Fish of the Week!

Get to know the fish and places it calls home. We also discuss fishing strategies, the importance of curiosity, and pathways into fishing and caring for native fishes. Our guest is Redband Trout enthusiast and Oregon State University student Roberto Ponce Velez.

Get to know Ohio's second smallest fish, the Tippecanoe Darter - a lover of marble-sized rocks and riffles. Guests Brian Zimmerman (a rare and endangered non-game fish biologist at Ohio State University), Ethan Hendershot and Zeke Churchin (non-game fisheries research technicians) help tell the success story of this fish.

Get to know Hawaii's mullets through the eyes of University of Hawaii undergraduate students Andie Le Doux and Iokepa Frederick. We'll imagine the grand experience of the once great mullet migration that provided sustenance for the people who lived on the coast of O‘ahu while we appreciate conservation work being done in the muliwai (estuary) environments that attract them near shore.

The beauty of this fish matches its home: high-elevation streams in the White Mountains of Arizona. We discuss its conservation successes and the continued commitment moving forward. Tim Gatewood from the White Mountain Apache Tribe and Zac Jackson from our Arizona Fish and Wildlife Conservation Office are guests.

This very cool fish uses its finger-like fins to locate prey on the seafloor and might bark at you if you catch it. It's also at the center of an amazing case study regarding a place-based approach to sustaining wild seafood. Our three guests are a fisherman (Jason Jarvis), chef (David Standridge), and Eating with the Ecosystem's Kate Masury. Calls to action? try something new, eat the whole fish, and get to know your local fishermen!

With a namesake that matches the vegetation found in marshes where it lives, this California native comes in three different forms and has a very impressive skill: females pack an unbelievable number of extremely large young in their enlarged vascularized ovaries and give live birth. Senior Research Scientist John Durand from the University of California, Davis Center for Watershed Sciences is our guest.

What good are they? "Well, what good are you?" goes the famous quote about this fish. Meet the Owens Pupfish: a small, blue, chubby, feisty, extreme, endangered fish that’s native to the Owens Valley in California and was recently celebrated in the newly-established Owens Pupfish Refuge within the Bishop Paiute Tribe’s Conservation Open Space Area. Brian Atkins, Environmental Director for the Bishop Paiute Tribe, and Menemsha Zotstein with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are guests.

Meet a big, beautiful, predatory fish that floats like a butterfly and whacks prey with its wings: the California Butterfly Ray! Scientist and Elasmobranch expert Joe Bizzarro from the National Marine Fisheries Service's Southwest Fisheries Science Center is our guest.

May we have your at-TENCH-ion please? Will the real Slime Shady please stand up? Folklore has it that Tench slime can cure any sick fish that rubs against it. Hence its other name: “Doctor Dre.” Oh wait, oops (checking notes). Hence its other name: "Doctor Fish." Guest Bryan Witte, a fisheries biologist with the Kalispel Tribe talks with us about ol' Tinca tinca including how and where to catch one.

Tench were first introduced to North

America in the 1870s. On our latest podcast episode of "Fish of the

Week!" we're talking all about Tench with a focus on eastern Washington.

Catch new episodes every Monday at FWS.gov or wherever you get your podcasts!

The American Eel: very demure, very mindful. So demure, in fact, that nobody has ever seen them spawn! These wonderfully mysterious fish start and end life in the Sargasso Sea with an incredible freshwater migration in between. We continue to unravel some of the mystery around this migratory fish with guest Ámbar Torres Molinari. This episode is dedicated to her late advisor Dr. Thomas J. Kwak and all the amazing field technicians who helped make her American Eel research possible in Puerto Rico.