Cue the theme song:  Blinded Me with Science by Thomas Dolby . The past two days I have been at the annual meeting of the Nebraska Chapter of the American Fisheries Society.  The American Fisheries Society, AFS, is THE professional society for pointy-headed fish biologists, http://www.fisheries.org/afs/ .  The Nebraska Chapter AFS is our local, state chapter.  We get together once a year, typically in February, conduct some business and catch up on what every one has been doing.  I estimate that we had 80+ fisheries professionals in attendance this year including folks from the Nebraska Game & Parks Commision, Nebraska’s Department of Environmental Quality, Nebraska Public Power District, The Nature Conservancy, University of Nebraska–Omaha, University of Nebraska–Kearney, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, South Dakota State University, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and I am sure others that I am forgetting. Our meeting consists mostly of oral presentations of the work Nebraska fisheries professionals have been conducting.  I take lots of notes at these meetings and usually learn tons of things that would make good blog posts.  I will get around to telling you about some of those things in the coming weeks.  For now, let me just show you the agenda, titles of the “papers” that were presented orally and those that were presented in poster format.

Nebraska Chapter of the American Fisheries Society Annual Meeting February 14 – 15, 2012 Ak-Sar-Ben Aquarium Schedule at a glance February 14, 2012 8:00 – 12:00 am                 Registration and poster set-up 9:00 – 10:30 am                 Keynote presentations 10:30 – 10:50 am               Break 10:50 – 12:20 pm              Oral Presentations 12:20 – 1:20 pm Lunch 1:20 – 3:00 pm                   Oral Presentations 3:00 – 3:30 pm                   Break 3:30 – 5:00 pm                   Business Meeting 5:00 – 6:00 pm                   Social / Poster Session 6:00                                        Dinner 7:30                                        Auction February 15, 2012 8:30 – 9:50 am                   Oral Presentations 9:50 – 10:10 am                 Break 10:10 – 11:30 am               Oral Presentations 11:30 – 12:00 pm              Meeting wrap-up and poster take-down Lunch (not provided) Contributed oral presentations (see Abstracts for list of co-authors) February 14, 2012 9:00 am                Source water protection and the farm bill. – Brett Lorenzen 9:45 am                 Land management, habitat improvement, and biological change: time for change?– Don Huggins 10:50 am              Geomorphology and instream habitat associations of shovelnose sturgeon in the lower Platte River, NE. – Jeremy Hammen 11:10 am              Update on Nebraska’s regional fish tissue monitoring program. – Greg Michl 11:30 am              Movement patterns of plains topminnow, Fundulus sciadicus, in Nebraska lotic systems. – David Schumann 11:50 am              Do common carp deserve their bad reputation? – Mark Kaemingk 1:20 pm                Using LP hook timers to understand the dynamics of trotline catches in a large river.– Kirk Steffensen 1:40 pm                Size-dependent scaling of ontogenetic diet shifts in an age-0 piscivore. – Christopher Uphoff 2:00 pm                Mud pies: Is direct ingestion of sediment-bound endocrine disrupting compounds a significant route of exposure in fish? – Lindsey Knight 2:20 pm                Just go with the flow: documenting sturgeon use of the lower Missouri River floodplain. – Michael  Archer 2:40 pm                The freshwater mussels of Nebraska. – Steve Schainost     February 15, 2012 8:30 am                Spatial and temporal variation in catch rates following trout stocking. – Dustin Martin 8:50 am                Assessment of fish presence and distribution in floodplains during a high water event on the Missouri River. – Dane Pauley 9:10 am                A mobile application for the identification of different types of fish species.  – Shankar Lakshmanan 9:30 am                Bioassessment of the wadeable streams and rivers of Nebraska using a posteriori classifications. – Thomas Heatherly 10:10 am              Missouri River habitat assessment and monitoring program: larval fish, benthic macroinvertebrates and water quality of constructed off-channel habitats during a high water event within the channelized Missouri River.  – Schuyler Sampson 10:30 am              The influence of hatching date on recruitment dynamics of bluegill. – Kristopher Stahr 10:50 am              Comparing predator functional density and bioenergetics modeling to estimate stocked yellow perch consumption. – Seth Lundgren 11:10 am              Sturgeon growth characteristics: the good, the bad, and the ugly. – Martin Hamel Contributed poster presentations Channel catfish population estimates in the lower Platte River, Nebraska.– Aaron Blank Movement of big river fish in the Missouri and Platte Rivers.– Jeremy Grauf The distribution of six species of concern in Nebraska headwater streams.– Kelly Turek Evaluation of PIT tag retention from two tagging locations in juvenile pallid sturgeon.– Martin Hamel Floodplain habitat use of large river fishes.– Nicholas Hogberg Length distributions of channel catfish that were available, harvested and caught at an urban reservoir.– Chris Wiley Modeling effects of predation and deformation on eggs of walleye Sander vitreus at Red Willow Reservoir, Nebraska.– R. A. Kill Assessing zebra mussel habitat suitability in Nebraska reservoirs.– Danielle Haak Interactions between juvenile bluegill (Lepomis macrochirus) and yellow perch (Perca flavescens) for prey and habitat resources in a natural lake.– Aaron Andrews Characteristics of bluegill nesting colonies within a Nebraska sandhill lake.– Kristopher Stahr Decline in the fish community in the Niobrara River at Agate Fossil Beds National Monument following establishment of northern pike (Esox lucius).– Dr. Richard Stasiak Missouri River sauger and the flood of 2012.– Brandon Eder Food habits of pallid and shovelnose sturgeon utilizing the Missouri River floodplain.– J. David Adams Impacts of fish predation on Platte River caddisfly (Ironquia plattensis) populations in Nebraska.– Michael Cavallaro Partitioning angler effort in a complex system.– Christopher Chizinski

Now some of you may wish to see a little more detail and if you wish here is the Nebraska Chapter AFS website, http://nebraskaafs.org/ , and you can take a look at abstracts of all of those papers here, http://nebraskaafs.org/abstracts-and-agenda-2012-meeting/ .  Yes, there are a lot of things that will be of interest to Nebraska anglers, so dig into those abstracts if you wish.  Just keep in mind that these were professional presentations made at a professional meeting of pointy-headed fish biologists and other resource professionals.  Unless you are familiar with the state of the science, you may see things in the abstracts that do not make sense.  I can probably answer questions, just keep in mind the intended audience of those abstracts.  And, as I said earlier, given time I will get around to telling you about some of the things that would be of particular interest to Nebraska anglers. I hope folks and especially anglers understand that the management of our fish and fisheries resources in this country is based on science.  I believe it is important that Nebraska anglers and fishing license buyers understand that there are a bunch of professional scientists working with Nebraska’s fish, water, and fisheries resources.  Many of us at times hear comments from Nebraska anglers that we should find out what the pointy-heads in some other state are doing with the implication that those biologists in other states know what they are doing.  In fact, we sometimes joke with each other that all the “good” biologists obviously work in some other state.  I hope Nebraska anglers realize that our fisheries professionals here in Nebraska are very much current and well-versed in the state of the science.  We frequently attend professional meetings with fisheries professionals from our own and other states; we are very much aware of what others are doing and how well it has worked and they are very much aware of what we are doing and how those things have worked.  Science is always advancing, always learning, and you have a bunch of excellent pointy-heads right here in Nebraska that are part of it!!!! Oh yes, you could also say that there was a bunch of dorky, “geeks” that did not have anything better to do on Valentine’s Day than get together to have a meeting, socialize, and have an auction to raise some money.  But, we had a lot of fun doing it!  Besides, haven’t you heard that “geek is the new sheik”?   outdoornebraska.ne.gov