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While many fish may die while they wait for answers, sawfish populations are particularly vulnerable. Grubbs said this unexplained phenomenon is extremely concerning, given that genetic analysis of the smalltooth sawfish population estimates there may be only about 400 breeding females left. Nearly 30 adult sawfish have been confirmed dead, with more bodies likely yet to be found, and more than 100 live sawfish have been observed exhibiting this strange spinning behavior. That’s a large portion of the total population, and they don’t have a strong ability to recover. Researchers think it may take a decade or more for sawfish to reach sexual maturity.
To buy the sawfish time while researchers figure out what’s going on, the plan is pretty wild: Capture live sawfish, bring them out of the ocean (so they don’t get stranded or sick, if the problem is the water), and quarantine them until they recover and researchers figure out the answer. That’s no small task for an animal that’s 10 to 15 feet long, weighs as much as a horse, and needs to stay submerged. A NOAA statement last Wednesday listed Ripley’s Aquarium, Mote Marine Laboratory, a nonprofit research organization, and Dynasty Marine Associates, a supplier to aquariums and pet stores, as three possible locations to take the sawfish to quarantine. To make that work, NOAA also has to find “transportation routes,” Grubbs noted. In the meantime, testing will continue — samples of water, dead sawfish and other fish, and healthy fish, provided by Grubbs and his team during a recent research trip.
This kind of mass death event, as Marion Renault said wrote During last year’s TNR campaign, the phenomenon became increasingly common. “We are far from realizing the impact these die-offs have on the ecosystem,” Marion wrote. “One disaster makes you more likely to have a second or third disaster,” a zoologist told her. “Every disaster,” Marion wrote, “makes the ecosystem more vulnerable to the next one.”
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