William Ireland Center for Fisheries Research - Facilities and Equipment

Facilities at Auburn University include a 210 m² laboratory building, a 128 m² office building, and five outdoor drive-through boat storage bays that are all shared by Drs. Dennis DeVries, Mike Maceina, and Rusty Wright. In addition, a pond facility provides a variety of sizes of controlled hatchery and farm ponds (see photo page for some pictures of these). This 1000-hectare facility includes a lower station, with 194 hatchery ponds totalling 11 ha of water, and an upper station, with 36 farm ponds totalling 80 ha of water. All ponds are drainable, contain distinct littoral and limnetic areas, and are on University property with controlled access, providing a unique facility for continued whole-pond experimental work. Field equipment available at the lab includes three Smith-Root shockboats (two of which have been fitted with a larval fish push net; the largest boat is suitable for large reservoir work, the smallest boat is suitable for pond work), two large net boats (one of which is fitted with paired larval fish push nets), a Boston Whaler (which has been fitted with a larval fish push net), several small flat-bottom boats, and a variety of seines, trap nets, and gill nets. In addition YSI temperature-dissolved oxygen meters and Ohaus digital field scales are available for field work.

Inside the lab we are set up for processing larval fish samples and for quantifying fish diets and zooplankton samples. Four dissecting microscopes, two compound microscopes, and an image analysis system provide us with state-of-the-art technology for processing larval fish samples, diets, zooplankton samples, and for quantifying daily rings in fish otoliths. A recently-purchased semi-microbomb calorimeter is now available for energetics work. In addition, we have a nephelometer and a spectrophotometer for analysis of turbidity and chlorophyll a in pond and reservoir water samples. The Annex office facility houses graduate students and technical staff, and includes numerous IBM-compatible computers for data entry and analysis. In a nearby flow-through tank facility, we are equipped for running multiple aquarium feeding experiments under controlled photoperiod and temperature conditions.

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