This series follows University of Montana graduate student Dan Bailey as he travels the wilds of Mongolia to survey and tag Taimen, the world’s largest trout. From the team’s remote field camp and elsewhere in the world, Dan is posting to the Club EcoBlu blog as he assists with the Taimen Conservation Project .  Taimen are highly endangered, have been known to grow to 6-ft long and more than 200 lbs.  The information gathered will aid in drafting a conservation plan to protect this megafish.  Trout Headwaters, Inc. is a sponsor of the project.

Notes from the Field January 24, 2012

Taimen conservation takes me around the world once again, this time to New Zealand.  Earlier this fall I was asked to participate in a comprehensive taimen conservation workshop that is being held in Auckland, New Zealand, as part of the 25^th Anniversary Society of Conservation Annual Meeting.  This workshop was hosted by Dr. Pete Rand of the Wild Salmon Center in Portland, Oregon.  The purpose of the meeting is to summarize what has been learned through case studies in the field, identify key research gaps, and prioritize conservation actions to avoid local and species-level extinctions.  This meeting will assess the current status of all five taimen species.  For those that have been following previous blog posts, the species that you are familiar with is the Siberian taimen (Hucho taimen), this species has the largest distribution of the five taimen species and has the healthiest numbers.  I presented on foreign angler education in Mongolia.  The conference is truly a global affair with presenters from Mongolia, Russia, China, Japan, U.S. and Europe. Read More > Taimen_Workshop_Program