Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Animal Behavior Gives Us Grief

Back in Massachusetts at Clark University...


The trials continue – both literally and figuratively! John and Susan realized the other day that if anything were to happen to Dianne (Dianne Suggs, one of our PhD students) and she was unable to run the testing on the lab’s male stickleback, that we would be short one essential lab process. These tests show how the males respond to gravid females and foraging groups at the time of reproduction.


To wit – John gave Anna, Jeff, and Meghan the Very Important task of learning how to test male stickleback. My commission in this instance was to write down every step for testing males in exquisite detail for posterity, and to learn the basics of the process myself so that I am able to help in the event that I am needed. (Truly, I am becoming a universal assistant in the stickleback lab. Go fish!)


Yesterday we took it upon ourselves to learn the setup for these tests. It’s quite complicated in that we test six males at the same time all in separate tanks and each tank must have two computer monitors on either end of it so that the researcher can show the male video of both the very pleasing gravid females and more sinister foraging groups. All of these males must be placed in the tanks during a time convenient for them to make a nest. Wires run across the floor in a dizzying array of electricity – spilling any tank water in here is not a smart idea! Cameras must be hooked to power sources, monitors must be hooked to computers, computers must be hooked to other monitors… It all gets quite confusing and we spent the better part of two hours figuring it all out yesterday, hooking together splitters, trying not to plug too many power strips into other power strips… etc.


Today we are still missing equipment. Each male’s tank should have two cameras in front of it to record the male during the trial. One camera records the entire trial to give us a good view of the set of behavior exhibited by the male; the other is placed directly in front of a color card in the tank by the male’s nest that allows us to make color measurements. We are currently short a couple of tripods and repeated scouring of the bio building has shown us only the interior of several other labs where cameras and tripods are hard at use. [See, for example, Justin Golub’s experiments.]


As if running all over the building looking for cameras and tripods wasn’t enough, our right computer monitor that controls the right monitors being shown to the six male fish is acting up and even our local lab techies can’t seem to figure it out. So far, it’s been an hour since we were supposed to begin trials and things aren’t looking much brighter. I suppose it’s one thing when you have trouble with your computer at the office, but when some technology you are supposed to be using in lieu with essential scientific trials doesn’t work, things are so beyond frustrating…


After an hour or two we fixed the right computer monitors, decided to borrow a couple of tripods from the female testing area, and … went to lunch. Cause fiddling with reluctant technology and equipment is hard work, doncha know.


- Rachel

Saturday, June 21, 2008

Just Call Us "Team Discovery"

Lauren and I left late Tuesday afternoon (Moody Blues, anyone?) for a five day camping trip needed to trap in the Willow and Talkeetna areas of the Mat-Su. Most of the rest of the day passed in a blur of driving, but luckily, we managed to find the last gas station whose price range was still below $4.29 on our way out of town. We got an amazing campsite at South Rolly where we could throw our traps about a ten seconds walk from our campfire to the lakeshore, and had a quiet night of chili for dinner and much guitar playing from Lauren.


Wednesday we discovered the joy of not having a chain grocery store to shop at. We were a bit disappointed in most of our catches (it perhaps being just the wrong time to catch shoaling stickleback) but were later gratified when we caught over a thousand fish at Willow Lake in a little under three hours. At Boot Lake, we were entertained by the rising of a loon about ten feet off the shore from where we stood (without cameras, of course), and then ended our day with an extraordinarily successful hike through the untamed wilderness using only a compass to get to Heins Pond, a lake Lauren trapped as a collection for the lab for the first ever just last year.


Thursday morning, we broke camp at South Rolly and went to pick up our traps at Heins Pond. After our fifteen minute hike back through the woods with fish and traps in tow, we drove not even a quarter mile down the road to find a black bear down the pickup truck stopped in front of us! Strange to remember that every time we are out in the field we are completely surrounded by such wildlife. We then diverged from the Parks Highway for what seems like the first time in my life (to get anywhere in Mat-Su you take the Glenn Highway which turns into the Parks Highway) and took the Talkeetna Spur up to – where else? – Talkeetna. Here we found the Best Campsite Ever overlooking the river, and were incredibly successful trapping all of lakes we needed to down to figuring out that what we’ve been calling East Sunshine is actually North Sunshine and finding a reliable contact at Question Lake. We spent the evening playing cards and watching the clouds burn off the horizon before driving out to the scenic lookout on the highway where Lauren saw Denali (a.k.a. Mt. McKinley) for the first time in her three years of coming up here to Alaska. We were so enthralled that we sat there for another hour watching the sunset behind the mountain.


