Toward Conceptualizing the Whole: Observing Aquatic Species in Their Natural Habitat

As fisheries scientists, culturists and managers, we often find ourselves focused on a limited set of data values representing our “species of responsibility” and the relevance of those data points to our objective or mission.  We focus the lens of understanding with increasing magnification to unlock genetic codes laid down 20 million years ago to understand life history traits and our potential to impact or change these structures through management decisions.  We produce a staggering number of statistical analyses and models to estimate various performance measures and explore probabilities.  We are intimate with the parts, yet seldom are we in a position to observe our “species of responsibility” in its natural environment and consider the whole.  Photography and video are dynamic tools capable of expanding our perspective; providing documentation and observation of diverse environments not easily accessible to us. This is especially true for observations in aquatic environments.  Marine environments are fairly well known to us, we have devoted considerable resources and technology to reveal the diversity of life that exists there. The public may have a vague notion of what “woody debris” in a stream looks like, however the chances are good that they have a fairly well articulated mental image of what a coral reef looks like and what animals might live there.  Documentation of freshwater environments and the cycles of diversity in these realms are largely under represented.  Often freshwater species are featured outside of their habitat, held in someone’s hand or other artificial environment.  Our perception is disconnected from their “residence”, disconnected from their interactions with other species and what they need to reproduce and survive.  With the explosion of low cost digital point & shoot cameras with underwater capabilities, the tools are available for us to begin presenting a more complete image of these species in their native habitat.  Pressure on freshwater environments is escalating as demands from agriculture, industry, urban municipalities and the uncertainties of climate change play out across its surface.  As fisheries professionals we can facilitate greater understanding and synthesis in our own work by considering the whole and by employing images that are representative of our “species of responsibility” in their native habitat.  Truly, a picture is worth a thousand words, as we take the message of our numbers and our bits and pieces of the whole to the public, “we should choose images as carefully as we choose words”.