Hi Kent,

If you are interested in capturing live specimens with non-destructive methods then your best bet is to use traps/pots and/or suction (or slurp) guns. We also found that small nets made of clear plastic were very useful in capturing small wrasses on coral reefs. One of the best ways to capture small wrasses on reefs is with slurp/suction guns made of transparent acrylic. Papers that use these collecting techniques usually do not describe in detail how they have actually built their collecting devices. If you go to Google Scholar and search for some of these terms you’ll find a lot of information. You may find these of some help:

http://www.ices.dk/sites/pub/CM%20Doccuments/1993/B/1993_B22.pdf

Slurp or suction guns:

https://patents.google.com/patent/US3486264A/en

https://aslopubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.4319/lo.1974.19.2.0354

https://patents.google.com/patent/US3231997A/en

https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/a5/0d/cd/19a1135f20c2d3/US3965608.pdf I hope this is of some help.

Tomas

Hi Tomas (Tom) Tomascik ,

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll certainly look into slurp guns as you have suggested. Have you tried these on planktivorous wrasses that stay on the water column? I'm choosing between using a hand net (similar to the one you mentioned) and the slurp guns as a non-destructive way to get individuals as I would need them intact. Anyway, will certainly check out the ones you mentioned.

Cheers,

Kent

Hi Kent,

To capture the cleaner wrasses at cleaning stations on the reef we used large dip nets made of fine clear plastic sheets. We positioned the dip nets and then slowly herd the wrasses into the nets. It worked well but it was time consuming. I have not tried the slurp gun on pelagic fish, but it works great on all demersal wrasses since you can access their hiding places.

Tomas

Hi Tomas (Tom) Tomascik,

My guess is that the slurp gun might work fine since these wrasses have to shelter too when they are disturbed. I'll do a field experiment on the methods you suggested soon and maybe even try combinations to see what works. Thank you for providing helpful suggestions.

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