Friday we pulled about a TON of stickleback from Question Lake and ate lunch looking at Denali again (neither of us really got tired of sitting at that scenic spot). We trapped X and Y Lakes and discovered that not even the locals can remember which is which as there are conflicting maps on either end of the trail leading into X (or is it Y?) Lake. But Lauren noticed something that led to a bit of knowledge that when relayed may or may not make Matt have a meltdown. The maps both refer to a third lake, obviously called Z Lake, in between Y (or is it X?) Lake and Tigger Lake. “Huh,” said Lauren. “That’s funny. Trouble Lake is definitely in between X and Tigger, but I don’t see it on here. I wonder if it’s too small to list… but no, it’s only a little smaller than Tigger. Oh look, a maintained trail leads out to Z Lake! Let’s go check it out.” Check it out we did and come to find that Z Lake is indeed the same Trouble Lake that we have been trapping by hiking through trail-less woods full of devil’s club and other nasty vegetation.


…Alaska is so much FUN.


Saturday we discovered some yellow and green stickleback in Tigger Lake (this was apparently destined to be a camping trip chock full of discoveries and nothing else) and managed to pack up some live ones for observation back in the unit. Returned home to Anchorage where Matt has now been replaced by Susan. She’s here to help Kat out with her behavior project (a rather interesting study of sneaking male stickleback). Dinner conversations have suddenly become rather more informative than usual! But it’s an incredible thing to have her here living and working with us in the field – not to mention taking part in our Alaskan antics. We didn’t even have to tell her the van was named Pewter.


- Rachel

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

The View From Here

This weekend I went camping on the Kenai peninsula for four days with Lauren and Matt. We made collections and (the reason Matt and I went with Lauren) we made crosses in the field of a few populations down in the Kenai. There were gorgeous lookouts on the way up, so we stopped often to take pictures between lakes.


- Anna Mazzarella


Here's Lauren at one of these viewpoints. This photo looks like an ad for Clark!

This is Watson Lake, which we stopped at to trap as we drove down the peninsula. It rained every morning, but we did get one gorgeous day, and this is evidence that there was some sunshine on the trip!

Here's a picture of Matt and Lauren as we were actually making the crosses on a picnic table at our campsite on Anchor Point. We made them shockingly fast, probably because we were highly motivated by the fact that it was 44 degrees out! By the time we were done we could barely move our hands and had to go sit in the car with the heat on so our hands would stop hurting.

Here's one of my favorite pictures I took on the trip, a view of Beluga Slough with the ocean and mountains in the background.

Saturday, June 14, 2008

Camping by the Numbers

Lauren, Anna and I spent 4 days camping on the Kenai Peninsula. Four bears, a golden eagle, 29 crosses (performed on a picnic table in high winds and 46-degree temperatures), a dozen or so trapping sites, hundreds of beautiful mountains, and one spectacular sunset later and we were back in Anchorage, ready to hit the showers. A good time had by all.


- Matt








Monday, June 9, 2008

The. Best. Day. Ever.

Matt is off with the water quality girls today to Talkeetna. It’s a long drive and Jana and Sophie need to complete the water quality on at least three lakes while they’re up there. Matt is going because he needs some live fish from Trouble Lake which is, as the name suggests, rather difficult to get into and out of.


Meanwhile, the four of us remaining (Lauren, Anna, Jeff, and me) got up early so that we could begin the Best Day Ever. Anna and Jeff brought me to the lab and taught me how to “make babies.” This involves getting a lot of fish ready to reproduce from the holding tanks in the mosquito-ridden year, bringing them across the street to the into lab where we work, anesthetizing them, then swirling female’s eggs and male’s testes together in Petri dishes full of embryo medium. (The more technical way of saying this is that they taught me how to make “crosses” between stickleback.)


After this, we all piled into Sean Connery, and set off for adventure. I learned the real words to Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” (Hold me closer, Tony Danza…), climbed a really big butt – er, BUTTE, solved an earthquake and watched another hit right next to where Matt and the girls were in Talkeetna, and generally had fun running around the backwoods of Alaska with my friends.


