Southwest Florida Fish Slam – Spring 2022

March 29-30, 2022 – Forty-two fish biologists from seven organizations participated in a two-day Fish Slam event in southwest Florida from Sarasota to Cape Coral. The Fish Slam participants sampled freshwater habitats for non-native fishes at 26 sites in March. Sampling gear included electrofishing boats, backpack electrofishers, and dipnets. Fourteen species of non-native fishes were collected or observed.

For general information on Fish Slam events, please see the webpage for the Florida Non-native Fish Action Alliance.

Fish Slam events started in 2012 and have since successfully documented range expansions of non-native fishes and fostered collaboration between professionals from multiple agencies/universities/non-profits (Schofield 2020). The most recent event had the greatest number of participants and largest fleet of electrofishing boats in Fish Slam history.  

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One koi, Cyprinus rubrofuscus, was collected in North Port. The species is collected occasionally throughout the state but was the first occurrence from this locality.

For the first time in Florida, a tire track eel, Mastacembelus favus, was collected live from the wild. After a review of museum collections, it is also likely that these are the first confirmed records collected from the wild in the United States. During Fish Slam, one team collected two specimens from a site in Cape Coral of tire track eel, which is native to southeast Asia. This family of fishes is common in the aquarium trade and valuable as a food fish in their native range. Follow up sampling was performed by Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC).

Data from these collections are available in the USGS Nonindigenous Aquatic Species database. All field observations of non-native species were entered into the USGS Nonindigenous Aquatic Species database.

Native species were returned to the wild alive. Select specimens were preserved and cataloged at the FWC Fish and Wildlife Research Institute’s Florida Biodiversity Collection Museum. The Mastacembelus favus specimen was cataloged at the Florida Museum (UF 248349).

The participants of the 2022 Fish Slam were: Chris Anderson (FWC), Josh Bauer (USACE), Arthur Bernhardt (FWC), Jesse Blanchard (FIU), Chelsea Bohaty (USACE), Mary Brown (USGS), Chelsea Buescher (FWC), Matthew Bunting (UF), Wes Daniel (USGS), Cedric Doolittle (USFWS), Kirk Dunn (FWC), Jake Edwards (USACE), Deb Epperson (USGS), Katie Everett (UF), Steven Fortney (FIU), John Galvez (USFWS), Kelly Gestring (FWC), Zoey Hendrickson (UF/USGS), Brian Hutchinson (FWC), Howard Jelks (USGS), Eric Johnson (FWC), Jon Lane (USACE), Ashley McDonald (UF/USGS), Sara Menendez (FWC), Jen Moran (FWC), Cayla Morningstar (USGS), Matt Neilson (USGS), Dan Nelson (FWC), Jason O’Connor (FWC), Bob O’Horo (FWC), Eddie Perri (USFWS), Eric Post (FWC), Doug Richard (FWC), Pam Schofield (USGS), Adrian Stanfill (FWC), Matt Stevens (FWC), Davis Todd (FWC), Nick Trippel (FWC), Quenton Tuckett (UF), Cindy Williams (USFWS).

Institutional acronyms:  FIU – Florida International University; FWC – Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission; UF – University of Florida; USACE – U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; USFWS – U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; USGS – U.S. Geological Survey

We are grateful to our professional colleagues who volunteered to make Fish Slam successful and fun. Special thanks to Barron Moody, Eric Johnson, and Adam Brown (FWC) for assistance with permits for these sampling events and Larry Page and Rob Robins (Florida Museum) for expert identification of new species.