NATHAN P. BRENNAN AND PHILLIP W. BETTOLI, Tennessee Cooperative Fishery Research Unit, Box 5114, Tennessee Technological University, Cookeville, Tennessee 38505, USA

Paddlefish Polyodon spathula have been an important resource of the North American fisheries industry since the late 1800's. With improved capture efficiencies, increasing demands for paddlefish, and alterations of critical spawning habitats, paddlefish populations have declined in many locales and been extirpated in several areas. To protect and enhance paddlefish stocks in North America, a large-scale, multi-state, cooperative fishery management effort was initiated in 1995 by the Mississippi Interstate Cooperative Resource Agency. Since 1995, 22 participating states have coded-wire tagged over 3,000 adult wild paddlefish to assess their abundance and migration patterns within the Mississippi River basin. In 1995 alone, over 200,000 hatchery-reared paddlefish juveniles were tagged and released to enhance wild paddlefish stocks throughout the Mississippi River basin and in several large rivers in Texas. Information on the capture, tagging, release, and recapture of wild paddlefish, as well as the tagging, release and recapture of hatchery fish is being incorporated into a GIS-database. Annual sampling by participating agencies is providing insight into the exploitation and long-range movements of paddlefish. The contribution, if any, of hatchery-reared fish to wild stocks will be apparent in several years when stocked fish recruit to commercial and recreational fisheries throughout the basin.