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

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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.