Behavioral Guidance: The Promise and Challenge

With globalization of commerce and recreation has come increased connectivity between many large bodies of water, habitat fragmentation in others, and an increase in invasive species.  Together, these drive an urgent need to separate species of fish and selectively direct their behaviors without causing harm and at low cost. For migratory fishes, there is frequently a need to direct desired fish away from hazards yet permit their migration while blocking, or removing, undesirable species including exotics. An excellent way to address this challenge is to manipulate fish behavior using the diverse suite of sensory cues they find attractive or repulsive.  The promise is that many cues (sounds) can easily be added to waters at low cost and can be species-specific and active at low levels (pheromones).  Velocity fields can also be manipulated to take advantage of different swimming behaviors and tendencies. Challenges are that behaviors are variable so control is unlikely to be perfect, our understanding of the physiological basis of fish behavior is not great, and some cues cannot be manipulated. This talk will address these factors from basic and applied perspectives and introduce attractants and repellents for desirable and nuisance fishes that will be addressed in the symposium.