The following might explain better:



The last story of the best day ever is about the Tsunami Warning Center in Palmer. Lauren saw it on a map and thought we should visit because she lives in Washington state and thought it’d be neat to have one of the tsunami warning stickers that she sees all over the Puget Sound. So we found the building and dropped in for awhile. The people who worked there weren’t giving tours that day, but once they found out we were a bunch of student biologists they gave us an incredible hour-long informal tour that included us getting to use their Early Bird Warning System to “solve” an earthquake! And while we were standing there, a whole bunch of alarms went off and we saw an earthquake happen in Talkeetna where Matt and Sophie and Jana were. (It was only a 2 point something so they didn’t even feel it, but still!) They were also fascinated by what we do and came out to the car with us to see the fish and talk to us some more. It was a pretty extraordinary experience and not one any of us is likely to forget soon.




- Rachel

North of Anchorage

Jana, Sophie and I went up about 3 hours north of Anchorage to take water quality samples from several lakes, as well as to trap fish at Trouble Lake. Trouble is a bit of trouble to get to, but reaching the lovely, secluded lake after 1,000 feet of thorns and dense forest makes the scratches and bruises well worth the effort. It’s also always a pleasure to chat with the kind folks who let us access the lake via their property. I’ve posted a picture of Jana and Sophie working hard at Tigger Lake, and while they were taking a plankton tow, I was shooting some pictures of courting male stickleback from shore.


- Matt




Saturday, June 7, 2008

View from a Canoe

Things all get switched around from time to time. It’s nice for me, not being hooked into any one specific project because apparently I will get to experience them all!


The water quality team has been having some trouble with getting the U.S.S. Clifford back onto Pewter all by their lonesome so we’ve rearranged teams somewhat. Because Matt doesn’t always need both Anna and Jeff in the lab with him during the day, one of them gets hooked up with trapping or water quality in order to have the right number of people to get things done.


This means for the past two days I’ve been a temporary member of Bravo team. Do they have a nice job or what! Water quality, my foot, they just want to do this so they can paddle around all the gorgeous lakes here.

- Rachel



Jana, above, hard at work.
Below, Rachel and Sophie

Thursday, June 5, 2008

I Went to Alaska and I Came Back Weird

So the fearsome foursome is back together for a day or two using Pewter to tote traps and one big red canoe about the Mat-Su. The specific things we did this day hardly matter. At this point, we are used to our long work days, and it’s the little things that make them distinct. On this slightly cloudy, threatening-but-not-quite-raining day in June a few interesting things happened. We almost hit a moose that came running out of the bushes on the side of the road at the van. Lauren’s lightning reflexes saved both van and moose, and the animal looked even more scared than we were as it trotted back into the forest.


Second, we got to hear a few choice quotes from Ms. Jana Loux-Turner. To wit: “It’s not as lake-y as the other lakes,” and “I just kissed the motor.” Who knows what either of these was really supposed to mean. It’s Alaska. You go with it. Lauren had a nice quote as well — about some of the experiences we’ve had losing things at the lakes around here. “Lynda stole our temperature probe and Irene ate a trap. Those thieving ladies of the Mat-Su!” In a brief psychological retrospective (this is Clark after all), it behooves me to note that the week we spent camping on the Kenai Peninsula together at the beginning of this trip went a long, long way toward bonding us all as friends. This explains things like A-lab-skan and our penchant for naming inanimate (and animate for that matter) objects. Stickleback summer in Alaska quickly becomes all about the inside jokes and the fast friendships. Days are spent working, of course, but it’s rarely work to any of us. And nights are spent sitting around the table long after dinner, discussing the crazy things that happened that day or playing cards or harmonizing with Matt and Lauren on the guitar. I’m not sure what I expected when I flew out here, but the easy-going attitude and calm efficiency of this “working vacation” is just what the doctor ordered.


- Rachel


Lauren, above, and Jana, below,
model the latest in Alaskan fashion

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Friends In High Places

It's good to have friends in high places.


Scott Christy, a local pilot (and retired geologist, among other things) is a great friend to our lab, and is kind enough each summer to take us in search of stickleback in hard-to-reach places in his float plane. Today he took Jeff and me to several lakes around the Cook Inlet in search of what may prove to be some interesting stickleback populations. Our best catch came at an unnamed lake just west of the Little Susitna River. We dubbed it "Birthday Lake" on account of it being my birthday. Scott's not only a great pilot, but also a fantastic naturalist and storyteller, so spending the day flying with Scott was a great way to spend my 25th (wink, wink) birthday. You can see from the pictures that Jeff enjoyed himself as well. There's also a nice shot of the Little Susitna River from the air.


- Matt






Pup Lake and Yard Dogs

It’s Matt’s birthday! The “death” of June. It never gets old.


