9th Annual NYC Awards Ceremony

9TH ANNUAL NEW YORK CITY AWARDS CEREMONY

BTT awarded the Lefty Kreh Award for Lifetime Achievement in Conservation to Tom Brokaw in a special virtual presentation of the 9th Annual New York City Awards Ceremony on

September 17, 2020.

An Emmy award-winning journalist and best-selling author, Brokaw served as the anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News for 22 years, during which time he reported on the most historic events of the time.

Blending his passion for angling and conservation, Brokaw narrated the acclaimed fly-fishing series Buccaneers & Bones and co-starred alongside Lefty Kreh, Michael Keaton, Liam Neeson, Huey Lewis, Jimmy Kimmel, Tom McGuane, Yvon Chouinard, Jim Belushi and some of the world’s top flats anglers.

“We are honored to present Tom Brokaw with the Lefty Kreh Award for Lifetime Achievement in Conservation,” said BTT President and CEO Jim McDuffie. “Throughout his celebrated career, Tom has been a tireless advocate for conservation. His role on Buccaneers & Bones was no exception as he helped to raise awareness of the threats facing the flats fishery as well as our science-based approaches to address them. We thank Tom for all he has done to help advance our conservation mission.”

Michael Keaton and Tom Brokaw during filming of Buccaneers & Bones.

Steve Burke, Chairman of NBCUniversal, introduced his longtime friend and colleague. “Tom really was the heart and soul of NBC News for many, many years, and is to this day,” Burke said. “Tom means a lot to me. He means a lot to NBC news. He certainly means a lot to anybody who’s ever picked up a fly rod and cast. He’s a great angler. He’s a great lover of this country and the American West. And it is my privilege to introduce our honoree, Tom Brokaw.”

In accepting the award, Brokaw called on anglers to be engaged in fisheries conservation.

“What we need to do as individuals, and collectively, is to organize ourselves around something in which we can have an impact,” he said. “And nothing is more important than the impact we can have on the fisheries—freshwater and saltwater, especially. It’s a great honor. I’m not entirely deserving, but I’m thrilled to be associated with Lefty Kreh.”

As part of the star-studded evening, BTT also honored the cast of Buccaneers & Bones with the Curt Gowdy Memorial Media Award, which is presented to individuals who advance the cause of conservation through media and outreach to others. The 2020 recipients were actor Michael Keaton, singer-songwriter Huey Lewis, author Tom McGuane, Patagonia Founder Yvon Chouinard, and BTT board member Bill Klyn, a co-creator of the show.

The recurring cast of the acclaimed television series, Buccaneers & Bones, received the Curt Gowdy Memorial Media Award at the 9th Annual NYC Awards Ceremony. The 2020 honorees were Yvon Chouinard, Michael Keaton, Bill Klyn, Huey Lewis and Tom McGuane.

Michael Keaton

Yvon Chouinard

Huey Lewis

Tom McGuane

Bonefish Spawning Research Posts New Discoveries

I’ll always remember the first bonefish I caught with a fly I tied myself. The bonefish was cruising slowly along a sandy beach, the water so shallow the top inch of the fish’s back was exposed above the surface. As I watched the bonefish move slowly along the shoreline toward where I stood, hiding in the shadow of a mangrove at the end of the beach, it would occasionally make a quick lunge after one of the small crabs that were feeding along the water’s edge on the late dropping tide. I was so interested in the fish’s behavior that I almost forgot I was there to catch a bonefish (that’s the scientist side of my brain).

But the fishing side of my brain pushed its way forward, and I crouched and moved up the beach to give myself some backcast room away from the mangroves. I was casting what a friend calls “crap on a hook,” a poorly tied, Clouser-like, crabby imitation made mostly of brown deer hair.

As the fish moved within range, I plopped the fly on the water’s edge a foot in front of the fish. As the fish came even with the fly, in slightly deeper water, I made a small strip. When the fish saw the movement it lunged toward the fly with such energy that it beached itself, fly in its mouth. The fish made a few wiggles to get itself back in the water, as I crouched, mesmerized. I set the hook.

I’ve always been drawn to the skinniest of water in my pursuits of bonefish, water so shallow it’s as if they are crawling over the bottom. But even on days fishing for bonefish in deeper water, we’re still only talking about water that’s a few feet deep. And Andy Smith’s pursuit of the monster bonefish on the east side of Andros are still in water that’s only six feet deep.

