Quote:
Originally Posted by Lamplighter
Today is my grandson's first day of real employment in a fish hatchery (Lake Merwin, WA).
He's still in the last year of the Fisheries training program at a local community college,
and he'll go for full time employment in the summer.
I'm a bit concerned that he is taking on too much this semester...
14 credit hours + 2 days per week at the hatchery + 1 day per week
at the plant nursery where he's been part time for the past year.
<snip>
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FWIW here's a mid-term update...
Much to my amazement, Sam has not missed a day of work
and has been keeping up with his classes. It has been a real strain on him.
When he has a day off, he crashes, and lights out at 9 most nights.
Lots of grumpy, tired, late-for-dinner days, but so far, he is keeping up.
On top of all that, he has started his "field work" project.
This is an ongoing stream survey of "pre-spawning mortality of Coho salmon in urban streams".
This project is not so much doing new research as it is to learn how to do research.
Yesterday, he found 1 male and 1 female that died before spawning.
The project requiring about 3
more hrs of his time each week.
Here's a description of
the pre-spawn mortality issue:
Acute die-offs of adult coho salmon
returning to spawn in restored urban streams
Quote:
Beginning in the late 1990s, several agencies in the greater Seattle area began
conducting fall spawner surveys to evaluate the effectiveness of local salmon habitat restoration efforts.
These surveys detected a surprisingly high rate of mortality among migratory coho females
that were still ocean bright and had not yet spawned.
Pre-spawn mortality (PSM) has been observed in many lowland
urban streams that have been surveyed to date, with overall rates that generally
range from ~ 20% to 90% of the fall runs.
By comparison, the rate of die-offs in non-urban (e.g., forested) drainages appears to be low.
The precise cause of PSM is not known. However, at present,
the weight of evidence suggests that the widespread coho die-offs
are a consequence of non-point source water pollution.
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