Matt’s friend, Scott Christy, took him and Jeff up in a float plane today. Meanwhile, Lauren and Anna gave me a day off to write — so while they headed out to the field, I took a brief trip to downtown Anchorage with Sophie and Jana to do some souvenir shopping.


Matt turns 13 ... er, 31!

They then headed off to do their water quality sampling for the day. The plan was to do two lakes today — Stepan Lake being the first. However, when we trapped Stepan a few days ago, we walked in over muskeg. It being rather difficult to carry a canoe between two people over water-logged marsh, Bravo Team set out looking for the public access. They ended up at the end of a dirt road where a house stood overlooking a lake. There were dogs outside so they bravely got out and went to knock on the door. The man who answered kindly informed them that they had ended up at Big Beaver Lake and let them come into his incredibly nice house to look for the public access to Stepan on Google Earth. So they go off looking… End up at Pup Lake which they knew was wrong. Pulled into a driveway that looked oddly familiar — it was a friend’s house on Lazy Lake. Wrong again! Turned around and saw a side road they hadn’t tried, so down it they went. There was a house at the end of this road with a black dog in the yard. This detail had been in Susan’s description of where the public access to Stepan was so they got out to ask the owner if this was indeed the place. And that was how they met “Mrs. Key, but call me Dee.” An incredible character study ensued that would be impossible to relate through mere words on a computer screen because it involves a lot of relevant body language. And that would be why Bravo Team only got through one lake today.


- Rachel

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

One Long Day

Jana and Sophie at the end of a plankton tow on Bruce Lake


What a day. Some of the days on the Kenai were long, but this day may have taken that cake for Lauren and me. I suppose it’s partially our fault for starting later than normal due to running errands, etc. But I’m getting ahead of myself.


We begin at the beginning. After a long night of playing cards and chilling out in the main unit, we took our time getting going in the morning, lolling about the kitchen while we ate our cereal and packed our lunches for the day. Today, Matt, Anna, and Jeff were only working in the lab a few blocks away from the main unit, so the fearsome “deathsome” effectively had two cars at their disposal. Jana and Sophie were taking the beloved Pewter out for the day, looking forward to a productive day of testing four lakes. Lauren and I were to gain control of the Forester, who quickly became known as “Sean Connery” due to the actor being in a movie called “Finding Forrester.” We divided our equipment, and each headed our separate ways.


I heard at dinner tonight that Jana and Sophie had an interesting time of it. Their potential four lakes turned into two perfectly tested lakes. The weather had turned somewhat stormy and windy for them at the end of the second lake so they decided to lay off and call it quits before getting drenched. Not counting the hour-long nap they took in the middle of the day! Since it was just the two of them for the first time, they had to get used to taking the canoe off and putting it back on pewter’s roof rack without additional muscle support. And while reaching for something in the van, Sophie twisted her shoulder and didn’t want to risk further injuring it for awhile, so the two of them decided to rest for a few minutes while parked at the public access to Rocky Lake. An hour later…


Also heard that Matt, Anna, and Jeff had an uneventful day in the lab, making crosses and being generally productive.

No wonder $20.00 won’t even get us 5 gallons of gas – this is the “death” pump!


Lauren and I, on the other hand, had a very eventful day indeed. When we left the unit in the morning, we headed over to the lab to get Matt’s keys so we could get into his room and get hold of the power inverter for the car so I could possibly plug my laptop in and write while we drove. We picked him up because he’d also managed to forget his own charger. The power inverter didn’t work, but at least Matt got his charger. Next, we took a drive over to Frank von Hippel’s lab to pick up the hard drive Lauren’s father mailed to her while we were all still out on the Kenai. No dice. So we drove off to find a gas station (which still hurts, even though we are used to the above-four-dollars-a-gallon prices)


One of the two beautiful swans at Beverly Lake.

Once in Wasilla, we hit up the Aquarium Zoo store to replace the temperature probe I managed to lose at Lynda Lake about a week ago. Ran over to the Kaladi Brothers coffee shop and picked up a new coffee mug for Rich King to replace one he’d lost. Lauren is an excellent friend. Drove off to the Beverly Lake area and picked up all the traps thrown on the previous day at Kalmbach, Bruce, Cloudy, and Seymour Lakes. We left our tenth trap next to the water at Bruce Lake and had to walk all the way back down the trail to get it back again. Also, come to find out that the man at Seymour Lake who told us we’d better be Republicans or he wouldn’t let us trap on his property is also a bear hunter. He was loading up his float plane with equipment as we gladly took our leave. There was another errand run to Fred Meyer to pick up supplies for a huge map of the Mat-Su that Lauren is making for us to be better organized in our trapping plans. After this, we drove off looking for Spring Creek which we found easily enough. Also easy to trap, but incredibly buggy. We were happy to jump back in the car and crank the A/C.