We always think of bonefish as shallow water fish.

In recent years, as we’ve learned more about bonefish biology, the scientist side of my brain has more than once told the fishing side of my brain to sit down and shut up. There is so much more to bonefish than being the gray ghosts of the shallows.

This drone photo shows the bonefish pre-spawning aggregation during the day before they moved offshore to spawn. Photo: Tom Henshilwood

The history of the recreational flats fishery in the Florida Keys is long and storied, and is credited by many with starting the modern sport of flats fishing. Despite the interest in the recreational fishery, just 15 years ago little scientific information was available. The lack of information increased the fisheries management challenge when it became apparent by the 1980s and 1990s that the Florida Keys bonefish population was in decline. This population decline contributed to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) classification of bonefish as Near Threatened due to regional habitat loss and fragmentation (particularly mangroves and seagrasses), coastal development and urbanization, declines in water quality, and harvest by commercial, artisanal and recreational fisheries.

The observed decline in bonefish abundance prompted the founding of Bonefish & Tarpon Unlimited in 1998, the first conservation group focused on advocating for improved management of the species and the fishery it supports (Bonefish & Tarpon Unlimited changed its name to Bonefish & Tarpon Trust in 2009). Upon the organization’s founding, it quickly became clear that little scientific information on bonefish was available. Therefore, the goals of BTT have been to assess the status of knowledge of bonefish, assess the threats to the fishery, support research to address these issues, and push for revision of fishery management strategy to promote the recovery of the Florida Keys bonefish population.

Building upon the knowledge gained during BTT’s first years of existence, the Bonefish Reproduction Research Project (BRRP) began in 2016, with the goals of learning the entire life cycle of bonefish, and understanding the biology well enough that we could complete that entire life cycle in captivity, all in a five-year period. Five years is very ambitious, especially when you realize that it took Japanese scientists studying Japanese eels, which are related to bonefish, nearly 50 years to achieve this level of understanding of the eel life cycle. Fortunately, we benefited from the advice of our Japanese colleagues. Plus, as a colleague recently said, “I’ve never known BTT to fear the unknown.”

A bonefish pre-spawning aggregation in the Bahamas. Photo: Robbie Roemer

The eggs at left are from a female captured from a pre-spawning aggregation, not quite ready to spawn. The eggs at right are from a female in a pre-spawning aggregation that are much larger and ready to spawn. Photo: Dr. Jon Shenker

BONEFISH PHYSIOLOGY The first step was to figure out what controlled the bonefish reproduction process, and what “spawning ready” bonefish looked like. In previous research, scientists had found that female bonefish had eggs for much of the year, but couldn’t determine exactly when they spawned—they never found eggs that were fully mature and ready to be spawned. Now we know why. We have focused much of our research in the Bahamas, because with such a large bonefish population we were able to get more samples faster than if we had worked in other locations. We captured female bonefish from flats and from pre-spawning sites on Grand Bahama, Abaco, and Andros, and collected blood and egg samples.

We analyzed the blood for hormones because the concentrations of hormones provide clues on the reproductive state the females are

in—ready to spawn, already spawned, on the flats and not in spawning mode. We analyzed the eggs for lipids (fats) that indicate the health of the eggs (in general, more fats = better, closer to spawning), and size (larger eggs are closer to being ready for spawning).

In general terms, we found that female bonefish were in multiple phases: resting (few or no eggs, not even thinking about spawning); thinking about it (allocating energy resources to making eggs); getting ready (eggs have developed a lot, are larger and with high lipid levels); migration time (ready to migrate to the pre-spawning site); and spawning imminent.

We also found that the hormone levels, which indicate the level of spawning readiness, differed significantly between the flats, where the hormone levels were lower, and the pre-spawning site, where the hormone levels were at the highest levels. We also found that egg size would slowly increase in female bonefish on the flats as the spawning moon neared, but that there was a rapid and dramatic increase in egg size just prior to spawning. This shows that bonefish can remain in the eggs-ready suspended phase on the flats for an extended period, and don’t really turn on the jets for reproduction until late in the game.

