Qiet time

Since my last blog it has been a quiet time for as far as REU goes. On a day I couldn't go Olympic National Park employees, Lower Elwha Klallam employees and other volunteers rescued over 5,000 fresh water mussels from the diversion channel that was dewatered. This is more than double the amount of mussels the from the first go around. I am hoping over winter break to get my lamprey data into a spreadsheet so I can do some preliminary analysis to come up with a more viable way to capture adult lamprey. I also am going to contact the NOAA people who monitor the PIT tag readers to see if any of the juvenile lamprey I put a PIT tag into have moved out of the East Twin River.

Another project that is going on down at the Lower Elwha is an elk survey and I have been invited to go along whenever my schedule allows. I initially got involved in REU to work with mammals so I can't wait for winter break because this is the chance I have been waiting for.

Mussel/Fish rescue on the Elwha

Rescue operations for fresh water mussels and fish is still a main priority at the Natural Resource Dept. at the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe. This past week along with volunteers, hatchery employees and other REU students I helped to rescued chinook, coho, trout, sculpins and mussels from a section of a diversion channel being dewatered as part of the construction of the new water treatment plant for the City of Port Angeles in preparation for the removal of the dams on the Elwha River.

Mussel rescue

Last week I got to assist Larry Ward of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe with the second leg of rescuing mussels from the Elwha River. The mussels were rescued by Larry and several others from Olympic National Park due to the current construction going on in the Elwha for of the new water treatment plant for the City of Port Angeles. After the mussels were removed from the river they were brought back to the Tribal Hatchery where they were kept in raceways. Last week with help from my fellow REU'er Mel and USGS we dug out the some 6,000 plus mussels from pea gravel in the raceway, counted them, measured some of them and tagged 45 of the mussels with PIT tags. We then brought them to several different sidechannels of the Elwha (below the construction) and released them. It will be interesting to see where and how fast these tagged mussels will move. The PIT tags were super glued to the outside of the shell so hopfully they don't get rubbed off. It was amazing to see how 'happy' the mussels were minutes from being put back into the river. They were sticking out their foot and imbedding into the sediment.

Lamprey's on the Peninsula

I was lucky enough to spend the day with two scientists from California that are working on putting together a Key to Lamprey on the Olympic Peninsula. I took them to Deep Creek, East Twin, West Twin Rivers where Larry and I have had so much luck in finding macrophalmia, the transformed stage of lamprey that are about 5 years old and the size of a pencil. These macrophalmia are leaving the fresh water systems and going out to the ocean where they will be a parasite on a fish for about 2 years (no on is really sure about the time they spend out to sea). Of course we didn't have the success today finding them that we have had in the past couple of weeks. We were able to capture only a small fraction of what we have caught in the previous 2 weeks. We were going off of two main reasons for this: 1) they have moved out to sea and we were too late 2) the stream flows were up because of recent rains, or maybe it is a combination of the two. Because there isn't much known about the movement of these little guys we can't be sure about why we were so unsuccessful. The more time I spend learning about these lamprey the more questions I have.

The other awesome thing that happened today was that we got to experience a thunder and lightning storm out at Deep Creek! Thunder storms are one of the things I miss about the East Coast and this was the first storm I have witnessed this year. It was totally exciting :)

summer REU

I have been really bad and forgot to blog all summer so I am going to give a condensed version of what I did.

Most of my summer was spent trying to capture the elusive Pacific Lamprey! My mentor was Larry Ward from the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe and our first order of business was to try to capture as many adult lamprey as we could that were at the Tribe's smolt traps. We are not sure why but the adult spawning lamprey love to hang out under the tarps that are laid down in the streams for the smolt traps. We were successful with only a few getting away. This is impressive considering that we were chasing them in the stream with big nets! With some help from Mary Moser we were able to PIT tag these adults to track their movement within the system. Doing the surgical implantation of these tags out in the field was a major highlight!

Over the course of a few weeks I also got to participate in the fish rescue that was spear headed by Elwha biologist Ray Moses. The fish rescue was just that, we were rescuing all the fish we could including federally listed species from the big pools that were created due to the rerouting of the Elwha River. The rerouting of the river is part of the future Elwha dam removal. The construction that was under way was part of constructing the future Port Angeles water treatment plant. We saved thousands of listed species as well as countless sculpins and fresh water clams. For me this was very rewarding because saving these species is helping to preserve the genetic diversity of critical species like the bull trout for future generations.

not much going on

It's been a while since I blogged but I had the chance to attend a one day conference on Lamprey's and about the project that I am going to be spending bulk of my summer on and the upcoming school year. There are 2 major species of Lamprey's in the Pacific Northwest and with the second half of the day spent on correctly identifying the 2 most abundant species it was a great learning experience. The 2 biologists that ran the conference were from California and they are developing a field guide for Lampreys in the Pacific Northwest. Not a whole lot is known about the lamprey which makes it more exciting to know that I will be part of the project this summer that finds out about the mysterious lamprey.