Lauren gets the GPS coordinates at Kalmbach Lake.

Headed over to Walby Lake to get GPS coordinates we’d managed to forget not one, but two trips in a row. And managed to find some very nice people off Trunk Road who let us trap off their property at Wasilla Creek. Three kids. All talkative. And a very large, friendly dog who was content enough to follow us all over the yard while we looked for likely places to catch fish. Run to the storage unit to get more traps for Matt. Some of our traps are in need of repair though, so quick change of plans! No trapping at Lucille Creek today, we’d save those traps for Matt. Instead, we ran off down the road to drop our last traps at Knik Lake and then Goose Creek (this was our creek dropping day, if one couldn’t tell). Took a lovely ride down Burma Road which is very long and hilly and entirely made of dirt. Roller coaster ride of a road. It was great fun. Lots of trees chopped down on the roadside, however, where last year there was forest. We speculated on this for some time, and think maybe it’s because the spruce trees are sick and dying. Not sure. Something to keep an eye out for. Burma Road led us to our final stop of the day. Yesterday, Matt, Anna, and Jeff dropped twenty traps at Whale Lake in order to pull a live collection of juveniles today for behavior testing, as well as a collection of about 300 other fish for Mike Bell, another stickleback researcher spending the summer on UAA campus.


Whale Lake is an adventure just to get to. You park across the highway, hike straight up the hill of an ATV trail, and then walk across quite a stretch of muskeg. Waders required! At this point of the day, the storm clouds that chased Jana and Sophie away were threatening Whale. Lauren and I steeled ourselves, grabbed a cooler and a jar for the fish, and made the hike in. Near the end of counting the fish for Mike Bell, it began to sprinkle. And we realized we had only pulled 19 of the 20 traps. We went scouting for the 20th (which Lauren found in a corner) and then contemplated how to pack twenty traps plus a cooler full of water and live fish back out from the lake. We didn’t want to make two trips, so I got the traps loaded on my shoulders and set off across the muskeg, Lauren attempting to tote the cooler behind me. This ended in me putting ten of the traps down halfway across the muskeg, walking ten out to the trail, then coming back for the others which Lauren and I split between us, held under one arm, and used the other to carry the cooler between us. Once at the trail, we added the other traps so that we each held ten, plus the cooler still between us. Those juvie fish went for a ride! We had to put everything down only twice because we are monsters made of steel. Team Alpha stands for awesome. Made it all the way back to the car, and got into Anchorage again around 10:30.


- Rachel


I get one foot out the door of the main unit and this is what I see! A moose outside North Hall.
A perfect moose print in the mud.


Sunday, June 1, 2008

Lassie, the Spruce Chicken


Really need to remember to put bug spray in the van! Lauren and I went to pick up our traps at Zero Lake today and nearly got eaten alive. We also got led down the trail by a spruce grouse for awhile. We were told by a local while camping at Hidden Lake that most people here call these spruce chickens — wanting to blend as much as possible, so do we. This particular spruce chicken soon earned the name Lassie as it would settle on the trail some ten yards in front of us, then startle up as we drew close and settle on the trail another ten yards away. This continued for so long that we began to ask it, “What’s the matter, Lassie? Timmy fell down the well? Show us the way, Lassie the Spruce Chicken!” Er ... maybe you had to be there.

- Rachel


Friday, May 30, 2008

Speaking "A-lab-skan"

Late last night, the other half of our lab group flew in. They are all here to mainly work in UAA’s lab, using fish caught in the area. Matt Wund is the lab’s postdoctoral research fellow. His work is based around studying how different populations react to the selective pressures of new environments. Anna Mazarella, a junior biology and studio art major, is here to not only help out in the lab, but to take as many pictures as possible. Jeff is a junior psychology major and joins Sophie and me as a rookie to Alaska. His first few weeks, he’ll be working in the lab with Matt and Anna, but eventually he’ll be working with Kat Shaw, a doctoral student at the University of Connecticut who graduated from Clark with her fifth-year Master’s in 2005.

