FWS Sturgeon Trip!

My last week with the Fish and Wildlife Service was probably my favorite of the whole internship. My mentor, Glenn Constant, sent me to the Fish and Wildlife Service conservation office in Panama City, Florida. On Tuesday, we drove out to the Escambia River to do telemetry work with the Gulf Sturgeon.

We set three-gill nets in the middle of the river for about 45 minute time periods to catch the sturgeon. After the 45 minutes are up we would pull in the nets and we would place the sturgeon that we caught in the wet well that was filled with river water. After we were done pulling up the nets and setting them back out, we would park the boat on the side of the river. We would individually tag each of the sturgeon by placing an avid chip in the meaty area of their top dorsal fin. Then we would place tags on each of their pectoral fins and take their weight and length. After we were done tagging them, we would have to throw them back in the river to make sure they didn’t float back up to the top of the river. Gulf sturgeon do not have a swimbladder, so if they breathe in the open air when we are tagging them, they will float to the top. In order for us to get the air out of their bladders, we would have to tap the air out. This doesn’t hurt the sturgeon at all because their scales are like a strong armor around their bodies. We set nets and tagged sturgeon for about four to five hours, and in that time period we caught and tagged seven sturgeons.   

A picture of four of the Gulf Sturgeon we caught in the live well. We were measuring the largest sturgeon we had caught from that round. 

A picture of me and the smallest sturgeon we caught. The scale behind me is the way that we measured their weight.

A picture of me and the largest Gulf Sturgeon that we caught, which ended up weighing about 50 pounds. 

This internship has been one of the best experiences of my life. I have gotten to meet so many people and do so many things that I would have never had the opportunity to do if it weren’t for this program. I am so grateful to have had this experience and I will remember it for the rest of my life.

LDWF Final Week

The final week of the internship included time with Nikki, the biologist who works the wildlife vet, time duck banding, and my final times with the gopher tortoises. When I was with Nikki, I did the usual looking at pig stomachs, cleaning out stinky refrigerators, and talking about life as a wildlife vet. One day I was lucky enough to go duck banding one more time, but sadly we did not net any ducks. Those in charge of laying the feed out dumped the feed slightly out of range, so no ducks were caught unfortunately. My last day on the job happened to be the best that week, since we got to release gopher tortoises into their pins and cuddle with a bobcat. No joke.
My mentor works with this family of wildlife nuisance people, who also work with wildlife on the sets of television shows and movies. They take care of some of the gopher tortoises before they are released in their pins. We had to go to their home to pick up the tortoises, so we got to see all their other cool animals including alligators, a whole bunch of snakes, raccoons, wolf dogs, a bobcat, and a trained nutria.

Older fully trained raccoon

new baby raccoons

BOBCAT!!!

baby alligator snapping turtles for USFW

other federally protected turtle that they are holding for USFW

After seeing all the awesome animals, we went to finish the tortoise pin and release to of them into it. It was funny watching them interact with each other, since they were two males. I had never seen two stranger tortoises together before. The smaller one of them was the one who wanted to fight, while the larger tortoise just wanted to do his own thing. It was great being able to witness two tortoises being placed back into the wild, where hopefully they will help increase the species and population. 

This internship has allowed me to meet a bunch of great and funky people, while gaining all around experience and a basic understanding of how a state government program operates. My mentor, Keri, was awesome! She worked hard to get me with people for all walks in the agency, so that I could achieve my goals. I wish the internship could have been a bit longer, but I'm grateful to everyone involved for letting me participate in this great opportunity. I'm going to miss everyone, even though it feels like we started only yesterday!

Thank Everyone!

Final week and thoughts

My last week in the studio was unfortunately a bit slow. With all of the other interns back home there wasn't much to work on for my last few days. I spent a bit of time searching for historical pictures of Louisiana wetland in the hopes to be able to return to the location and take a current photo. The old photo would act as a "ghost photo" to show the dramatically changing landscape.

My summer as an intern at the Coastal Sustainability Studio has been a great experience for me to learn and discover what it is I want to pursue after graduation. CSS has provided me with new experiences I would not have had the chance to partake in otherwise and I am grateful for that. I encourage you all to head over to the studio one day and to see the things they are doing there it truly is a unique place to work. I also look forward to seeing how the Water Campus exhibit comes along and how it is executed in the future.

All in all I had a wonderful summer internship experience and would recommend all fellow RNR, wildlife, environment, and coastal students to apply for a National Fish and Wildlife Foundation applied scholars internship!

The Finale

The last week of my NFWF internship with USGS was more vegetation survey field work. I stayed in the exciting city of Morgan City and visited six different marsh sites, each containing 10 different vegetation plots. At each plot, the dominate vegetation was identified then five individual plants of the dominate species were measured. After that an average vegetation height and water level was measured. All other species of vegetation located into the plot were recorded and compared to previous years. An estimated percent of each species cover in the plot was recorded. Pore water samples were supposed to be collected but our pore water instrument broke in the field.

I am very grateful to the NFWF team and the USGS team for allowing me this opportunity. I had fun while learning so much about my future professional career. I will miss this internship and somehow  I'll miss the unforgiving marshes and swamps of Louisiana. I included two photos: one of me breaking trail in the rain, and the other the beauty of Louisiana's marshes. Once again thank you to everyone that made this internship possible and very successful.

