A jolt of electricity sends a minor shock all the way down the Atchafalaya swamp to a trout community. The shock stuns the fish temporarily, and the sting lulls to numbness.

Seconds later, the fish continue swimming merrily on their way, unharmed and unfazed.

Electrofishing has an extremely low associated stress mortality rate, and it’s considered the most humane fish sampling methodology.

Though it was originally practiced in the early 1900s, electrofishing did not become a popular fish collection technique until the ’40s and ’50s, when a record-breaking amount of federal dollars were invested in conservation of resources.

Every so often, associate professor of renewable natural resources Mike Kaller rounds up a handful of students, hops on a small barge and explores the aquaculture in the swamps of Louisiana. The students use electrofishing to sample fish populations in hopes of gaining valuable information.

“It’s like Christmas — you don’t know what you’re going to get,” Kaller said.

Kaller graduated from Lake Superior State University in Michigan before landing a job with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. During both his time in college and his first job, he became familiar with the practice of electrofishing.

He said his opportunities with the method, however, were limited at Lake Superior State.

“They only had one electrofishing unit, and they only let their top students use it,” he said.

Kaller was one of those top students.

After gaining experience with the unit, he utilized his expertise in Wyoming, assessing trout populations in the tourist-heavy area. He set up regulations based off his observations of what anglers were catching and also from electrofishing the population.

He came to the University in 2001, first as a graduate student, then as a scientist and now as a faculty member.

Kaller said he ensured electrofishing opportunities would be more available to students at the University than they were at his first alma mater.

“Here at LSU, anyone who has taken Fisheries Techniques and anyone who has demonstrated to me that they are a safe and responsible person gets to use the equipment,” Kaller said.

Electrofishing provides data that helps researchers and lawmakers alike establish harvest regulations, he said. It also helps them identify the status of populations of species of conservation concern, otherwise known as endangered species.

Kaller said associated economic values come from both harvesting and conserving populations. Though the conservation value is harder to put a dollar sign on, he said, one way to measure the value is by how much it would cost to replace the animals if they were gone.

He said by monitoring their populations and understanding their distributions in space and time through electrofishing, the state can avoid costly management and restoration price tags that exist for those species.

“Harvest adds value and conservation stops loss,” Kaller said.

Electrofishing is considered an active sampling method, meaning the electricity is brought directly to the fish, as opposed to passive methods like nets where the fish have to swim to the bait.

Kaller said this allows researchers to get into more complicated habitats than possible with a net, including aquatic vegetation beds, fallen trees and undercut banks.

With their findings, Kaller and his students provide data to several agencies, including the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, the Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, courtesy of electrofishing.

“I think it’s one of the most effective techniques we have available,” he said.

Kaller’s studies range from sampling fish cultures in the Atchafalaya Basin before and after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita to the cause of fish migrating away from mountaintop mines in the East Coast.

The materials and equipment necessary to fund these discoveries, however, have a high price.

There are currently three types of electrofishing units on campus: backpack style units, which run from $7,000 to $9,000; barge style units, which cost about the same; and boat-mounted units, which range from $13,000 to $35,000.

Kaller said the wealth of knowledge gained from each excursion is worth every penny.

“[Electrofishing] gives us a different piece of information toward understanding the ecosystem,” Kaller said.

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