The four of us had to explain a few things to our new counterparts: we have developed our own peculiar language in the two weeks we’ve been up here. Lauren calls it “A-lab-skan.” For example, the night we got back into Anchorage we had some fortune cookies with our dinner and one of the lottery numbers on the back of someone’s fortune was 4. Lauren mentioned that it was mildly amusing because 4 is an unlucky number in Japanese culture, and I remarked that I had heard that was because the word for the number 4 was very close to the pronunciation of the word for “death.” Well, this was hilarious to us at the time. Who designs a language system where you count “one, two, three, death?” And ever since we do not say “four” anymore; we say “death.” So we became a “fearsome deathsome” with “death” chairs around our kitchen table… etc. That’s right. You can never take us too seriously up here.

Also decided to label ourselves using the military phonetic alphabet due to the street names surrounding Wolf and Kings Lakes, which are all named Echo, Sierra, Tango, and so on. Lauren and I are Alpha Team — making her Alpha Leader (Alpha One) and me Alpha Two. Jana and Sophie are Bravo Team — Jana being Bravo Leader and Sophie, Bravo Two. And because the other three are not in the field, we emphasized their difference by passing over Charlie and labeling them Delta Team. Matt is Delta Leader, Anna, Delta Two, and Jeff, Delta Three. This has led to some very interesting phone conversations. Especially because we spelled people’s names out using said alphabet and thought it was hilarious that Matt became “Mike Alpha Tango Tango.” Which quickly led to us calling him Captain Tango Tango.

Maybe you all didn’t need to know that. Poor Matt.

- Rachel


Other examples of the fun things the lab gets up to – sticklecookies! Here we see many nuptial-colored males courting a gravid female.

Sunday, May 25, 2008

On Rabbits and Moose (Okay, Just One of Each..)

Here are some Alaskan pics I've taken so far. The top photo shows Anna and Jeff at Rabbit Slough. We saw the moose, 2nd photo below, at Whale Lake. He regarded us for a few minutes, and then plopped down to relax.

- Matt Wund




Saturday, May 24, 2008

Blame It On the Rain

The weather treated us surprisingly well when we were down on the Kenai. It was cold in the mornings and at night, but for the most part we had sunshine.


Today it rained. All day. Not hard or anything, but enough to make life interesting.


Our first day in the Mat-Su was spent in a new car. Poor Pewter’s “maintenance required” light came on, so we took him back to the car rental and got a Highlander for the weekend. Unfortunately, this car had no roof rack, so Jana and Sophie had to leave the canoe behind for awhile. But that meant that we got to trap incredibly efficiently for a few days. Today we experienced the extreme bugginess of Irene Lake and the interesting trek via ATV trail and muskeg to Whale Lake.


- Rachel


A moose skull seen on the trail leading into Whale Lake.

Friday, May 23, 2008

Homeward Bound

So, yesterday we made some rune stones to help us make decisions. For example, the decision of who showered first when we got to our unit.


I won that one.


After pulling all our traps from the day previous, we headed home to Anchorage. We rolled into town around 9pm after a slightly harrowing ride on the highway due to high winds. Pewter handles well for a minivan, but he becomes a high profile vehicle in the wind with the U.S.S. Clifford tied on top. Tired, but excited to sleep in real beds, we got some dinner and the keys to our unit on the UAA campus.


Jana and Sophie batten down the hatches.


Showering for the first time in seven days was GREAT.


Our unit is fantastic; there are four single bedrooms and a very nice galley kitchen. This will be the main unit, so Jana, Sophie and I will move out into the second unit a week from now when our other lab members arrive. For now though, we have another week to enjoy being a fearsome foursome. And tomorrow we get to settle into our normal commute out to the Matanuska-Susitna area (also known as the Mat-Su). All is well with the world.


- Rachel


Lauren measuring the softness of the carpet in our unit.

Thursday, May 22, 2008

The Shish-Kablog

This is our last night of camping. The UAA residence halls open tomorrow, so we’ll be traveling back to Anchorage and moving into our main unit tomorrow night.


Met some people today at Encelewski Lake who know Rich King! It is a small world, and very satisfying to know that the locals almost always remember the “stickleback people.” We make an impression.


Traveled down to the tip of the Kenai Peninsula today and threw some traps in Deep Creek and Anchor River, which require treks through salt marsh to get to. The beach was relatively unoccupied today, but we’ve been seeing the beginning of the Memorial Day campers and RVers. I don’t blame them for taking advantage of the time while they have it; despite the still chilly air, the ocean is gorgeous with the mountains as a backdrop and the sky yawns wide here, blue and inviting.


