Over the past few weeks it has been unusually hot here in Klamath Falls. The worst being 102! So my fellow interns and I decided to spend July 4^th on the coast. For a not well-planned trip it turned out amazingly.  We lucked out and found a campsite not too far from the beach. And it was everything we had hoped for, the coast was cool, almost frigid and beautiful.  The small town we were near put on a great fireworks display on the beach.

Cape Blanco

Off the pacific coast scenic byway

Back in Klamath falls, the area is still suffering from a 5 year drought. It was expected that water at the dams would be shut off at some point. Over the July fourth weekend the water was shut off at the Gerber dam. When the water is shut off fish get stranded at the base of the dam, especially larger fish, and if they are not removed will die. The Bureau of Reclamation took on the task of trying to salvage as many fish as possible. We got a chance to go out for a day and help them with their endeavor. They utilized trap nets in the large main pool below the dam and electrofished the smaller pools. Any fish caught were transported to above the dam where there would hopefully be enough water for the summer for them to survive.

Gerber Dam

Erica having fun saving some fish

Unfortunately this catfish didn’t make it

We were especially interested in any sucker fish caught.  All suckers were photographed, measured, weighed, tagged and DNA samples taken. They are tagged with what’s called a pit tag, which is similar to what they use as microchips in dogs.  The tag is placed right in the underbelly, above the anal fins.  A small piece of anal fin was clipped for DNA analysis.

Sucker fish

Pit tagging

The next two weeks we spent trap netting in both Upper Klamath Lake and Tule Lake down in California. We are trying to catch suckers that had been released last year. The first week was disappointing.  We didn’t catch any, but we did catch a variety of other species such as: blue chub, tui chub, fathead minnows, sculpins, perch, pumpkinseeds, black bullheads and rainbow trout. Attempts on Tule Lake were not very successful due to our motor not wanting to start when trying to head back to shore.  We tried to paddle back to the boat launch, but the afternoon winds picked up, so we had to drift to the other edge of the lake and be rescued by our mentor. It was quite a long day.

Chub caught in one of our nets

This last week on Upper Klamath we caught four suckers in a single day, which is a pretty good catch.  This size of sucker is not seen very often and is similar in size to the fish we have in our net pens.

Sucker caught in our trap nets

Over the weekend we finally made it to Crater Lake, which is practically in our backyard. You can hike about a mile down to the water to swim or jump off the cliffs. The water was a spectacular blue and of course freezing cold.

Crater Lake

Hi everyone,

We Richfield interns are exactly halfway through our CLM internship, I feel like I’ve learned so much. For the past couple months we have been focused on cacti, but the past couple of weeks have transitioned into SOS collections. We’ve learned to collect vouchers, fill out the data sheets, and have made 6 collections of globemallows, Hesperostipa comata, Chaenactis steviodes, and Machaeranthera tanacetifolia. While I’ve liked the cactus work, I’m enjoying the new tasks and seeing new parts of Utah. Most of our collections are coming from western Utah (since there is a focus on Great Basin plants this year). There are some very remote parts out there, such as Ibapah, which is only accessible by dirt roads (90+ miles of dirt roads).

We’ve seen lots of wildlife, such as badgers, gray fox kits, a hoary marmot, and rattlesnakes. We’ve also seen beautiful birds such as a Scott’s oriole, mountain bluebirds, western bluebirds, northern harriers, long-billed curlews, and Say’s phoebes.

My brother visited me and we went down to The Buckskin to hike the Buckskin Gorge. We also went up to Boulder Mountain and canoed on one of its many lakes.

More coming soon (since it’s the end of July and I never submitted my June post…).

Ellie

Buckskin Gulch Slot Canyon

Great Basin gopher snake