Yesterday was my last day with Fish and Wildlife. Since my last post, we’ve been busy trying to finish all the end of the season chores like data analysis, write-ups, and gear cleaning. We didn’t get to everything though because a few things came up. One day we spent with USGS sampling adult suckers in Clear Lake, CA. It consisted of pulling a seine net between two boats and then pulling it up to shore and collecting all the fish from it. We also pulled up a few trammel nets that were set out at specific spots to get fish swimming in the area.

Releasing tagged juvenile sucker fish!

We also had to tag and release our last net-pen of fish and we were able to take a reporter out with us so she could do a write-up of our season. We were lucky to have zero mortality from tagging and released a few hundred healthy juvenile suckers between all of our net-pens. So hopefully in a few years we’ll see them spawning!

Overall, I had a great season out here and learned a lot about sucker fish, lake systems, the west and all the challenges it presents. I’ve never worked in an area where water was such an issue, so it was definitely interesting to see how water availability affected things over the season. I have a background in marine science, but after this season I’m definitely more open to working with freshwater resources. I’ve also realized that I want to go into a more active management career such as working for Fish and Wildlife or USGS instead of working in academia, which is what I previously thought I wanted to do.

I got to work with a great crew this season and I’m sad to leave them, but I’m definitely ready for the next thing, which I don’t actually know what that is yet. But I also feel much more prepared for grad school or another job, whichever comes first, after learning all sorts of great new skills. I feel like thanks to CLM and everyone at my office I’m more confident and ready to take on anything new!

Sucker fish lips!

Today we stared releasing our fish! We had a surprising amount too. A few weeks ago we had estimated about ten suckers per net but today after pulling one net and removing all of the fish, we had around 80 healthy suckers to tag and release! We put PIT tags in them to track them over the next few years and see how many of them make it and spawn and live happy lives. To do this, we used an anesthetic to knock them out long enough to get length measurements, species determination, and put tags in. Then we held them in a recovery bucket full of aerated water to make sure none of them had adverse effects from the drugs or the tags. We had zero mortalities which was great, and we released them at the edge of a patch of vegetation so they could have some protection from predators. Now we just have four more nets of fish to tag and release over the next week or so, so hopefully we have just as many fish in those nets!

Getting measured before getting tagged.

Waiting for release in the recovery bucket.

Freedom!!!!!!!!

The past month has been filled with fires, lightning, and unpredictable weather. One day it’s hot, the next day it’s perfect. One minute it’s pouring down rain, the next it seems like there’s been no precipitation for months. Luckily, it seems like the fires have calmed down a bit, although there are still a few in the area and some smoke in the sky making the world glow red at sunset. The fires have stayed relatively far away, although some road closures from one prevented us from getting to one of our sites for a few days. Otherwise, work has become relatively routine. Monitoring water quality, checking for live and dead fish, and working on a report of our propagation methods has become the day-to-day. This is broken up by evening trips out to the lake when the dissolved oxygen drops to turn on the aeration systems as well as a trip to Lakeview, Oregon to help out with Modoc sucker surveys. We’ve also sampled one net at each site to get a feel for how many of our fish are our target species. To do this, we simply pulled a net out and pushed the water and fish to one end, then lifted the net above the water, giving us a nice view of the fish. At one site it looks like we have about 100 Lost River suckers and a few hundred minnows in the sampled net, and at the other site we have only about 10 Lost River suckers and a few hundred minnows.

Measuring fish from the nets.

I’m glad we have some suckers, although out of the thousands we put in, the numbers are extremely low, and we still have another month or so for them to hang on until we tag and release them. The minnows are another unfortunate result, but there’s really no way of keeping everything out of the nets while still allowing water and nutrients to circulate in and out of the nets, so we just have to deal with it.

The past few weeks have been busy. During most of the second week of July I got to assist with bull trout surveys. They were at a site about an hour and a half out of town and because of the heat we wanted to start early each morning, so we camped at a site close by and were able to enjoy the mountains and rivers for a few days. The surveys consisted of electro-shocking the river, catching the trout that we could, and then weighing, measuring, I.D.ing, tagging, and releasing them. The data is used to see if fish are utilizing, and returning to, sites that were restored over the past few years.

The week after that I took a motorboat operator certification course offered by the Department of the Interior, and required by the government in order to operate federal boats. It was three days long and consisted of a few lectures as well as knot tying, rescue procedures, maneuvering drills, and driving with a trailer.

The past two weeks have been filled with data collection and water quality monitoring. The dissolved oxygen keeps moving to our threshold value, but hasn’t quite bottomed out yet, so we’ve been keeping a close eye on it and getting the aeration systems ready to go should we need to start them up to increase the DO. Next steps are to sample the fish that we have to see what percent are the suckers, and try to keep them healthy for the rest of the season!