Took a brief trip down to the Homer Spit (“Spit Happens!” or “A quaint little drinking town with a fishing problem.”) for a souvenir run. Bought postcards and gifts for the poor people back home who are missing all of this.


Halfway through our drive off the spit to our next trapping site at Mud Bay, we spied a bald eagle. We’d been seeing eagles ever since we moved farther south, but this one was sitting on a signpost, just chilling. We drove right up to it without it ruffling a feather. Quietly dubbed him “Ebert” and went to drive away after taking about twenty pictures each. And then we spotted Ebert’s cousin not fifty yards down the road! More pictures. The wildlife and its proximity to human life up here is fairly mind-blowing.


We made our last night camping one for the books. Made an awesome campfire, sang all the camp songs we knew, cooked up some mouth-watering kabobs (and hot-dog-a-bobs), and rounded it out with some roasted marshmallows.


- Rachel


Wednesday, May 21, 2008

On the Road Again

As the title clearly states, another day of driving. Nothing terribly exciting until the end of the day when we left our Hidden Lake campsite and moved down to Ninilchik in order to trap farther south.

- Rachel

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

The Midnight Mud Attack of 2008!

Speaking of Skilak Road … We had quite the eventful night. After throwing all of our traps and picking up the water quality duo from their last lake, the four of us spent some time in the Soldotna McDonald’s charging our cell phones and the ATV battery we bought to use with the trolling motor on the canoe. (This was a fun four hours in which we sat in the back of the restaurant charging our equipment, using the wifi from the Safeway across the parking lot, and eating Subway sandwiches for dinner.) It had already been a long day, and Lauren and I still had twenty traps to throw back at Hidden Lake near our campsite. After seeing some of our first moose on the slowly darkening ride home from Soldotna (and what Lauren and Jana suppose was a great-horned owl in a tree off the side of the road), the three of us who weren’t driving drifted off to sleep. Lauren took it well, but Skilak Road is an adventure by itself even in the light. Nineteen miles long, it is entirely dirt and gravel – very fun in a minivan in the middle of May when things have been muddy and the vehicles with four-wheel drive who have been using it create large ditches down the middle and sides of their road by taking the mud puddles at good speed. Pewter takes these areas slowly and carefully, and Lauren had gotten through every bad patch just fine. Until…


The front left wheel slipped off a ridge of hard-packed mud that Lauren had been carefully navigating and fell down into a small ditch of mud. The rest of us woke up to see the sign for our campsite maybe fifty yards down the road. Sweet. So we got out to assess the situation. Lauren had her window rolled down to talk to us while we figured things out — so when we went to push and she went to accelerate… Well. Let us just say that Pewter and Lauren both were very artfully decorated with the plume of mud that fountained into the air as the front wheel escaped.


Made it back to Hidden by 12:45, grabbed our twenty traps, and threw them before heading off to bed. Nothing brings a good field researcher down!


Today, we made a friend at Longmere Lake, a place Lauren has tried and failed to trap for the past two years. Very nice people, but talkative! Alaskans are great for conversation. They will tell you their life’s story and expect yours in return. Also very curious about what we do — but the questions are fantastic. Especially when we meet kids. They ask the most random, pointed questions about what we’re doing. It’s a great deal of fun.


- Rachel

Monday, May 19, 2008

Hazy Shade of Winter

Lauren, left, and Rachel take a moment

Water quality girls still figuring things out. Today, I learned how to count and preserve fish in the field. It’s so crazy and amazing to actually see this fish in the wild after studying them for years in a classroom. It’s very early in the season; we’ve talked to a few locals who’ve told us that most of the lakes around here only just iced out a few weeks ago. Apparently, it was an unusual winter weather-wise. We heard that Anchorage had a few feet of snow only two weeks before we arrived!


And yet … the sun was beating down on us enough today that Lauren and I actually turned on the air conditioning in Pewter for the time we spent riding between lakes. Oh, the humanity.


Also! Saw a black bear today while driving down Skilak Road. It stood on the side of the road for a moment, nonchalantly watching us as we exclaimed and scrambled for the video camera before trotting off into the woods again.


- Rachel

Sunday, May 18, 2008

On Trapping Lakes and Flagging Tapes

First day! Lauren taught me how to set traps in about two minutes while standing on the muskeg at Watson Lake. Muskeg is great stuff; generally, one can refer to it as bogland or marsh. It consists of sphagnum moss and other vegetation in various states of decomposition and is home to all sorts of interesting plants — like berry bushes (cranberry, blueberry, cloudberry, crowberry), carnivorous pitcher plants, wild calla lilies, and Labrador tea plants. Can one tell that we have been trying hard to identify every new plant and animal we stumble across out here?


