Native Steelhead spawning comes to a close

After fertilizing hundreds of thousands of native Elwha steelhead we are done for this year. This has been a very fun and interesting project to be on. It is far from over because the Lower Elwha Kallam hatchery has many eggs to incubate and lots of fry to feed and move around as they grow. We have hundreds of fry outside in the raceways and many eggs in the incubation room. Before the end of summer, (I think) we will be weighing, measuring, taking a fin clips, and PIT tagging the fish who are big enough. We will basically start the process over again of genetics and family so in 4-5 years we can spawn these guys.

Another thing we will be out doing soon is pumping redds for more recruitment in our native steelhead recovery program. Redd pumping is one of my favorite things to do. It is like opening a present we are wondering how many little steelies we will get and what stage of development.

Even more spawning

With the Hood Canal bridge closure I will the one who runs the database and decides who is spawned with who. It shouldn't be that hard to mess up I just have to make sure that all the males are different families from each other as well as the female. We are spawning what looks to be our last batch of females tomorrow :(
We have also been able to see the fruits of our labor, the steeelhead fry that we bread a couple of months ago were put out in the raceways!

Melanie and I got to present this project along with our fellow REUers at ONP's perspectives program last Tuesday night. It went really well and I am glad that is over!

The picture is one of our handsome sperm donors!

Still spawning

Every Tuesday is spent down at LEKT spawning steelhead native to the Elwha River. It is been a big success because we have many hundreds of hatched eggs. This means we are doing something right! The NOAA crew makes the trip up every week as well because we have implemented a little side study to see if par marks are heritable. The adults that we are spawning had their par marks counted when they were smolts along with a picture. The average number is around 8 but there are some with 11 so we are coducting some special matings to see if this is inheritible. It will be interesting to see in 5 months when we count par marks what we can deduct.

Still spawning

Spawning of the ESA listed Elwha steelhead is still the main priority down at the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe. So far we have fertilized over 51,000 eggs and we have some hatching from our first spawning. It is so cool being able to visualize the fruits of our labor! We are re-plenishing our native stock for future generations to enjoy.

Nearshore vidcast

Steelhead Spawning

This is a follow-up on the ongoing Steelhead recolonization project for the Elwha River. Many agencies are partaking in this event NOAA, Lower Elwha Tribe, and REUers. Last Tuesday was a very exciting day down at the Lower Elwha fish hatchery. The first group of native Elwha Steelhead (4 year olds) who were pumped from redds (in the river) and transported to the hatchery where they have been reared were ready to be spawned. The genetics (fin clip) have been done on these fish when they were PIT tagged, when they were approximately 6 months old. Gary Winans from NOAA is heading up the genetics and he has a very large data base of the families these Steelhead belong to as well as gender. The genetics allow us to make sure we are not breeding close relatives together.
The fish were captured out of their tanks, scanned for tag number so we knew what family they belonged to, if the fish was female then she was killed (they die after spawning in the wild) her eggs were extracted and put into 3 different tubs. The males were put into a tank with anesthetize (they get live to give semen once more) so we could milk the semen out. The semen was collected in baggies, oxygen was added to preserve viability, once we had semen from 3 males we mixed semen from one male into each tub of eggs. Water was added to aid the fertilization process then we mixed all of them together strained the eggs then added them to a brooder. The water in the brooder had iodine added to it to protect the eggs from bacteria. The iodine was rinsed out after a short amount time and now we are all waiting to see if our spawning was a success.

Podcast

I didn't realize I could type the same time I posted my podcast so here is my podcast on the first project I did as an REU student. There are some mess ups but I seemed to mess in everyone. Practice makes perfect right?