This is relatively unusual in marine fish, which typically show a more gradual and prolonged final egg preparation phase.

BONEFISH SPAWNING In past issues of the Journal, we’ve shared with you the exciting findings from our bonefish tagging research. That research revealed that bonefish have small home ranges on the flats for most of the year, and that they migrate long distances from the flats to pre-spawning sites that are away from their normal flats, generally near deep water, where they form pre-spawning aggregations (PSAs). And we knew that bonefish in the PSAs move offshore at night to spawn, but that’s where our knowledge ended.

We were working off the M/Y Albula, donated for our research by the Fisheries Research Foundation, when we found the answer last November. We tracked the bonefish as they moved offshore at dusk. After meandering around offshore for a couple of hours, they were in water thousands of feet deep. Then they suddenly started to descend. And descend. And they kept going. The bonefish aggregation descended to 450 feet depth! And they remained deeper than 300 feet for hours!

This is the same species we chase in water so shallow their backs are exposed, and remain in small, shallow home ranges for almost all of their lives!

Fishing side of the brain: “Say what?!”

Science side of the brain: “See, I told you these fish were different—go take a nap!”

This image from the tracking boat sonar shows the bonefish aggregation during their spawning dive at approximately 120 meters (396 feet) deep. Photo: Dr. Aaron Adams

as the first pre-dawn glow warmed the horizon the bonefish suddenly rushed upward to 222 feet, where they finally spawned.

Why, you are probably asking yourself, would bonefish go to such lengths to spawn? We still have some work to do to figure out the “why,” but we have a good idea.

The tags we had in the bonefish that we used to track the aggregation had sensors in them that told us the real-time conditions the bonefish were in. The pressure sensor is how we know the depth, plus the sonar images we were able to record. The tags also had a temperature sensor, and this showed a significant change in water temperature at around 200 feet depth. The surface water temperature was 83 degrees Fahrenheit; the temperature below 200 feet was 78 degrees. This dramatic change in temperature caused a change in the density of the water (colder, saltier water is more dense than warmer, less salty water). We think that bonefish were searching out this change in density (called a pycnocline) to spawn. This would leave their eggs, and then the larvae that hatched, just above the pycnocline, and the eggs and larvae would essentially float on this denser layer of water. Our research has shown that bonefish eggs have a type of lipid that allows the eggs to float in this dense water.

Preliminary information suggests that bonefish larvae eat a substance called marine snow. Marine snow is a shower of biological debris falling from the upper portions of the water column toward the ocean floor. The “snowflakes” are actually collections of tiny pieces of dead organisms, like plankton, fish slime, bacteria, and other organic matter. When observed underwater, it looks like snowflakes slowly falling. The marine snow also often collects at pycnoclines—if it doesn’t stop

Assuming they get enough to eat and don’t get eaten, the bonefish larvae live in the ocean for 41 – 71 days before finding their way inshore and transforming into juvenile bonefish. As we revealed in a previous Journal article, the ocean currents may transport the larvae far away to other locations, or spin the larvae back to their parents’ home region.

HATCHING BONEFISH We’ve figured out the adult portion of the bonefish life cycle—home ranges, reproductive physiology, spawning migrations, PSAs, and now offshore spawning. Colleagues long ago figured out what bonefish larvae looked like because they had captured and described the larvae as they came inshore and transformed into juveniles. And research completed in 2014 gave us a good idea about juvenile habitats. So the remaining gap is from spawning to the late larval stages. What does a fertilized egg look like? How long does it take to hatch? What do newly hatched larvae look like, how fast do they grow, and what do they actually eat?

We’ve answered a lot of those questions in the past few years. We captured bonefish from a PSA and put them in large tanks on the M/Y Albula. We were able to strip-spawn some females and males (by applying pressure on their abdomens, we got them to release eggs and milt). We then mixed the eggs and sperm, and placed the fertilized eggs in special circular tanks, called Kreisel tanks, that slowly circulated water to keep the eggs suspended in the water. The newly hatched larvae had no eyes or mouth, only a yolk and oil droplet that they used for energy to continue growing for the next few days. The yoke and oil droplet contained the lipids (fats) from the eggs that we studied previously.

As they grew, the larvae formed eyes, a mouth, impressive teeth, and a gut.

