of information about whatyou can do as a consumer. so i have a few slides - someshopping tips - on buying fish. some of this is fromsunset magazine. i'll have that websiteup as long with a number

of other websites that youcan use for information. so number 1, the thing to dois make it western: california, oregon, washington,even british columbia. we have the most restrictive, the most eco-friendlyfishing policies of anywhere in the world. so look to see whereyour fish come from. it's better here than atlantic. it's better here thanin other countries.

make it western and you'remaking a good eco-choice. eat a variety of fish. i like salmon. you may like -- a lotof people like salmon but if we only eat salmon,that's not good for the salmon. so there's a number of fishout there that are tasty, delicious and heart healthy. and when you buy them in season,they're cheaper, they're fresher and it's better for the fish.

it's better for the environment. finally, i get askedthis question a lot: wild versus farmed. and the answer is, it depends. salmon, wild: wildalaska salmon. imprinting that on your brain. wild alaska salmon. that's the best. that's the most eco-friendlything you can do.

or wild pacific salmon at least. don't buy farmed becauseit's not eco- friendly but farmed rainbow trout, the rainbow trout fishery isactually very eco-friendly. so you have to kindof look in and some of these websites i'll give you at the end will giveyou more information. a lot of people areconcerned about toxins. mercury levels, you'veheard this in your fish,

mercury levels in the fish. well a very quick primeron bioaccumulation, mercury is ubiquitous. it's everywhere in ourrivers, streams, oceans. it's represented by thered dots in this diagram. if you're a small individual, you'll take up smallamounts of mercury. if you're a large individual,you'll also take up mercury from your environment.

but also if you eat otherindividuals that have taken up mercury, you get theirmercury load as well. so the farther up yougo on the food chain, you notice that themercury levels increase. your fish shopping tip:don't buy top predators. top predators havemore mercury loads. don't buy shark. don't buy swordfish. it has the most toxins.

stay lower on the food chainif you can like sardines. or if you want to eat atop predator like salmon, go for something likesalmon that's short lived. salmon mature at 3, 4, 5years as opposed to something like tile fish who has 10 or15 years to accumulate mercury. so this is a way to reducethe toxins that you get. finally, it dependson how you cook it; toxins are storedin the fat in fish. if you grill, thefat drips off, right?

it goes away. if you deep fry the fish thenthe fat seals in the toxins. it also i think cancelsout the heart healthiness if you deep fry. so, okay so no fish and chips. i'm ruining your whole morningby telling you there's no -- no, there are plentyof fish left to eat. there's plenty ofwonderful choices out there: beautiful fish that arehealthy, that are safe,

and that you caneat eco-consciously. you know? withouttoo much guilt. so just a few of the choices. if you forgot what i justscrolled really quickly for you, you can go to montereybay aquarium. they have a little printout. it's not this large. it's actually pocket size. so you could take it with you.

and they have best choicesfor seafood that says, "best choices, good alternativesand things to avoid." they also have bestchoices in sushi. speaking of sushi, if you liketo go out and you don't cook, the long beach aquarium hasactually partnered with a number of restaurants in longbeach that promise that they will onlyuse sustainable fish. and that's a bid deal. so you can spend yourmoney as a consumer

and actually make a goodenvironmental choice. so here are the websitesthat i promised you. i will leave these up here. the seafood for the future,this is from the aquarium of the pacific andtheir website. monterey bay aquarium, if you want to downloadthose little cards to take with to the store. the www.edf.org will giveyou the mercury pcb loads

and it's a very userfriendly website. and finally, i got all of thosebeautiful pictures from www. sunset.com and theirshopping tips. so i want to thank you for beinghere, for being here early, for listening tomy horrible voice. i'm so sorry. i want to thank ourfunding agency. chris and i have a grantthrough california sea grant. we've had a grantthrough department of fish

and game, [inaudible]. the setc and the la rod andreel are groups of fishermen in the community thatsupport out students and that is a huge deal. we really thank them. there's been about amillion students working on this project. they've all done a greatjob and we appreciate them. and i appreciateyour time today.