We have fish! We spent a week setting drift nets between 8 pm and 1 am (when the larval suckers are higher in the water column), off a bridge over a river where the adult fish are known to spawn. The first night we filled two coolers with tiny fish. We left them in the coolers over night, with a bubbler to keep the water oxygenated, and then transferred them to the pens the next morning. Each night we got fewer fish, but in a week we managed to collect enough to fill three of our five pens. The remaining two pens we filled with larval suckers brought up from a hatchery in California. The fish from the hatchery are Lost River suckers, the fish we caught are either Lost River or short nose suckers, they’re still too small to tell which. With any luck they’ll be short nose suckers, but either way, they’ll be valuable in testing and developing methods of rearing larval suckers.

Dock in progress at Tule Lake site.

Pens at Upper Klamath Late site.

Nets set at night to collect larvae.

Algae at one of the pens.

Since getting the larvae into the pens, we’ve been working on deploying Data Sondes to monitor water quality. We’re particularly interested in, among other things, dissolved oxygen because at some point in the season the algae is going to start blooming rapidly. Not too long after that, it will all die and the dissolved oxygen is going to plummet. At that point, we’ll be setting up an aeration system with a generator powering a bubbler that will aerate the pens 24/7 until conditions improve. So the focus over the next few weeks will be to get a good system down for reading and re-calibrating the Sondes and monitoring the fish and the water quality, and preparing for the crash.

A cooler full of larvae.

Up close and personal with a larva.

Larvae from the hatchery.

A lamprey that got caught in our net.

The last few weeks have been busy.  To recap, we’re building floating u-shaped docks from which we are going to suspend nets that form a sort of cage.  We’re then going to catch some larval shortnose suckers and place them in the cages where they’ll live (hopefully) all season, then at the end of the season we’ll tag and release them.

Weir used by USGS to monitor sucker populations.

We’re still in the planning stages at this point, and are working hard to avoid missing our window to collect fish.  Despite a lot of delayed orders at the hardware stores, we have our docks and cages mostly ready to be stocked with fish.  We’re going to start setting plankton tow nets during the nights in order to collect larvae to put in the cages, and then the, “official” propagation work can begin.

Nature Conservancy site.

We still have some work to do with the docks, but it’s good to have them in the water and basically set up after dealing with them for the past few weeks.  We’re using JetDocks floating dock systems and they are just not nearly as easy to assemble and work with as their YouTube videos would have you believe!  Anyways, at this point we’re just working on setting up some aerators (for when the dissolved oxygen gets too low in the cages), and DataSondes (to tell us when the DO is too low, as well as to monitor ammonium levels,  pH, conductivity, and water temperature).  We also need to put some bird netting across the pens to keep our feathered friends (of which there are many) from helping themselves to our fish.

Planting day with the restoration team.

I’ve also been able to help out on a planting day with some restoration folks from our office.  The fish morphometrics project is also progressing.  We’ve also been getting a lot of help, both in terms of people-power and equipment, from the other agencies in the area, especially USGS and BOR.  It’s really cool to see how everyone helps each other out and works together on these projects.  So with some help and hard work, hopefully I’ll have some fish to talk about next time!

One of the best and worst parts to starting a new project is just that, it’s new.  You really never know what to expect, which the creative and adventurous part of me loves but the overly organized part of me cringes at.  I’ve now been with the Fish and Wildlife Services office in Klamath Falls, Oregon for three weeks.  I’m working on a propagation project for the threatened shortnose sucker, Chasmistes brevirostris.  Which would be great, except we can’t seem to find any!  We’ve been spending quite a bit of time out in the field just trying to track down individuals who are ready to spawn.  I’ve also been working on building floating docks and putting together other equipment which are going to be used to keep the fish alive once we catch them and put them in pens.  These steps haven’t come without their own issues of course.  The docks don’t seem to be able to handle the depth of water which we want to use them in, and some of the power tools I have at my disposal haven’t been used in a few years, and don’t seem to have any intention of coming out of their retirement!  So improvisation and creative problem solving has been coming in handy, along with a few trips to the hardware stores.

Future site of propagation pens.

Despite this, or more likely because of it, I’m having a great time and learning a lot.  Not only am I putting my field work and research skills to use, but it’s also great to see that people who have been working in this field for decades don’t have all the answers and have to spend quite a bit of time trouble-shooting.  Plus, I am learning how to collect fish using seine nets and cast nets, tag fish and use a tag reader to keep track of them, water quality monitoring equipment, and various other tools of the trade.  I’m also learning a lot about the history of the area as well as the native (and invasive) species of fish, birds, plants, and wildlife.

Learning to throw a cast net.

Finally, I’ve started working on a project involving morphogeometrics.  In short, we’re trying to look at the shape and structure of different species of lake suckers and, using a computer image analysis program, determine if there are defining shape and structure features which can be used to identify different species.

Overall, it has been a great first few weeks.  I am really enjoying all this job has to offer; challenges and victories included, and I’m really looking forward to what else is in store this season!

Klamath Falls, Fish and Wildlife