I went to Rye to the Bioblitz which I do almost every year (but not last year as I was in Ohio for the NANFA convention). This time I took a camera to get pics of some of the fish related events.

First I did the seining at the Piscataqua river mouth. Two years ago this place was rich in fish species including silversides, smelt, sculpin, pipefish, and cunner. This year was different. The water was very cold, the patches of eelgrass were gone. The seining crew only got silversides and shrimp. dipnetting the seaweed on the wave crashed rocks only got me a mummichog. What it was doing in that environment I had no clue. (the fish were placed in buckets so fast I got no photos, the mummi escaped from the hands of the person putting it in the bucket).

This crab tried escaping the seine into a puddle but someone grabbed it.



Here is a sand shrimp



These ducks were in sillouette, I hoped a photo would let me see more details but it does not. They have elongated faces like eiders.



The salt marsh group didn't let anyone enter the water or stray too far from the path for fear of losing someone in the muck. (the group was big, and had a few kids, and from experience salt marsh mud is deep, i got stuck in it in the blitz a couple years ago.)



I extended my perfect dipnet and dipped over the edge into marshes the river channel. The groups leader liked that as it got him critters to talk about and saved him work.

Here is a threespine stickleback. I wish I got a better picture as it was my first threespine.



A ninespine stickleback, Ia ssume this was the same species I got a couple years ago as it had the same stripes.



I got lots of mummichogs



I took pictures of the Sea Coast Science Centers Aquarium tanks too, but not sure if those should be posted or not.

One thing I learned from this trip is you cannot collect critters from the state park. So I need to find another brackish area if I want to collect. Well, their is a big estuary upstream I never really explored. (technically when I went to the other side of the Oyster River dam I was in it, but I did not know it at the time).

Cool stuff Josh. You are in the water a lot, when can we expect photo tank pictures? Come on man, take advantage of these opportunities and photo these fish. These fish in hand, or whatever are beneath you. Not trying to criticize, but you are a very active member, and we all want to see decent photos from people who are in the water.

I wish I had photo tank pics from this trip, my photo tank was with me, but the bioblitz crew took fish for species counts/education immediately. But to be fair, the fish were not in my own hands this time but someone elses.

A few more things. The second time this month (first was the NJ trip) I seen a large fish spashing around at the surface in brackish water. What big (i estimate a foot long) fish splashed in brackish surface waters.

When looking up species info for this trip I discovered another fishes of... book free as a web site. Fishes of the Gulf of Maine.

http://www.gma.org/fogm/

and someone talking about their cold water new england tanks. Not often you hear of chilled native tanks, and chilled native marine tanks seem less common than trout tank ideas. http://www.nano-reef...and-coast-tank/