Sophie works in the field

Trapping the threespine stickleback sometimes requires the skills of a ninja warrior. In general, it is as easy as putting together a small minnow trap, throwing it out into the water, and tying it off to vegetation at the water’s edge. We usually throw about ten traps in a lake and leave them overnight before coming back the next day to count and preserve the fish we’ve caught. Where we trap at a lake is a matter that becomes more delicate. Some lakes do not have public accesses, or the public access is so well-traveled that we wouldn’t want to throw traps there because curious Alaskans and/or tourists might pull them up to check them out. Or worse, think we’re doing something wrong and remove our traps completely! Our ninja skills include finding isolated spots to throw traps, hiding our flagging tape and ropes from inquiring eyes, and making friends with nice homeowners who might let us throw traps off their property.

Traps, field notebook, and a jar of preserved fish. What more could you need?


To throw a stickleback trap: tag them (with permit number, Lauren’s name and contact info, and a line indicating that the trap is for research purposes), flag them (with the same information), toss them out parallel to shore, tie the rope off to nearby vegetation and discreetly hide the flagging tape. Our waterproof notebook (rightly labeled “Collector’s Bible 2008 Part 1”) gets a sketch indicating where each trap is, air and water temperature, GPS coordinates, and directions to the lake if we don’t currently have them. All of this information, as well as the counts we get for fish collected the next day, later gets copied neatly into a notebook for future referencing available to anyone using the collections from 2008.


The water quality girls had their first run today. They managed to set up their canoe with necessary equipment, but unfortunately have forgotten the chlorophyll filter in the lab in Massachusetts! Lauren and Jana have attempted to “MacGyver” a replacement filter, but the sponge that was supposed to be the filter got damp and the sealant hasn’t properly sealed. No worries. John will send the real piece of equipment a.s.a.p. to the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge for us to pick up on Tuesday.


- Rachel

Saturday, May 17, 2008

To the Kenai with a Keen Eye

I suspect that in the next couple of days, I am going to really appreciate that the grant money provided the four of us in these first two weeks was used to put us up in hotel for my first night’s sleep in Alaska. The trip here was exhausting, and it had just fallen fully dark when I got here around midnight (which was interesting by itself! It is strange to be in a plane headed north and the sky keeps getting lighter and lighter even as your body gets more and more tired). Met up with the other three girls who are here with me for the first two weeks.


Lauren and Jana in Alaska in 2007.

Lauren Ackein, a fifth-year master’s student, is in charge of our little group for this trip. This is her third trip to Alaska being in charge of the field collections the lab makes every year. My presence here is being put to good use by helping Lauren with trapping efforts.


The other two members of our party are Jana Loux-Turner and Sophie Valena. Both are junior year biology majors like me (and all of our families are from New Hampshire, too!) and are here in Alaska to continue a project Jana participated in last summer in Alaska testing the water quality of the lakes where we trap stickleback. This is Sophie’s first trip to Alaska, and she’s here to help Jana with the water quality study as well as to think about a possible future project on land cover change in the area.


The morning of the 17th was spent showering and piling on the food at the hotel’s continental breakfast bar. We packed up our Toyota Sienna minivan — oh, funny story. We have a penchant for naming things here. When Lauren and Sophie went to pick up the van from the rental desk at the Anchorage airport, Lauren wanted to know if it was a white van so we could all call it “Vanna White.” No, said the lady at the desk. It’s pewter. And “Pewter” it has become. He was the only male included on our camping trip. So, we packed up Pewter, and went to the lab’s storage unit in Wasilla which is about forty minutes away from Anchorage. It’s a beautiful drive alongside mountains and rivers and forest.


After picking up all our equipment and the canoe (which is big and red and was promptly christened the U.S.S. Clifford) for the water quality girls to use for their plankton tows, we were finally on our way to the Kenai. The long drive was made amazing via the wild views out our windows: the Prince William Sound, more mountains (with more snow), cliffs and waterfalls. We had our eyes peeled for mountain goats, which Lauren has seen in the past, but we were fresh out of mountain goat luck this year. Maybe on the next trip down.

Our beloved minivan, Pewter.

Drove into Soldotna to get food for dinner around 10:30. Set up our tents at a campsite on Hidden Lake. We were right on the shoreline, and as it finally fell dark we crawled into our sleeping bags to fend off the cold, ready for our first day of work in the morning.


- Rachel