Week 4 Day 1

I hope every one had a great weekend. I know I did. And, unlike most Mondays I was really excited about today. We went out to the field site that Luke has been working and helped him do collections for his doctoral work. The site was pretty (thought the water was a little filthy...)

Joe and I suited up and headed up stream to meet Lori, her son Brian, Luke and Jessica.

Once we got to the test site we noticed things were in full swing. The first stage of the collection process was electro fishing. Yes. It is just as exciting as it sounds.

When there's something strange
Swimmin' in your stream
Who ya gonna call...

Electro fishing involves strapping a giant battery to your back, dragging a grounding wire and walking around with a thing that looks like a metal detector to stun fish (and snakes). Who ever is following the guy with the proton pack then scoops up the stunned fish and drop them in a collectuon bucket. After two sweeps of electro fishing it's time to use the seine net. The trick with the seine net is to keep the poles at a forty-five degree angle and bumping along the bottom so that the lead line drags the bottom the whole time. The floats on the top of the net keep the net open while you drag. Then you slip up onto the shore and, voila!, fish! The gar were some of the coolest.

Once the fish were in collection buckets Luke measured, counted and tagged (certain) fish. During the count he would check to see if any of the fish had been tagged in a previous collection and compared their location to their original tag.

After we collected from all five sections we went back to the start and Joe and I helped Dr. Hoeinghaus take the ecological survey. This involved measuring pH, temperature, dissolved oxygen, depth, width, and canopy coverage.  Joe used the the high tech YSI meter and pH meter. I used the uber high tech nasa stick (it's a piece of PVC with a depth gauge drawn on it in sharpie) and a spherical densitometer. Cool, right?

Good times.  :)