Not enough Spring break

Spring break started out great! Mel and I did the Elwha Consortium tour with Pat Crain of ONP. Although I have been to the tour stops many times I learned a lot about the fish windows that the park is looking at using during the dam removal. The survival of the Bull trout is going to depend on the rescue plan. The second day of the conference was alot of fun and it is always great to see the results of the data that I helped to collect.
One Friday of that same week I went along with Matt Beirne and Larry Ward to look for juvenile Lampreys on one of the side channels of the Elwha. I have never seen a live lamprey so I was really excited to learn all about these little creatures. Lampreys like very fine sediment with some organic material in slow moving water or shallow pools. Lately it seems that equipment failure has been following me around because the electroshocker (which we use to find and stun the lampreys) wasn't working correctly! We fiddled with it for about an hour and then Larry decided to call it an afternoon. It was very disappointing because we didn't find one lamprey! Oh well hopefully we will have better luck next time.
Last week Sonny I had planned on doing our monthly water quality but again our equipment wasn't working properly! This was a big disappointment because the Hydolab just came back from its yearly maintenance from the company. Sonny and I didn't figure it out until we were on the other side of Lake Sutherland and then on our return trip back to the dock the engine on the boat started to smoke! Thankfully we made it back to the dock without rowing! Equipment failure I am learning is just a part of the scientists' life.

slow month for REU

After the technical problems with the boat and having to switch up the schedule I was unable to make it back out to do the monthly Lake Sampling which I look forward to. Lake Sutherland is so beautiful this time of year with the snow capped mountains and singing birds it is really a relaxing job except for the very cold water I have to put my hands into. It isn't so bad after about the third time because your hands go numb but nothing the heater in the truck fix. Very rarely is the lake choppy it usually looks like glass except for the occasional fish jumping. Because of the cold we are usually the only ones out there at 8am which makes it that much better. Hopefully next post I will have something a little bit more interesting to share.

Equipment failure

Equipment failure is a surefire way to put a big damper on your tightly scheduled day. One of the many things I have learned about science is that it never goes completely as planned and always plan for the unexpected. We certainly weren't expecting the head gasket on the motor for the boat to crack while it is still under warranty. we only got as far as the first buoy and the motor was smoking so bad there was now a smoke cover on Lake Sutherland. We then noticed oil leaking out where the exhaust was so we decided to get back to shore before we had to row. We are scheduled to try this again on Tuesday barring any unexpected breakdowns.

Pit Tagging juvenile wild Steelhead

The most exciting thing that I have gotten to do since January is to assist Biologists from Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe and NOAA insert pit tags into Steelhead. A pit tag is basically a microchip (like the ones for dogs and cats) that has the hatchery it is from and a number. These tag's are inserted into the peritoneum of the fish with a big needle after we anesthetize them of course. A fin clip is taken also for genetic sampling which will tell us what family each fish belongs to so when these guys are old enough to breed we are not breeding brothers and sisters. The genetic info is put in a database with the number each fish got. These juvenile Steelhead are special little guys in lots of ways because they are now federally listed and this summer I helped to retrieve these babies and some of them still had their yolk sac. Where adult salmon lay their eggs is called a redd and these redds are raised areas of gravel in the river bed and they are marked out during spawning season so in about 6 weeks we go back to them and "pump" the redd. Basically using specialized equipment we force water under the gravel and catch the fry (baby salmon) in a net. The fry are taken back to the hatchery and put in either an incubator or round tank and now that they are about 6 inches long we insert the pit tags. This breeding program is achieving a few goals, increasing survival rates, cataloging genetics, and enhancing the breeding stock of the hatchery fish. Hatchery raised fish do not have the fitness of wild so by breeding wild stock with the hatchery fish it also increases survival rates for the hatchery fish.

winter duldrums

Well aside from it being very cold not much much is happening. In the past couple of weeks I have assisted with the water quality sampling that the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe does monthly. Because of the cold Sonny (LEKT tech) and I have got the Lake Sutherland sampling down to a two hour round trip. Our hands really take a beating in the cold water not to mention the cold air blowing over us as we cruise across the lake. BRRR is all I can say. The other monthly water quality sampling isn't so bad, I get to go out for a little hike and get some much needed exercise. I believe I have mentioned these sites in other blogs but LEKT monitors some Elwha River tribs as well as the estuaries. These take the better half of a day and I really enjoy going down the mouth of the Elwha every month. The monthly changes are amazing!

Winter break

Over my winter break from classes I spent my days sorting through fall out traps. A fall out sample is much easier to sort through than a hess or sediment sample, but nether the less a very painstaking experience. Until I got the new microscope (thanks D) my neck was really strained. The new scope made my neck and sorting a more pleasant thing, that is if you call picking through organic litter soaked in alcohol looking for dead critters a good time. I also assisted in getting the monthly water quality samples on Lake Sutherland. This wasn't nearly as much fun as in the summer but it was nice to get out in the boat. We finished up our lake sampling just in time because as we were loading the boat back on the trailer it started to snow. After getting back the hatchery we ate lunch and defrosted before going back out to do the other monthly water quality sampling. There are seven different sites that the Tribe monitors including 2 on Little River, 1 on Indian creek, 3 by the state hatchery, 1 at the end of road on the Lower Elwha Reservation, 1 each in the estuaries. One of the most impressive things is how much the Elwha River changes at the mouth. What is referred to estuary 1 is very close to not being an estuary at all any more. The flooding that occured has deposited so much sediment that I didn't recognize the area at all. It is really an amazing sight.