Products CWT VI Alpha VIE AutoFish Counter Choosing Product List Prices Warranty
| | AutoFish System TM07 January 2008 - Mobile Tagging Trailer Special Warning Notice 
In the Pacific Northwest of the United States, different species and stocks of Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus sp.) commingle as they migrate towards spawning areas. This often results in mixed-stock fisheries in which some stocks are abundant while others require protection. In fisheries that exploit complex stock mixtures, mass marking and mark-selective fishing emerged as a way to increase the harvest of hatchery fish while protecting natural stocks of concern. Currently, mass marking in this region involves clipping the adipose fin to provide a visual cue that allows differential retention of marked fish while requiring unmarked fish to be released in mark-selective fisheries. In theory, mark-selective fisheries enable more hatchery fish to be caught while allowing more natural fish to escape to their natal streams and increase the spawning abundance. Mass marking also provides a valuable tool for assessing wild stocks because hatchery origin and natural origin fish can be distinguished as the fish migrate to the ocean, when captured in fisheries, and when they return to hatcheries and spawning grounds. With about 200 million fish requiring mass marking each year, this program was clearly not feasible with the manual marking and tagging methods that were available in the early 1990’s. In response to this need, Northwest Marine Technology (NMT) in cooperation with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Bonneville Power Administration, and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service began developing a revolutionary new series of machines to automatically inject Decimal Coded Wire Tags (CWT) and excise the adipose fin on salmon and steelhead. Through consistent research and development, these partners created the AutoFish System. AutoFish System – An Innovative Approach to Fish Handling | The AutoFish System uses advanced technology to sort and process Pacific salmon and steelhead in a hatchery or fish farm setting. The AutoFish System is a cost effective way to handle juvenile fish rapidly without the use of anesthetic or human contact. This system can be customized to perform any combination of: |
The natural instinct of fish to move in water currents guides them through the AutoFish System with minimal stress and trauma. This has resulted in the AutoFish System changing the way fish are handled at hatcheries throughout the Pacific Northwest. Since its implementation the AutoFish System has been used at hatcheries in California, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. By 2005, over 100 million fish had been Coded Wire Tagged or fin clipped with the AutoFish System. ContentsDownloads |  |
|