First podcast

Powered by Podbean.com

Puget Sound Georgia Basin Conference (PSGB)

One of the projects I have worked on during my time as an REU student is in the Nearshore with Anne Shaffer of WDFW. Data from the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe and Anne's Nearshore work was collaborated together to get a picture of how juvenile salmonids use the estuaries at the mouth of the Elwha River. Anne was lead author on a paper discussing the results (the manuscript has been submitted and we are waiting to hear back from journal editors) and I was a co-author on this paper for all the years of data collecting. The data collecting was all the seining I have talked about previously on this blog. From the results of data analysis Daniel and I created a poster that we brought to the PSGB conference. I was able to go to this conference through the generousity of the National Science Foundation. I got to go for all three days of the conference and I attended some amazing talks and learned about all the great science going on in our own backyard the Salish Sea. I learned alot and had lots of fun doing it! We got stay in a brand new hotel that is LEED certified and has the largest green roof in Seattle! A good time all around!

Steelhead PIT tagging

On February 5th Mel and I assisted the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe and Gary Wynans from NOAA with PIT tagging and tissue sampling of juvenile steelhead. This is part of the re-colonization project that Gary is spearheading. Gary is a fish geneticist for NOAA and just an all around great guy. The purpose of this project is to tag and gather genetic samples via tail fin clips, then use this genetic information to catalog families of native Elwha Steelhead. The tribe uses this genetic information when they get ready to spawn these fish to maximize genetic diversity by not breed siblings to each other. The fish we handled today are the future of the native steelhead runs in the Elwha River when the dams come down their prodgengy will the future steelhead runs of the Elwha. I believe this is the fifth year of this project. I guess you are wondering how we got these little guys. When I say little guys they were naturally spawned in the Elwha this spring and I helped other members of the tribe gather 981 fry this summer by electrofishing the side channels of the Elwha. The preferred method of gathering these fish is by pumping redds (fish egg nests) but we were unable to do that this spring because of the high flows.

My favorite part of this project is being able to insert the PIT tag. We do this with a large gauge needle. We put the tag which is similar to a big grain of rice inside of the hollow needle and then inject it on the underside of the fish. All the fish we tagged were in the 100mm range. When we got done tagging and clipping we put these guys out in the raceways at the hatchery where they will be reared until they are ready to spawn.

IMW hard work

IMW stands for Intense Management of Watersheds. NOAA is collecting data on several watersheds in the area, basically comparing a restored watershed to unaltered. W. Twin, E.Twin and Deep creek are the ones I have been involved with. In the summer NOAA along with help from LEKT electroshock the watersheds and PIT tag coho and trout, they have been doing this for 4 years now and have almost 10,o00 fish tagged.

Today I went along with Ray (LEKT) and Todd (NOAA) to E. Twin River and helped to recover and reset up the antennae that are placed in the water to read the PIT tags. A storm earlier this winter rerouted the river and deposited over 4 feet of gravel, rocks and sand on top of the antennae. Most of the day was spent digging this water soaked substrate. My arm and wrists will never be the same. The sediment is very heavy and the digging was slow going. We managed to get one out and the second one almost out. Two others had been recovered the day before and those were reset back in the river. It is important to me that these antennae get up and going because they also are going to read my PIT tags in the 33 lamprey that Larry and I released in E. Twin this summer. The information I hope will tell us when the lamprey are moving in and out of the river system. I am tired but it is a good tired!

Elwha Nearshore

For the past couple of weeks Daniel and I have been working on our poster that we are going to present at the Puget Sound conference. The poster is based on a paper that Anne Shaffer from WDFW is writing and will be published in Hydrobiologia. We have been going over data and I am finding out how important it is to be meticulous in one's recording in the field as well as entering into a spreadsheet. One mistake can change the outcome of your results which could mean coming to the wrong conclusion. Our prof has been a big help with running the stats and I couldn't do it without him "holding my hand"!

I also have assisted Matt with the Lower Elwha tribe on analyzing data from my first REU project. That project involved collecting benthic, terrestial insects in the estuaries of the Elwha River. We also are looking at stomach contents of juvenile salmonids that we caught in the estuaries. We were wondering what macroinvertebrates are in the estuaries and what do the fish choose to eat? So far the data is pointing to the diet preference of the juvenile salmonids is insects from the dipteria order which are 2 winged insects.

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.