Another approach to baratrauma recovery/prevention.

Some of you may have seen this post on IFish as well.  I thought I'd repost it over here and see if anyone has tried this too.

http://www.ifish.net/board/showpost.php?p=3117308&postcount=19

Originally Posted by Stowaway
Last year I had good success leaving them underwater right when I noticed they weren't on the keep list. The water is clear enough to see them below the surface at maybe 20+ feet. Once I notice it's orange I stop reeling and wait a minute or 2 for them to decompress. You'll see them spitting bubbles. Then I'd reel them up the rest of the way, release them and watch them swim away.

interesting opinioin, but unfortunately not likely to be true.  Unless he's tagged each fish and tracked it, it's very unlikely that this method makes a difference:

One source of information, among others, regarding this is:
http://seagrant.oregonstate.edu/sgpubs/onlinepubs/g05001.pdf (printable with pics)
and/or
http://seagrant.oregonstate.edu/sgpubs/onlinepubs/g05001.html (not as friendly to print, no pics)

Does Slowly Bringing up a Fish Help Reduce Decompression Damage?

Bringing up a rockfish slowly does not decrease the decompression problem significantly. It takes most rockfish a long time (hours at least) to naturally adjust to pressure changes. When using any of the above release methods, it is very important to bring the fish up at a steady rate and then get it back into the water as fast as possible.

And from http://wdfw.wa.gov/fish/rockfish/rockfishbiology_sep2809.pdf  pg.39

The speed of reeling and the ascent rate does not lessen the effects of barotrauma on rockfishes. Black
and blue rockfishes require several days to achieve neutral buoyancy at the surface (Parker et al. 2006),
and their swim bladders rupture when retrieved from a depth of 30 m. Low-speed reeling does not
improve the survival of copper rockfish (Meyer 2006), and holding experiments of quillback rockfish
brought to the surface slowly and those brought to the surface rapidly do not differ in their survival
following four to six weeks in captivity (Berry 2001).

Granted, these quotes are only 2 sources, but that's all I have handy on my laptop.  < nerd

The bubbles this guy is reporting seem to me to be much more likely to be an after effect of gasses being pushed out of systems that have been smooshed badly or is direct evidence that the swim bladder has ruptured.  If anything, this method is extending the timeline that the fish is hanging out with a giant airbag in it's guts and with it's eyeballs trying to explode.

I would love to be wrong, for the sake of both the fish and the fishermen, but the science doesn't agree with this guy's short-term perspective.  A doomed to death rockfish looks like it's swimming just fine on it's way down.  The evidence of it's demise only shows up after some time has gone by.

I always do my best to send them down.  I hope for the best but don't delude myself that all, or some, or any will survive. Mortality is 100% if you don't at least try to send them down.  So I try, maybe some survive maybe some don't but the last thing I want to do is leave fish floating on the surface, if anything it just makes us look bad.  If I catch an orange fish I move right away. Often you don't have to go far to get off the school 50-75 yrds works most times.  That said I wouldn't mind seeing a few more Vermillions on my game clip