Had a good day out with some graduating Seniors yesterday. It seems that many area High School are making the kids do internships instead of letting them rot with Senioritis through the month of May, and I had the fortunate situation to take four of them out and sample fish in our area. Two of the gals were to do a project on invasive species and we had planned to look at the expansion of round goby in the Ottawa River. However, it rained like heck the other night, so we had a bit of a change in plans. We instead went out to Lake Erie, which as you might know, is chock full of invasive species. Also gave me an excuse to use the new big ol' bag seine, although it's not so stark white any longer lol.
For all the pictures, you can hop over here: http://www.farmertod...anfa/fish/2009/ I have some samples for this page.
We sampled a variety of habitats near the Lake Erie Center, Maumee Bay State Park, Metzger's Marsh and a final stop in a culvert under Route 2 on Berger Ditch. We sampled 28 species of fish, 4 of which were exotic, and we did get a couple green-gills. A couple pics:
Sampling the Lake Erie Center pond.
Examining the catch.
Standing on a pile of Lyngbia algae (another exotic)
We also did a little a posteriori science after running some transects in the swimming area at the State Park. We started, without them knowing, in the most homogeneous end of the beach, with habitat "heterogeneity" (if you could call it that) increasing as we got out of the more disturbed area toward a rip rap lined shore, where we picked up some plants and shift to more silty substrate.
Data are at the bottom of the website link I provided above.
I'm going to have them analyze the data and provide hypotheses about the effect on abundance, biomass and trophic guilds in their final reports. When we started this, they (well, actually all of us, myself included) thought we were just fishin'. After we talked about it a bit (I noticed the trend on TRANS3), I hollered out "HA! You've been caught doing Science!"
Then I answered the next logical question: "Yep. This is how you get paid to go fishin'." It's a nice little classroom, I think. Probably wouldn't be a bad thing to drag our Aquatic Ecology classes here. 
If this ain't the Hokey Pokey, then I don't know what it's all about!
Their best tournament pose.
The best Farmertodd Type tournament pose.
We stopped at Metzger's Marsh next, I keep hoping to get a big bowfin or longnose gar, but they allude my nets. We finally got some color into the net tho. That muddy water and sand bottoms leaves a lot to be desired in the color of fishes.
Pumpkinseed Sunfish
Golden Shiner
On the way home, I had the students blockade the upstream portion of a culvert on Berger Ditch, while Kevin, my undergrad assistant, and I pulled the bag seine through 2 ft of mud over about 50 meters, and over topped our waders multiple times in the struggle. It was totally worth it.
The Biblical Catch
And after the carp were removed.
One of the students then asked an EXCELLENT question... "What's the difference between a stream and a ditch?" My masters work asked the same question, and my advisor Hans, Justin Selden, and Nate Tessler are still working on that one
Berger Ditch, looking upstream. This is a "silt riffle". You can see all the tiles, and the flat, flat, flat topography of the land of the Huron Erie Lake Plain (HELP).
We went back to Maumee Bay State Park and rinsed all the mud and crud off as best we could (who would ever think you could get "cleaner" in Maumee Bay?), and then got a group shot with the NANFA t-shirt in view to cap the day. I'm sure they all slept very well last night. I can't wait to hear how sore Kevin is from dragging that seine through that culvert. We're starting half way next time.
This all came together last minute. I hope to do this again next year, with a little advertisement and advance planning. I think it worked out for the best, and I was really glad to have the opportunity.
Todd
Edited by farmertodd, 16 May 2009 - 01:25 PM.
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