I talked with the political director of the Wisconsin Bass Federation who attended the presentation of documentation on the study. He pointed out some interesting things that haven’t come out.
1 The water where the fish were kept and had a disolved oxegen content that was not conducive to supporting life. They knew this going in to the study. They could have taken steps to supply additional O2 to these fish. If they had provided the same additional O2 to both the 125 fish in the contrel group and the tournement fish it would not have affected the ultimite goal of the study which was to determine the degree of negative affect Tournements have on fish.
2 The fish were not provided with food for 5 days. When was the last time you didn’t eat for 5 days. Food could have been provided. If they had provided the same food to both the 125 fish in the contrel group and the tournement fish It would not have affected the ultimite goal of the study which was to determine the degree of negative affect Tournements have on fish.
3 The control group consisted of 125 fish. Somewhere around 4 times that were used in the test group. Why? If a larger sample would provide greater accuracy then why wasn’t the size of the control group increased? The only real result is that the size of the dead fish numbers increased with the size of the study group. This increase in sample size for the caught fish serves only to make the results of the study less viable, comparable and accurate. An even more damaging impact of thgis biological blunder is that there is a inflated number of fish in the Tournement study that are attributed to dieing from stress of tournement handling. The folks like bigfish won’t see the study, it’s flaws, or the deceptive results. They will only see a big fish kill connected with those people in the fancy boats. The 39 fish that were found floating might be a better indicator of what is real. Even if that number was tripled wouldn’t that total be worth the hundereds of thousands of dollors that the event pumped into La Crosse?
4 The sheets that were handed out at the briefing had no identifying marks or logos as to where the information came from. If you are proud of your work wouldn’t you want to claim credit for it.
5 Experements are designed around an attempt to prove or disapprove a guess as to impact of an action on what is normally a consistant result. In this case the action was tournement angling and wiegh ins. The result would be the effect on mortality. There were no tests done on the culled fish. This was not a study on the evect of culling fish. It was a study of the effect of tournement fish handling practices and it’s impact on mortality. What ever the study was intended to prove or disprovewas masked in that the fish that were included in the study were ill cared for.
6 Whether the study was to determine the effect of culling or the effect of tournement fishing and wiegh ins on fish mortallity is an issue but not the real issue. The real issue is why this poorly design study was conducted and the health of the fish was not protected. These fish could have been hauled off to the fish hatchery and placed in ideal conditions and it would not have affected the results if in fact the results were attempting to address the question do tournement fish that have gone through the catching and wieghing of a tournement die as a result of that process. Instead the fish were put in the worse conditions possible and let the strongest survive.
7 As a result of their week in the studies version of the death camp an interesting thing happened. The tournement fish which were caught, held in livewells, brought up to the scales and wieghed survived at a 9% greater rate than the fish that were supplied as the test group. The icing, chemical treatments, fungacides, antibiotics and airation that tournement anglers are supplying these fish seem to be working.
THIS ENTIRE STUDY IS BAD SCIENCE!!!!!!!!
I am sure that the La Crosse paper printed info that was supplied to them. No explaination just alarming numbers and headline making stuff.
You folks in La Crosse can and should tell them to look for the truth.
The results of this study are not the truth.
These results are an opportunity for the La Crosse paper to raise a fuss and help find the truth.
Who out there in La Crosse is going to step up and make a fuss.