After five days, they began feeding on the food we had prepared to imitate marine snow.

Unfortunately, after eight days they died. They had been eating the food, but the food likely didn’t have sufficient nutrients for these early days. We’ve reformulated the food for the next attempt.

This project is the first time that bonefish have been spawned, eggs have hatched, and larvae have grown to eight days.

BONEFISH SPAWNING IN CAPTIVITY Getting fish to spawn in captivity can be very difficult. It’s one thing to get them to eat and grow, but getting the conditions just right for spawning is a different challenge. As we’ve already learned, the reproduction process for wild bonefish is very complex and impossible to fully replicate in captivity. But we’re making progress.

Since the conditions in large tanks are not the best way to get fish into

A bonefish larvae hatching from the egg. Photo: Dr. Jon Shenker

A five-day old bonefish larvae. Photo: Dr. Sahar Mejri

the spawning mood, we use a few tricks. First, we artificially change the lighting (the duration of light each day) and water temperature to mimic the seasons—longer days and warmer water for summer, shorter days and cooler water for winter. Then we shorten the time it takes for a season to transpire, so an entire year lasts just a few months. This tricks the fish’s system into putting energy into producing eggs and sperm in preparation for the fall spawning season, which we can manipulate to occur multiple times in a calendar year.

As the artificial spawning season nears, we check the bonefish to determine if the eggs are developing, and give them hormone injections to help the process. This is a common practice in fish spawning work. We check the fish near the full moon in the month they should think is peak spawning, and if we find a female bonefish with well-developed eggs we give her a different hormone injection and put her in a separate tank with a spawning-ready male.

So far, we’ve gotten fish to this spawning-ready stage numerous times, but don’t yet have a successful spawn in captivity. But each time we learn new information from wild fish, we update our captive breeding approach.

INFORMATION FOR CONSERVATION The recent increase in young age classes of bonefish in the Florida Keys is a promising sign. This means that new larvae are coming into the system and surviving to become adults, and the fishery is improving. But if we are to prevent another decline in the future in the Florida Keys as well as other locations, we need to understand why. Based on the new information obtained in the Bonefish Reproduction Research Project and from other recent research, we now have additional tools to help us figure out why, which will help us make the management changes needed to ensure healthy bonefish populations in the future.

The knowledge gained from identifying bonefish PSA locations and their offshore spawning behavior is guiding our search for bonefish spawning areas in the Florida Keys, and has helped us identify spawning sites in other countries. As we identify these sites, we begin the work to get them protected. Knowing the spawning depth of bonefish will enable us to revise and improve our larval transport models, so we can better define the links between bonefish populations throughout the regions. As we continue to hatch and rear larval bonefish in captivity, we will learn more about their behavior and diet, which is important for understanding how the larvae might use ocean currents to their advantage and how they might be impacted by climate change and ocean acidification.

Now that we know what healthy bonefish eggs look like, and we know that a fish’s diet influences egg quality, we will be able to use egg analysis as an indicator of bonefish health. For example, would a water quality decline that causes a seagrass die-off and kills a lot of organisms that are bonefish prey result in less nutrition for bonefish, and impact females’ ability to create healthy eggs?

All of the new data from fieldwork hold great promise for getting bonefish to spawn in captivity. We know the hormone changes required for females to properly develop eggs ready for spawning. We now know the size bonefish eggs must be to be ready for fertilization. Now that we know that bonefish are seeking out a temperature change for spawning, we will create a rapid drop in temperature as part of the process to induce the final egg development needed for fertilization. And we’ll keep fertilized eggs and then the larvae at these lower temperatures to match natural conditions. This should improve our chances of successfully completing the bonefish life cycle in captivity.

Bonefish provide leverage for conservation because of their high economic value as part of a recreational fishery, and their charismatic nature (they regularly adorn the covers of magazines). To protect the economically important bonefish fishery, management agencies have to protect habitats that span from backcountry mangrove flats that bonefish use as home ranges to offshore waters where they spawn. By protecting these many habitats, many other species that are less charismatic but no less ecologically important are also protected. This means that bonefish conservation helps overall coastal conservation. Given that restoring the Florida Keys bonefish population will in large part depend on restoring the South Florida and Florida Keys ecosystem, bonefish restoration will have regional conservation impacts.