Day 9 -- July 17, 2017

Spokane Reservation, Wellpinit, WA

Today we got to spend the day in the creek under the façade of trout counting. (That did happen, but mostly we just walked up the creek, or maybe that was just me.)

Here’s the process:

1. Put on waders – these are important if you don’t want to a) freeze or b) get electrocuted.

   

   Step 1: Joel models the latest fashion in

   fishing waders, accessorizing with a cap

   stolen from a fellow camper and a back

   complete with water pouch. 

2. Get your gear – this includes a fish shocker box* (man included to operate box), two five gallon buckets, three fish nets on long poles, and some scientific stuff (scale, measuring ruler thingy, tiny ID chips, and DNA sample vials).
3. Get in the river, making sure you stay behind the man with the fish shocking box.

   

   Step 3-4: Monet and Joel help the DNR interns catch the fish after they've been shocked. 

4. If you have a net, stand behind the fish shocker and catch any fish that come. Fish go into bucket.
5. Bucket of fish is taken to shore for scientific stuff.
• Write down the ID chip number (there was another name for this, but we referred to it as the fish’s social security number) and load the chip into the injector.
• Catch fish, take DNA sample from dorsal fin and put it in vial. Write down number of vial.
• Measure fish’s total length and the fin length (how long it is to where the tail fin splits) and weigh fish. Write down these number.
•  Inject chip into fish.

  

  Step 5: Judy was awesome helping DNR employee Kaci do all the scientific stuff
  with the fish that were caught. She has been using the past week and half to look for
  volunteer and intern experiences, getting contacts before starting her senior year this fall.
  She plans to be Environmental Sociologist, which I never knew was a real thing, but
  she assures me that it is. She's awesome and is going to do great things, I have no doubt.

6. Return fish to river, where it will live the rest of it’s fishy days being able to be tracked and identified.

   

   Step 6: Be free, fishy! Judy sets free the fish she helped tag for tracking.

7. When you have completed that stretch of the creek, you will walk back down stream and take a break, maybe have some lunch. You might be asked to return to the stream and repeat the process somewhere up the creek.

*I have been reassured many times that the fish shocker box does no permanent damage or harm to the fish, just kind of stuns them so they float to the top of the water and the people with the nets can catch them and put them in the buckets. I know, still doesn’t seem great, but science necessitates some not so great things. Or so I’ve been told.

It was a good day for our half of the crew. Apparently, the other half had it a little harder, their fish shocker got dunked in the creek so it stopped working. There was also an incident with a bog when their guide sent them down the wrong fork. But they all made it out the other end.

Like I said, I enjoyed the excuse to have some creek time. The water was nice and cool, and I didn’t seem to get too bad of a sunburn. Always a plus.