Diversion Panels and Caminda - NFWF week 8

My last week at NFWF was definitely one of the most exciting. I was able to travel to Plaquemines Parish and go to the Expert Panel on Diversion Planning and Implementation meeting. The group of people that serve on the panel are all from out of state, and they give their input to all of the updates and work occuring on the current river diversion projects. People from The Nature Conservancy, CPRA, engineering companies, and economists all gave speeches about the current status of the diversions. A lot of the work that is occuring now has to do with models and collecting data from CRMS sites (shoutout to Peter). One of the most interesting parts of this meeting was the public comments that took place at the end. These meetings are open to the public and, if you wish to speak to the panel, you have about two minutes to do so. In these two minute speeches I got a really good idea about how some fishermen and oyster harvesters feel about the diversions. One person claimed that "we just don't have enough science to prove that these things will actually work" (at which point all the scientists in the room shook their heads). Another man who makes his living off from harvesting oysters felt that diversions are important and we need them, but we "don't have the right kind of policy and decision-makers in Louisiana to go through with it." It was interesting to see how strongly some people felt and how hard it is to truly make everyone happy.

Diversion meeting agenda

On Thursday, we got to go down to the Caminada Headland to see the dune restoration that is occuring there. Very fine sand is being dredged from Ship Shoal, which is a sunken island offshore, and it is being put back on Caminada. This is going to help with shoreline erosion and it will also distribute sand to adjacent areas like Grand Isle. As the sand erodes from Caminda, it gets deposited to these surrounding areas. The goal is to dredge 3.3 million cubic yards of sand onto this 14 mile long headland.

Here's an active pipe that's currently pumping out sand onto the beach

After the sand is deposited in one area, it is flattened out and distributed with bulldozers, and then the pipes are moved down the headland to restore the next patch of degraded beach. Sand fences are put in place to catch sand from wind erosion and build up tall dunes on either side of the fence. The beaches are made up of a lot of shells which are left behind as the wind creates tall dunes along the fences.

What fencing looks like after a year. All of the sand around the fence is built up, and shells are left behind

These shell habitats are perfect for nesting areas for birds like Least terns and Piping plovers. However, during construction and dredging, they have to prevent the birds from establishing nests, so that they don't harm the eggs. To do this, they disturb the sand by creating a wavy pattern in it (there's a more technical term for this, but I forgot what it's called...) The birds prefer a flat area, so they can watch for predators, so they won't establish a nest on a wave-like landscape. Our guide, Mike, said that we are coming to an end on the nesting season, so bird abatement won't be as much of a problem for the next few months.

the waves in the sand prevent birds from nesting here

While we were out there I saw lots of different terns, shorebirds, and a bunch of pelicans and sea gulls! This was definitely an awesome way to spend my last day, and I had so much fun. I've learned so much these past eight weeks from hanging out with Jon and Tanner, and I can't believe how fast this internship flew by. I'm sad to see it come to an end, but I've absolutely loved interning for NFWF. I'm so grateful to have had the opportunity!

Telemetry Work with the FWS

This week in the exciting life of a Fish and Wildlife service (FWS) intern, Cedric and I took a two-day trip to the Pearl and Bouge Chitto Rivers to collect telemetry data on the endangered gulf sturgeon. This telemetry work we are doing consists of 28 receivers that are placed all along the rivers. These receivers can sense when a sturgeon that has been tagged with an acoustic transmitter swims by. So what we were doing those two days consisted of pulling up the receivers to download the data and replacing the batteries in all of the receivers.

 We started our day bright and early Monday morning at 6:30am and headed out to the Slidell area to launch the boat. The first day we borrowed a boat from the fish hatchery at Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF), which was awesome because this boat had seats with backs on them!

After we launched the boat at our first site, the Bouge Chitto River, we drove out to our first receiver and Cedric taught me how to download the data to the computer and how to change the battery. The second site we boated to, we had to tie up and hike to, which was defiantly an adventure. By the end of the first day we had boated and driven to three different locations and worked on five different receivers.

At the start of the second day, we drove back to the LDWF fish hatchery to switch out our boats. Instead of borrowing LDWF’s boat again, we went out in a large metal boat that belonged to the FWS. The best part about this boat was that it had seats with backs on them and it had a 225 horsepower motor.

We launched the boat in the lower Pearl River because that’s where the majority of the rest of the receivers were. This was the largest boat/trailer that I’ve ever had to back up and launch, but in the words of Cedric, I totally nailed it! For the rest of the day we boated to twenty-two different sites to work on the receivers.   

The last site we had to go to we had to load the boat back up and walk to because the receiver was placed on someone’s dock.

By the end of the two days, I think both Cedric and I were completely exhausted. Through working in the field those two days I learned so much about telemetry and I think its so interesting. I love that the main goal of studying these creatures is to see where they like to live at different seasons and compare that with their spawning seasons. Ultimately, we are trying to figure out where the gulf sturgeon likes to spawn at so we can try and protect them and I just think that that is awesome. 

Most of the receivers we pulled up were attached to solid structures right beside the river, such as this tree. 

This is one of the receivers that we pulled up and serviced. 

A picture of me sitting on a tree limb in front of the dam in the Bouge Chitto river. 

A picture from the dam in the Pearl River. 

Week 7 - More Rare Moss and Prairie Work

This past week I went back up to Pineville to help look for more rare moss. I found more bobcat and opossum tracks and a huuuge nest of grand daddy long legs. If there is one thing I have learned about being in the woods this past couple of weeks, its that I hate spiders and spider webs. Now I don't mind if they are doing their own little things in their own little worlds, but not on my face. Literally. Walking into spider webs every 10 seconds does not rank high on my to do list.

I also went out to Lake Charles again to do more plant plots in the prairie. I've come to be very fond of the prairie and will be very sad to never see it again, particularly the ranch we most visited. It's such a different and pretty place to visit, and there are no spider webs on my face, which is a plus. The only really negative downside to doing this work for 14 hour days is the miserable heat. It's just too dang hot. But it is preferable to being stuck inside all the time. And I am looking forward to my last week because I will be doing work with gopher tortoises and hopefully get to go see some pitcher plants.