By Benjamin McLean

Blogger’s note: Benjamin McLean is presently a student at Portland State University working with our regional office staff in Portland, Oregon. Our hardworking interns have some pretty cool experiences during their time with the Service are often inspired to write about them. Be sure to catch up on the rest of the series by reading the other Intern Adventures!

Interning for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services has been full of new challenges and unique experiences. My favorite example of this took place a few months back when Fish and Aquatic Conservation Program biologist Sean Connolly and I fled our cubicles in the Service’s Portland Regional Office to go fishing! That’s right, fishing. Not your typical, “you grab a pole, I’ll grab a pole” kind of outing though. We had been asked to help the Abernathy Fish Technology Center staff conduct a survey of wild and hatchery steelhead populations using electrofishing!

If you are like me, you have a few questions at this point: What is electrofishing? Does it hurt the fish? Isn’t that cheating?

To give you an idea of what electrofishing is, picture someone on the beach with a metal detector; now imagine that person has four friends following him with shovels. Every time the metal detector beeps, the friends rush in to dig up the buried treasure. Simply replace the beach with a stream, take away the shovels and add nets, and instead of lost rings and loose change you are after fish. That is electrofishing.

The user waves a handheld device through the water to emit a low-level electrical charge that stuns the fish for a few seconds, allowing those with nets to scoop the fish up and put them in holding tanks to be studied by the field biologists and then released. So yes, it is cheating of sorts. The fish do receive a small jolt, but it has been proven to be a very efficient and non-invasive method for conducting thorough stream surveys.  

The survey site was situated on Abernathy Creek in Southwestern Washington. There, we met up with the Fish Technology Center team:  Project Team Lead Ben Kennedy, Senior Scientist Doug Peterson, Electronics Engineer Kurt Steinke, Administrative Assistant Steve Dyer, and new Student Conservation Association Interns Margot Cumming and Paul Kieras. After a few handshakes and a safety presentation, we were given nets and thrown—figuratively, of course– into the creek.

We surveyed Abernathy Creek in at least six transects that each were several hundred feet in length. It should be mentioned, that Abernathy Creek is far from a typical stream. The Creek has a series of engineered log jams that have been implemented to improve fish habitat. This made wading up stream less  like a slow stroll along a creek bed and more like a perplexing scramble through a Wipeout-style obstacle course!

This ongoing study is important because it’s evaluating an innovative conservation hatchery program that’s trying to increase the abundance and genetic integrity of wild fish through what’s known as ‘hatchery supplementation.’ That’s a technical term for using hatchery-raised fish to help rebuild wild runs that are in decline. The results are going to help hatchery and hydropower managers determine the best ways to raise hatchery fish that don’t impact wild populations too much.

Possibly the greatest takeaway for me from my time in Abernathy Creek was learning in-field fish identification methods from the Abernathy Fish Technology team. The biologists showed me how to distinguish between steelhead, coho salmon, cutthroat trout, and sculpin by looking for key features in their physiology. This was important to the survey because the biologists were only analyzing steelhead and cutthroat trout populations. By the time we had finished the survey, I was able to make quick and confident fish identifications. I have yet to apply this new found skill at the office, however, I sleep better at night knowing that if the occasion were to arise I could pick out a coho salmon from a crowd of steelhead in no time!    

By the end of the day, the crew and I had helped to capture, study, tag and release 188 steelhead from Abernathy Creek. While the fish were smaller than what most anglers look for, it was easily the most successful fishing trip that I have ever been a part of.

Spending the day with such a great group of people and getting to wade through a gorgeous Washington stream reminded me of how lucky I am to be able to work with the Service and be a part of supporting, protecting, and restoring our region’s natural resources. Thanks to the Abernathy Fish Technology Center team for giving me the chance to share your work and passion; it was as rewarding as it was thrilling.