Here's an article and some photos from our native collecting trip last Spring.
NJAS COLLECTING IN PINE BARRENS
As advertised, a group of NJAS members and other NEC hobbyists made the trip down to the New Jersey Pine Barrens this past Saturday (May 30th) to Batsto Lake in the middle of our state's largest wild area, Wharton State Park, with an area of 179 sq. miles. The day dawned bright and clear and after assembling at our established centrally-located area in Hazlet off GSP Exit 117, our caravan continued south down the Parkway to Exit 52 to get on Burlington County Route 542 heading West out of New Gretna, a small town about 6 miles southwest of Tuckerton. We reached the Lake after about a 20 minute drive from Exit 52, and found very rewarding collecting as a result of some working of the dip nets at the outlet of the spillway to the 1882 water-powered sawmill, one of a number of scattered 19th Century buildings of historic Batsto Village known for its early iron works.
I'm getting ahead of myself however, as these native fish collecting trips started for me back in the mid 1960's as a member of the Exotic Aquarium Society of NJ, when guys like Gus Miranda, John Renosis, Dan Cuviello and Gus Chinni, who some of you remember, used to organize similar outings to other South Jersey Lakes for the same purpose. Very surprisingly I would add, Gus Miranda -- one of EAS's memorable and well respected past-presidents -- paid us a visit several years ago when we were meeting at the Nutley American Legion Hall just before we moved to the Nutley Elks Club. With these trips in mind, the NJAS collecting trips started some 10 years ago with visits to selected locations known to be the homes of just the very species we were seeking.
Coming more up to date, when these trips were first started, a selection of articles on this topic was researched in the pages of "The Aquarium" magazine, published by Dr. William T. Innes and edited by my good friend Alan Fletcher during the 1950's. During that time, editor Fletcher had written of several locations he collected native fishes at, in a number of different articles in that decade. This was between the times he was collecting in South America with Fred Cochu of Paramount Aquarium, a large wholesale tropical fish outlet in New York (Manhattan, then later in Ardsley). I contacted Alan back in 2005 concerning collecting trips in NJ, and the articles he wrote of them 5 decades prior. With first obtaining the coveted NJ Fish & Wildlife Scientific and Educational Collecting Permit and then having several locations in mind for collecting primarily gleaned from Alan's articles, and with Alan agreeing to accompany me and a number of other NJASers on that first trip, he showed us several other habitats that he had success at a half century ago -- and they still panned out for us amply that day.
This past Saturday was not very different, albeit my friend Alan and those same NJAS members were not along. Continuing where I left off at the sawmill outlet to the spillway at Batsto Lake, after most participants collected a few specimens each, we hiked the short distance above the dam to west bank of Batsto Lake itself, where everybody who wanted to collect some specimens to bring home were successful in being able to do just that. Using long handle dip nets and seines, running them through the aquatic vegetation proved fruitful after a number of passes and we came up with many different kinds of fauna, not all of the piscine variety but several of the reptile type too -- including a 3 1/2' water snake of the relatively harmless kind < g >. A few turtles were captured and summarily released also.
The Scientific Collection Permit, as applied for and approved this year, allows us to take a sampling of Pirate Perch, Banded Killifish, Darters, Blue-Spotted Sunfish, Dace, Black Banded Sunfish, Rainwater Killifish and Diamond Sunfish, etc., of which we were able to collect several of these species on this most recent trip; enough to be able to make some livestock donations and bring a few specimens into our home aquaria. Our trip was comprised of more than a dozen active attendants and another three or four friend and relative observers of these hobbyist, surpassing our very first trip in numbers slightly, some ten years ago. From Batsto, we moved to the Mullica River which is tidal in the section we've been seining the last few years down that way. Unfortunately, with the river's level being down due to the tide being out this time we didn't get as many of the sought after gem, Fundulus diaphanus this time, as we had hoped to. These gleaming Banded Killifish with a bright yellow tone and tiny blue sparkles along their flanks just did not make themselves as present this time, but this did not diminish the day's enjoyment in the least; it was a most enjoyable day for all, as is anytime out in the midsts of nature.
Ray Wetzel
RussWhite47
could probably give you more info.
