June 15, 2015
I
woke up at the usual time to get ready, but because I would be going on a
week-long trip to north-western Alabama, I chose not ride my bike to work. I do
not trust myself to ride with both a duffle and book bag on my back. So as I waited
for my ride get ready, I double checked my gear.
I got into the office a little before 7:00AM and was
instantly sucked into the swirl trip preparation. We had six people from our
office going on the trip: Jeff Powell, Andy Ford, Tim Mullet, Drew Rollman,
Eric Spadgenske, and myself. Denise
Rowell, Public Affairs Officer, also followed us on her own; she was coming
along to get some footage for a video about the Hutton Program and the fish sampling.
Our
fish sampling was to be scored using an Index of Biotic Integrity (IBI). The Butthatchee watershed is a priority
watershed in Alabama because of its diversity, and has been designated a
Strategic Habitat Unit (SHU). The IBI scoring of each stream is used to give it
a rating based on things like diversity and density of fish species, health of
the fish, amount of suitable habitat and others factors. All the stream ratings
together can give the scientist a fairly good idea of the health of the
watershed as well as giving them a good inventory of the fish that live there. They
use that score to monitor the status of the stream and to see if conservation
efforts are making a difference. This
type of information can be helpful in a variety of different ways and can be
used by a lot of different groups, many of which I found out would be out there
with us.
Along with the people from our office, there were
two people coming from the Mississippi Ecological Services Field Office, as
well as biologists from the Alabama Power Company, the Geological Survey of
Alabama (GSA, including Dr. Patrick O’Neal, one of the authors of Fishes of
Alabama), and the Alabama Department of Environmental Management (ADEM). I
was a bit nervous about being able to pull my weight on a team. The teams were
a mixture of people from the different organizations and I did not want to reflect
poorly on the Alabama Ecological Services Field Office.
Once everyone arrived, we met at a site on
Luxapalila Creek to do our first sampling. I had a bit of trouble putting on my
waders since it was the first time I had ever really worn them, but soon the
whole team gingerly scooted into the stream and the sampling officially began. I was handed a dip net and a jar to voucher
fish. I watched as the more experienced
members of the team shocked fish into the seine and did seine hauls. I help dip net fish when we shocked along the
shorelines. Everyone would crowd around
as Jeff and Andy identified the fish and called numbers to the data recorder. As
time went on, I felt much better about my ability to contribute to the team. I was amazed by the variety of fish found in that
little creek. Another part of their job become quite apparent—talking to locals and educating them about what we’re doing. About half way through our sampling, a local resident came over to ask about what we were doing. Jeff took the time to stop our collection and climbed out of the creek to talk to him. It is important to keep up good relationships with local landowners and tell them what we are doing. I’m sure they probably wonder about what all these strange government people are doing in their creek.
While
Jeff was talking to the landowner, we all took a break and Denise interviewed
me (and later Andy) for her video. After
he came back, we finished up the last of the sampling and headed back to the
hotel to get cleaned up. We ended the
night by eating dinner with other team members. It was an amazing experience,
and I couldn’t wait to do it again!
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