me so sleepy

FIELD: 8am - 7pm

Bradley and I separated for the day. I went out into the field with Lindsey to High and Papoose Lakes to look at the crayfish containers and document how the juveniles have grown. There were still quite a few mortalities (~half), but not nearly as bad as what we found in Big Lake yesterday. Afterwards we collected snails at a site on High Lake for a study that Lindsey's Notre Dame undergrads (known collectively as the undergrads) are working on to find a parasite. This is done by carrying a bucket and picking the lilies for these tiny, golden-brown snails that like to hang on the underside. but! the tricky part is that you can't move too fast or too much because they'll drop off if there's a big cloud of dust coming. Sometimes I'd just walk really slowly, or I'd slide along fallen logs Tarzan style, but I think my favorite method was to float (it's really easy with 7mm wetsuits) and kinda grab at the petals for snails. The final task of the day was to find Three Large Crayfish where she needed to save the gut contents for analysis. That part is really gross and horrible- you have to break off the crayfish's claws, break the fish in half, then pull out the yellow liver-like inside. but it has to be "Fresh" so you have to do all of that while it's still alive. I didn't really want to watch her doing that, so she let me go off and snorkel for fun for a few minutes. this was awesome because I felt like a gator, prowling through the water. I even came across a school of bluegill and we hung out for a bit.

back to the crayfish cracking: I do take comfort in the fact that Lindsey doesn't like doing this either, and she always says that she feels horrible. And in general, she keeps the best interests of the animal (well, as best she can) like working with certain lakes where she won't have to kill the fish post-experiment and things.

so then it was about 3pm when we returned to the ND research station and Bradley and I went about trying to catch Bluegill on Tenderfoot Lake for my research project. We attempted to sein net the fish out, but neither of us had done it in a lake before. Each time we would only get 3-4 fish, none of which were bluegill. and bluegill are pretty common here. We tried for about an hour, and were basically just swimming around in our wetsuits or trying to catch fish with our hands. Right when we were about to call it quits, Ashley brought larger white net to the dock and tells us how it's actually supposed to be done. Apparently what you do is half one person standing at the shore, and the other out as far as they can until it's too deep. Then, the deep person walks in a giant semi-circle half arc, dragging the net along the bottom, towards the person on the shore who is now walking parallel to the shoreline and meets the person. Then, you quickly pull the ends together, successfully creating a "pouch" of the fish sampled. This method/technique was so much better! We caught 6 beautiful bluegills, rock bass, yellow perch, minnows, etc. so luckly we were pm;u 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UPDATE: hehehe @ me. i had been typing this after my long day and was falling asleep on wednesday night (I was lounging in bed) as I typed, which at the end of the p's I guess I woke up and shut my computer. lols/