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.