The big sucker!
Sometimes when you travel down dirt roads for a little more than an hour, it can start to make you wonder whether or not you’re ever going to come out. This past week, we went into the deep heart of the Modoc National Forest in northern California in search of sucker species to see how far up the stream system they travel and can be found.
This past week was also my first chance to be crew lead as I had been designated crew lead for the shortnose and lost river sucker. I really enjoyed taking on the responsibility as lead and being able to make my own decisions on the project with the help of my fellow coworkers and being responsible for all aspects of the project. I feel that I really thrive when I am given responsibility and freedom to make my own decisions and choices in the field because I feel that it really aids in my problem-solving abilities and my performance.
Tuesday morning we set out with all of our electroshocking gear to sections of a steam upriver to a reservoir where we knew suckers were present. The river mostly consisted of small sections of flow and larger sections of pools. We concentrated on shocking the pools since that was where the suckers would most likely be. At first we caught a lot of dace and green sunfish (which are beautiful looking by the way) for the first couple of pools. When we arrived at the third pool though we caught our first small sucker which we photographed, weighed, measured and PIT tagged! A couple of pools later, the water started getting deeper and it was getting harder to shock because the fish could swim away more easily. Then, suddenly, while shocking in the middle of the pool, a huge fish jumped up! We missed it the first time and then it jumped up again and we caught it! Lo and behold it was a large sucker! We were all so excited to have found such a big sucker so far upstream! After that, we continued to find some suckers in different sections of the streams, so the week of surveying was a success!
It was also a success because the area hasn’t been surveyed for suckers in about 20-30 years. Therefore, our findings could hold significance for the scientific community and for endangered sucker restoration/conservation! The lead biologist on suckers here at the office who I am working with is actually going to have me write a manuscript on our findings which may be published! I never expected that to be a possibility this summer, but I am sure glad to have it!
Until next time,
Kaitlyn Farrar
Dace
Green sunfish