Final Days

Well, six months goes by pretty quickly. I am now down to just two days. We finished up the sucker rearing project in Upper Klamath Lake last week, and have deconstructed the net pens and docks as of 2 days ago. There was not a very good survival rate of the suckers, being that we only had in the end 21 suckers out of the 1,000-1,500 larvae that were introduced to the net pens. This ended up being the exact same amount as was able to be recovered last year. The project is not likely to be continued in the same manner in the future, as it has not had very high success rates over the last three years.

I have gained many skills in the field of fisheries over this past six month period. I now know how to use five different types of nets including seine nets, fyke nets, drift nets, trammel nets, and Wisconsin style tow nets, to catch both adult fish and larvae, and their food resources. We have gotten experience in both assisting in the process of PIT tagging, taking length measurements and inspecting for parasites and other abnormalities, and have had the opportunities to tag the fish ourselves. Also gaining more experience in electro-shocking to catch fish and sample for fish presence. Learning to manage data sondes for water quality measurements has also been very interesting and is much more efficient than the hand methods that I learned in college.

Although I was never able to get my Motorboat Operator Certification because I was not notified the most recent time they were back in Klamath Falls, I was still able to gain much more experience than I had previously had in boat operation. At the end of this season I feel much more comfortable driving boats than in the beginning of the season, which will be useful in the future, as most of the animal species I want to work with the most live in, or near, aquatic habitats.

This season was also filled with many other types of experiences, in a large part conducting plant surveys. I can say that while I do love plants, I do not think I would like to continue in a direction where I would be conducting plant surveys in the majority of my job. This may be because for the most part when conducing our surveys the weather was very warm and the species which were being studied all occur in habitat with no cover. These species included Applegate’s Milk Vetch, found to be slightly less endangered than previously thought, and Slender Orcut, an endangered grass which was not found in the target study areas. However, even though it was most likely just the weather which caused this feeling, I think that I have a passion for working with animal species. I was involved in more water fowl work, including the collection and banding of Canada geese and duck species in general. This was so different from the other bird banding and collection that I have done, which only included smaller passerine species during mating season. It was really interesting learning to sex the species from their cloaca, instead of brood patch development and size, or the lack there of.

This job has left me in quite a conundrum as I do not know exactly what I would like to go into. I have gained more experience in fisheries work from this summer that I feel like I would have a better chance of obtaining a fisheries job in the future. However, I don’t know if I want to stay in fisheries work, or try and gain more of the experiences I have been trying to obtain, including telemetry and radio tagging for working with birds or small mammals. I am not going to get into carnivore work because I have found that it is just too competitive.

Overall, this has been a great season. The people who I worked with are all so wonderful, and have really been so helpful these past months. Many of them them have also expressed how important it is to go to grad school, which I was not really considering, and I will be taking my GREs this winter. I will continue to reflect on the experiences I have had and will make a decision on which species I will be going to school to study further. May it be fish, or birds? I don’t know but will figure it out.

I think the other most positive part of this internship was the location. I have been so many beautiful places this summer. Being in south central Oregon has been a great opportunity to visit other areas haha. The redwoods are only 3 hours away, I had never seen them and it was a magical trip, I fell in love with those giant trees. The Oregon coast is also amazing! My favorite spots were Cape Perpetua with the temperate rainforest, Diamond Peak Wilderness, and of course the area surrounding Crater Lake. Best wildflowers I found were on Mount Ashland 🙂