Cooperative Fisheries Research and Management in Missouri's Big Rivers

The Big Rivers and Wetlands field station celebrated 25 years of collaborative research and management on January 1, 2016.  The field station consists of inter-disciplinary researchers developing linkages of big rivers and wetlands and other terrestrial and aquatic systems.  Through the 25 years, collaboration and cooperation often resulted in a much improved end product.  We describe ongoing examples of collaborative fish research and management beginning with benthic trawling.  While infrastructure is often limiting in fisheries, we incorporate the use of Cooperative Agreements with Universities and organizations.  Multi-use resources are common in big rivers.  Maintaining commercial and recreational fisheries are important management objectives.  We describe ongoing collaboration with commercial fishers and the value of recreational anglers as citizen scientists.  The Mississippi River is the largest river in North America connecting the inland waterways with the world.  As such there is large-scale infrastructure.  We describe the use of inter-agency and industry collaboration for understanding large-scale fish movement.  In coincidence with fish movement we further describe collaboration in developing environmental life histories of fishes in big rivers.  Through each example we address policies and practice while discussing alternatives and adjustments to the simple-complexity of cooperative research and management in big river systems.