Research Product

Chain pickerel, Esox niger LeSueur, occur east of the Appalachians from the St. Lawrence River southward and in drainage systems along the Gulf Coast to Texas. The chain pickerel is known to be common in the littoral areas of Chesapeake Bay at salinities as great as 12.6 l and Carlander (1969) reported that it may live in brackish water as high as 15 l. In our area, this species inhabits freshwater streams that flow into Pensacola Bay (Bailey et al., 1954). Chain pickerel comprise 0.1% of the catch in the lower Escambia River by sports-fishermen (Hixson et al., 1971). This note is the first report of E. niger collected from the normally saline portion of the lower Pensacola estuary. A 109 mm standard length chain pickerel was seined by Walter Burgess, Edward Matthews, and me on 7 August 1975 from Santa Rosa Sound, in Santa Rosa County, Florida, from Thalassia beds about 300 m West of the North end of State Highway 399 bridge. The specimen is in the Environmental Research Laboratory Museum as catalog No. GBERL-1914. Associated fishes either collected or observed were Menidia sp., Eucinostomus sp., Orthopristis chrysoptera, Lagodon rhomboides, Leiostomus xanthurus, Mugil cephalus, and Chasmodes saburrae. Water temperature was 26°C and salinity was an unusually low 3 l near the collection site. The low salinity is attributed to a three-day total rainfall (29-31 July 1975) recorded by the U.S. Geological Survey for the following stations in the Escambia-Blackwater watershed: Pensacola, 29.54 cm; Crestview, 42.16 cm; Milton, 35.33 cm. Salinity recorded at the Environmental Research Laboratory on Sabine Island dropped from 23 l on 28 July to a 25-year low of 1 l on 12 August 1975.