fish camera

[narration]in the cool running steams of the texas hill country, where the water is clear and virtuallyundisturbed, there is a threat looming over one of the most important aquatic speciesthat live here. that species is the state fish of texas, the guadalupe bass. {music fades}

[doc harrison]mike, are you doing any good? [mike andrews]good at tying flies. [narration]doctor guy harrison and his friend mike andrews are fly fishing the north fork of the guadaluperiver. they're looking for one of river's

original species. [doc harrison]i got him, fish on! he's a guadalupe bass. he might be a hybrid, but he's guadalupe.he's a nice fish, it's about 14, 15 inches. i didn't know i had him hardly until i felthim because he didn't make much of a splash. he just kind of sucked it under. run somewater through your gills here so you can go. he put up a nice fight, put up a nice fight! {sounds of line being cast} [mike andrews]the guadalupe bass is a good sports fish. it puts up a fine fight. it's a pretty fish.it doesn't get real big, probably around three

pounds would be the largest. but you get somenice sized ones and they're native to our state. [doc harrison]the biggest problem is that most of the guadalupe bass you catch are really hybrids. as youknow it's the state fish. so we really ought to do something about that. [narration]a texas native, the guadalupe bass has been in danger of becoming extinct. that's becausethe popular small-mouth bass, who also inhabit the same streams, have been cross breedingwith the native guadalupe. [dr. gary garrett]small mouth bass were brought into texas by

texas parks & wildlife in the mid 70s to providean additional sport fish for anglers, having no idea that they might hybridize with ournative hill country guadalupe bass. [narration]with support from the upper guadalupe river authority and local fishing clubs, it's here,at heart of the hills fisheries science center that doctor gary garrett and science centertechnicians are trying to save the guadalupe bass. [dr. gary garrett]the problems with the hybridization of guadalupe bass were actually discovered back in thelate 70s. in the late 80s i got involved in it and we did a range-wide survey to determinethe extent of the problem and we found to

our dismay that it was quite extensive. wewere fairly certain if we didn't do anything, we would lose the fish entirely, this specieswould go extinct. [narration]extinction was not an option to doctor garrett. so, he helped devise a stocking program thatwould potentially bring back the guadalupe. [dr. gary garrett]we began work to raise thousands and thousands of pure guadalupe bass, put them back intothe system and simply overwhelm the hybrids. {sounds of water running over falls} [kra ahrens}let's go get em shane! [narration]fisheries technicians shane pavlicek and kra

ahrens are fishing for guadalupe bass at severalspots along nearby johnson creek. they are collecting data on the fish, a census of sorts,to find out who's who among the bass community. [dr. gary garrett]every fall we send the guys out to collect guadalupe bass. {line being cast out} [dr. gary garrettthe point of that is twofold. one is to just analyze the population to see how we're doingand what percentage of hybrids are out there. but then we also keep some of the purer largeadults, and hold them as our brood fish. [shane pavlicek]that's what were looking for that will make

a brooder right there. get him back to thehatchery, and hopefully get a bunch of fingerlings from that one. {music} [narration]catching the right fish can be a challenge. [kra ahrens]got me a little one! oh!i have another green sunfish another stinkin' sunfish.another green sunfish, those things are getting on my nerves! [narration]but persistence usually pays off.

[kra ahrens]there we go, good ol guadalupe bass! right there at my thumb is brown tooth patchon its tongue and that's uh one of the ways of identifying a guadalupe bass. [dr. gary garrett]after the fish are caught they're brought back to the research center. there we notelocation they were caught in, how many from each location and each fish is injected withan internal tag. [shane pavlicek]260 [dr. gary garrett]so each of these fish are individually identified. and we take fin clips off of the fish foranalysis.

[dr. gary garrett]in the very early days, we actually had to look at the fish and measure things like numbersof scales and fin rays and pretty much make our best guess as to whether it was pure orhybrid. but today we use the latest technology and that's dna analysis and we can tell notonly if it's pure or not. we can tell if it was a back-crossed hybrid. we can tell a lotabout its genetic history. the other nice thing about this technology is we don't haveto kill the fish to find out what's going on with them. we can literally just cut alittle bit of their fin. the fish are just fine. [narration]once the dna testing is completed, the pure

guadalupe bass are separated from the hybridsback at the science center. they'll be held through the winter months until spring. that'swhen mating pairs will be matched and moved to the ponds for spawning. {splashing water} [narration]it's a coordinated effort with mother nature, designed to produce as many fish as possible. [bobby wienecke]large. [dr. gary garrett]one large. [dr. gary garrett]another large.

[bobby wienecke]one small. [dr. gary garrett]one small. [dr. gary garrett]the critical stage is actually getting the fish out into the ponds and getting a successfulspawn. we've got to time it just right. if we put the fish out too early and we get alate norther we can lose everything so it's a real balancing and timing act to get itjust right. [narration]fisheries technician bobby wienecke grew up near the science center. he's been familiarwith the state fish practically all his life. [bobby wienecke]when i was a kid growing up, i used to fish

johnson creek and we used to catch a certainlittle bass and we always called it a river bass. but then i found out that they had thereal name of a guadalupe bass. [narration]part of bobby's job is to manage the productivity of the ponds. but the guadalupe thrive infast water, and getting them to spawn in open ponds wasn't easy. that was until the creation,å¯of the guadalupe bass condo. [bobby wienecke]it seems like they want to hang around rock ledges, under rocks and that's where we pickup most our fish. we more or less decided to come up with a condo that you set up ina pond that they would fill more secure. i think it's probably a 95% difference in justletting them go in a pond without any cover.

[narration]when the male has successfully attracted a female to the bass condo, she could lay upto 9000 eggs, which will only take a few days to hatch. the male will remain at the nestto protect the young from would be predators. after 3 months, the ponds are drained. thebrood fish are saved for future restocking efforts, but the fingerlings will be movedto their new home in johnson creek. [dr. gary garrett]we don't want to stock them at too small of a size because they'll just-basically we'lljust be putting fish food out in the river. we want them to be large enough to fend forthemselves and have a fairly good chance of survival.

{rippling creek} [dr. gary garrett:]once we get to the creek, what we do is find good locations, good habitat, good hidingplaces, and the kind of places that guadalupe bass are designed to hide in. they know, theyrecognize that this is where i belong and they'll move right into their habitat. [david wilson]we're putting them in slowly so that they can adjust to this new environment. we'reworking with the state fish of texas here. so that's kind of a one-of-a-kind deal. [dr. gary garrett]the plan for the program is to stock intensively

for 5 years. what i want to do is put a quarterof a million fish into the guadalupe river and its tributaries every year and in doingthat i feel pretty confident we're going to push that hybridization percentage down toaround zero. if we do that, we probably can say we've saved the guadalupe bass. [narration]the efforts by heart of the hills fisheries science center, are making an difference.and if dr. garrett has a say in the matter, the guadalupe bass will long endure as theofficial state fish of texas.