I saw the email first thing Friday morning; a sawfish had been sighted in the Tampa Bay area. A man walking the beach in Redington Shores the day before had filmed a very small sawfish swimming in the shallow surf zone. Thanks to all the outreach and public education I’ve done in the area (including posting signs at fishing piers and boat ramps, manning booths at outdoor expos and fishing shows, hanging flyers at tackle stores and bait shops, and writing these monthly Sawfish News articles for magazines, newspapers, and blogs) he knew to share the details of his sawfish observation with us and submitted the video and location information to sawfish@myfwc.com. Andrew Wooley, who facilitates the sawfish hotline for Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, promptly forwarded the email to me since the sawfish was observed in my study area.
Since reports of sawfish on the Florida Gulf Coast north of Charlotte Harbor are rare, especially of small ones, it was critical to respond quickly. I promptly loaded my car with all the gear needed to catch, measure, and tag the sawfish if we could find it; though experience suggested this would be a proverbial needle in a haystack situation. Adam Brame, the NOAA Fisheries U.S. sawfish recovery coordinator, and I were at the location within two hours to start our search. We hit the beach and walked in opposite directions to maximize effort searching for the tiny sawfish in the shallow, coastal water. Within minutes Adam called me, he had found it!! I raced to his location and was astonished to see this little 28-inch-long sawfish in front of me. After easily catching it in a dip net*, we quickly collected several measurements, determined it was a female from the absence of claspers at the pelvic fins, tagged her with external and internal identification and tracking tags, collected a small piece of fin tissue (about the size of a pea) for genetic analysis, and released her.
Later that night we celebrated, after all we had just tagged and released an endangered sawfish in the Tampa Bay area!! But that was not the end of the story as more good news was on the way. A couple days later we received another report of a small sawfish in nearly the same location. So, my intern Matt Bernanke and I went back to the beach and repeated the search. Luck was again on our side, and we caught and tagged this second sawfish, a 24-inch male.
Now, in addition to the dozens of sawfish colleagues have tagged in south Florida, we have two sawfish in the Tampa Bay area to track and learn from!! These transmitters will last about two years and we will hopefully get movement data when these sawfish pass within range of stationary receivers placed in the Tampa Bay area and beyond. Our receivers are but a small part of a vast network of these listening stations throughout Florida through the iTAG and FACT programs. The fin clip samples will be processed by our sawfish geneticist, Kevin Feldheim at The Field Museum, to determine if the two sawfish are siblings and to provide additional information about their relatedness to other sawfish in our U.S. research database.
To find sawfish pups north of their typical nursery areas (Charlotte Harbor to Everglades National Park) was remarkably interesting and exciting; but it also raised several scientific questions. Why were these sawfish born in the unprotected, high-energy waters of a Gulf of Mexico beach instead of the safe, calm, mangrove-lined shorelines of Tampa Bay backwater areas? Although the two sawfish were the size we know them to be when born, did the mother intend to drop her young there or did something cause her to give birth early? Did she drop her entire litter of pups or only a few on her way to more suitable nursery habitat? Could this be a sign that smalltooth sawfish are expanding northward and are reestablishing in Tampa Bay? All are exciting questions that additional research will help us answer.
This story highlights the importance of citizen science and prompt teamwork communication; but citizen science only works when successful outreach campaigns educate the public. In this case, years of outreach in the Tampa Bay region finally paid off resulting in the multiple public reports of sawfish sightings. If you ever catch or see a sawfish anywhere in the United States, please share the information by visiting www.SawfishRecovery.org, calling 1-844-4SAWFISH, emailing sawfish@myfwc.com, or submitting the information through the FWC Reporter app. Your encounter report just might lead us to tag the next endangered smalltooth sawfish!
*All research activities were performed under the authority and guidelines of NMFS ESA permit #21857. Tax-deductible donations to help us continue sawfish research in the Tampa Bay area can be made at https://havenworth.wedid.it/.
Photo banner created by Dàlton M. Redwood
This piece was prepared online by Panuruji Kenta, Publisher, SEVENSEAS Media