for
the Amherst campus of the University of Massachusetts
September 7, 2001
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Bemis lands big catch at fishing rodeo By Sarah R. Buchholz, News Office staff
 r the last four summers, Biology professor Willie Bemis has been bringing home the bacon - sort of - from the Alabama Deep Sea Fishing Rodeo at Dauphan Island's Sea Lab. Bemis and a team of volunteers, some of whom are University students, spend about two weeks cleaning fish carcasses well enough to ship them to campus for the thorough processing needed before they can become part of the University's growing fish skeleton collection.For three days, approximately 3,000 fishermen hit the waters off Alabama, hoping to catch prize-winning fish. "I'd stand in the judging booth and say, 'I want that one!'" Bemis said. "It's an incredible sampling opportunity for research. We're the only general collectors there; we're working on all the species, so our collection is a snapshot of the diversity of species that are taken during the event. "I'm trying to build the collection to the point where it will be broadly useful for study," he said. But an added value of the project is the experience his students get.
"It's a nearly ideal place to teach students about fish. They dissect them, removing the meat with knives. They get a better lesson in 10 days than in any course. "We build a lab every year-walls, screening, pit for waste, sinks. It's a pretty big adventure." "I learned more in 15 days than in 12 months of handling the bones," said Bill Bassham, a graduate student in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology. Bemis and his students can spend up to 7 hours preparing a large tarpon before shipping it home. The carcasses must also be dried before shipping. Once the barrels are back in the lab, it takes a week to sort the collection before domesticated beetle colonies do much of the final work of removing traces of flesh. Large fish might take a year or more to be cleaned by the beetles, he said. "They're perfectly prepared to last hundreds of years. "The value of this is that we have very good data on these-where they came from, date caught. Most of the time, people preparing skeletons do not take the kind of data we do. Also, specimens tend to be more valuable if you have other specimens taken at the same time. "This is the most successful we've ever been," Bemis said of his team's efforts July 14-26. One undergraduate and three graduate students from his lab joined Bemis and others from France, London and Mount Holyoke College in the effort. "We collected about 250 specimens that are from about 80 species and 37 families," he said. "There are about 482 families of fishes; 80 species is a record." He estimates their average value at $200 each, which would make the value of this year's haul more than $50,000 but adds that it's difficult to estimate the value of a collection. "The amount of money it would take to purchase this-well, you couldn't buy this stuff," he said. In the three previous years, Bemis collected a total of 370 specimens. "So we're getting more efficient," he said of this year's haul. Bemis said the American Museum of Natural History in New York has about 2,500 specimens. "We're at around 620 at this point," he said, "so it'll take me a while to catch up." Bemis said the value to the University lies in the wealth of research that can be conducted on the skeletons. "Having these collections available attracts people to do Ph.D. work and offers something to do for students who are looking around, too," he said. "They're so attractive that you can say, 'Hey, open up that bag, play with the fins, see how they work.' "I'm in the process of trying to create a greater awareness of the natural history collection on campus. In the interim, I'm just filling up my research lab." Bemis said finding funding to purchase storage cabinets has been an issue for his project, but that he's committed to continue working toward that. The cases cost about $4,000 each, he said. "I've got a whole room full of specimens that need cases." Bemis said one hazard to the life of a university collection is the turnover in faculty who oversee the holdings. "It takes a great deal of forethought to keep a collection stable, so it can resist changes in leadership," he said. "Very quickly, UMass has become one of the places that has large holdings of fish skeletons. Going the extra step to prepare the skeletons makes this a pretty invaluable resource."
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