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For decades, Winnipeggers have headed south to Grand Forks or Fargo, N.D., in search of a deal.
Turns out, some of our biggest fish have been doing the same thing.
Biologists working on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border have found two species of fish found in the Red River — channel catfish and the carp-like bigmouth buffalo — can travel hundreds of kilometres, sometimes swimming all the way from Winnipeg to Fargo and back, possibly in pursuit of food or the perfect place to spawn.
The long-distance travels of channel cats and bigmouth buffalo are among the findings of research aimed at illuminating what happens beneath the surface of the famously muddy water in the Red River drainage basin. |
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Since 2010, University of Nebraska-Lincoln biologist Mark Pegg and other U.S. researchers have been implanting T-shaped tags in Red River drainage-basin catfish in the hopes anglers and commercial fishers will call a 1-800 number when they discover one of the identification markers. So far, they've tagged 15,849 fish and received about 1,100 reports about their movements.
Then in 2016, Winnipeg research biologist Douglas Watkinson and his colleagues and Fisheries and Oceans Canada started implanting transmitters in seven species of fish and installed a grid of 205 receivers on the bottom of Lake Winnipeg, the Red River and some of its tributaries.
To date, Watkinson's team has tagged 786 walleye, freshwater drum, common carp, burbot, lake sturgeon, channel cats and bigmouth buffalo — and has detected their movements about 12 million times.
The scientists, who plan to present their findings Monday evening at a seminar in Winnipeg (Victoria Inn, 6:30 p.m., free admission), say they were surprised how far channel catfish and bigmouth buffalo travel along the Red River, especially considering the obstacles the fish face at the St. Andrews Lock and Dam in Lockport, Man., and a weir at Drayton, N.D.
"Buffalo are ripping back and forth all the way to Fargo," said Watkinson, co-author of the seminal Freshwater Fishes of Manitoba.
"We're not sure why, right — if it's related to feeding, maybe some exploring and just looking for potential spawning in the future? We're not even sure if they spawn every year, at this point." |
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