Finals Week, Deer Check Stations and Working for Fisheries

Finals at college ended last week for me and I am excited to move on to the next chapter. I did pretty well and maintained my GPA. But, now I am really excited for being able to be working 40 hour weeks and getting to do and learn so much at my job.

My first bass I got while electroshocking- it's huuugeee, LOL.

Just yesterday, I was invited to go electroshocking for bass. We needed to get 30 and we ended up only catching 18 because of all the rain we had been getting made them not so easy to find. We took spine clips (spines are the pokey bits on their dorsal fin) for genetics to send to a lab. Then I learned how to extract otoliths (these are boney structures that are similar to the bones in our ears), these otoliths have tree-ring like growth patterns so we are able to determine the age of the fishes. A lot of sampling is done for this to determine when we need to stock lakes and ponds for new genetics and how the age and growth rate is in the target fish. 

Crappie otoliths

In fisheries we have been working on lead net surveys. During school I really had only been able to help work up the samples where we measure and weigh all the fish we catch in the nets. Now that I have been out of school I have been able to go help pull the nets from the lakes and bayous. I got to throw the drag which is a weight with hook like projections to catch the line the nets are attached to. Once I feel like I caught something very heavy and springy I pull it in and we grab the line. Then we are able to pull the anchors and then the whole net. After that,  we shake the fish out of the nets to sample. At one location, we caught around 1,000 crappie (or perch). At another location, we caught 2 snapping turtles which we released so each catch is so diverse and interesting!

Our hoop nets for lead net surveys caught a few snapping turtles.

This last weekend, and one other before it, I got the chance to work at deer check stations. This is really fun to learn more skills I had never done before and get to interact with the public. I helped weigh the deer, tag them for specific hunts, age the deer using their dentition, measured the antlers if it is a buck, and lactation if it is a female. I watched and learned how to take chronic wasting disease (CWD) samples. Both of these were such fun experiences and I am so grateful for where I work to allow me to participate in things like these!

Guess what- I'm pretty sure Jesus is a big friend of fisheries workers because of Peter and Andrew and how they were fishermen...then Jesus came and made them fishers of men. I feel like I have a similar story to Peter and Andrews encounter with Jesus. There was one lead net sample we did where we caught SO many crappie and catfish; our boat was so full we couldn't put all the fish in baskets because we quickly ran out. That it reminded me of the "miracle of the fishes". This was when Jesus said to Peter cast your net on the right side of the boat and then it was so full of fish it almost sunk the boat! 

I have always felt called to biology, I think it was our first job as mankind that God actually gave us. He told us to take care of his garden and "God blessed them; and God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” -Genesis 1:28. This is like what we are doing in fisheries- we manage the population of fish and try to keep them healthy, a growing population and good genetics. If you have been reading this blog for a while I have already done bird surveys and monitoring work, now I moved on to fisheries so I am unknowingly until now actually working my way up to fulfilling this verse. 

-Nichole💜