MARIANNA, Fla. — The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission released 3,300 hatchery-raised shoal bass fingerlings into the Chipola River in May, they announced in a news release on Monday.
This is the first time genetically pure shoal bass have been successfully raised in an FWC fish hatchery.
Shoal bass are one of the four native black bass species in Florida and are also a Florida Species of Greatest Conservation need, meaning they are at risk of declining in population.
“This project embodies the necessity for strategic long-term thinking in conservation and the vital role it plays, not only in word but also in being able to implement these actions,” Chris Paxton, regional fisheries administrator for Florida’s northwest region, said. “Thankfully we had already been working on how to spawn these fish in case ‘something happens one day’ to this isolated population. Well, it happened in the form of a Category 5 hurricane.”
In 2018, Hurricane Michael wiped out more than 90% of the shoal bass population in the Chipola River, the news release said.
The FWC passed an executive order that prohibited anyone to capture the shoal bass, and it's still in effect in the areas of the Chipola River and its tributaries.
The goal of raising and releasing the fish was to better the population of the shoal bass and help maintain the population's genetic purity in the long run.
“Shoal bass have very specific habitat needs and it is a major milestone to successfully spawn and grow these fish to a size suitable for stocking,” Hatchery Manager at FWC’s Blackwater Fisheries Research and Development Center Bob DeMauro said. “It is an incredible success to raise these riverine fish in a still-water hatchery pond when they are used to flowing water and limestone shoals in their natural habitat.”
The Chipola River is known as the only waterbody in Florida to reproduce the shoal bass population naturally. The river originates north of Marianna and flows 95 miles south through Calhoun, Jackson and Gulf counties until it connects to the Apalachicola River.
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