With the 2011 field season and my Maine Conservation Corps term drawing to a close, I think now is the perfect time to review and reflect upon all of the work that was done this summer and fall.  It was an ambitious field season for the researchers at the Reserve, and after a busy summer and even after the first snowfalls, several projects are still underway.  I was very involved in four big projects during my term, which I will review below, and helped with several smaller projects too, as help was needed.

Kennebunk and Mousam River Monitoring: The first project I worked on after arriving at the Reserve, and the last I will finish before I leave, is the fisheries monitoring of the Mousam and Kennebunk Rivers.  When I began my MCC term in May, fyke netting in the Kennebunk and gill netting in the Mousam had already begun, so I jumped right into the middle of the project.  We caught migratory and resident fish fyke netting on the Kennebunk River.  Migratory fish included American eels, sea lampreys, and blueback herring, while residents included common shiners, white and longnose suckers, brown bullheads, fallfish and three-spine-sticklebacks.  Gill netting on the Mousam, we caught striped bass and American shad, both migratory species.

This fall, we continued our monitoring of the Kennebunk River by fishing in one of its tributaries, Goff Mill Brook.  Our method for capturing fish this time was electrofishing, a technique we had become quite practiced at during other summer monitoring activities.  Electrofishing is exactly what it sounds like: a battery-powered backpack with anode and cathode extensions sends a weak electric current through the water, temporarily stunning nearby fish so they can be collected with nets.  After fishing three 200-foot reaches, we’ve seen fish such as brook trout, white suckers, chain pickerel, American eels and nine-and three-spine sticklebacks.

Saco River Monitoring: The Saco River monitoring project had much the same goal as the Kennebunk and Mousam River monitoring project detailed above: to determine the fish species and populations present in the Saco River in Biddeford, ME.  However, the means to our end were quite different.  Though we did use fyke nets, as in the Kennebunk River, our nets needed to be set and reset with each tide for two days.  At the first low tide, we set up our nets with the wings stapled down to allow fish up into the grasses of the salt marsh.  We returned at the next high tide to release the wings on the net, creating a barrier between the fish on the marsh and the rest of the river.  As the high tide went out, the trapped fish were forced into the funnel section of the fyke net, where, at the next low tide, we came to weigh, measure, and release the individuals.  During this project we netted eight sites on the Saco River for 24 hours each.  Working with the tides made for some late night and early morning fishing trips, but shared between a large group of interns and associates made the project manageable.  We caught 389 fish of 19 species during our four days on the Saco, including migratory alewives and American eels.

Merriland/Branch Brook/Little River (MBLR) Monitoring: If I had to choose one project that characterized my term at the Wells Reserve, the MBLR Project would be it.  The purpose of this project was to quantify how open and forested riparian (stream bank) areas affect not only fish species and populations, but also macroinvertebrate species and populations, stream habitat characteristics, runoff nutrient content and water quality metrics such as dissolved oxygen, pH, and turbidity.  This summer was the first year of this three-year monitoring project and while some elements of the project were up and running immediately, other parts (habitat assessment, for example) required us to use a lot of new field techniques and equipment, and took some practice to master.  Difficulties surmounted, the data collection phase of the project was a success and we collected stream data from 20 stream reaches throughout Wells and Sanford.  We caught 312 fish in this watershed, the most common of which were brook trout, white suckers, and American eels.  We are now in the early phase of the next step of this project; analyzing the mounds of data we have collected.  These analyses will tell us if there is a real significant difference between characteristics of streams with forested banks and streams with open banks.

Shoreys Brook Monitoring: This fall, a historical dam on Shoreys Brook, a tributary to the Salmon Falls River, is being removed and the Brook is being restored to a more natural state.  In order to document how this dam removal will affect resident and migratory fish in the Brook, we did some pre-dam-removal monitoring on eight, 200-foot reaches of the waterway.  The procedures we used for this project were identical to the electrofishing and habitat assessment methods followed in the MBLR project.  The streams in the MBLR and Shoreys Brook watersheds, though not far apart spatially, were quite different in their fish populations and habitat characteristics.  Common fish species in Shoreys Brook included pumpkinseed sunfish, American eels, sea lamprey, and golden shiners.  Plans for future, post-dam removal monitoring are in development and pending funding.

Having the opportunity to work on these projects and countless other mini-projects has given me a great overview of the work that the Reserve undertakes every field season and of the different types of projects that fall under the umbrella of ‘estuarine research.’  I was originally attracted to the MCC position at the Wells Reserve for several reasons, one of which was my inability to decide whether I wanted to pursue studies of freshwater or marine ecology.  I thought that estuarine ecology would be the perfect compromise.  This has indeed been an excellent experience for me.  Not only have I gained many useful skills acquirable only through direct experience, but I look forward to continuing to use these skills in graduate studies and future research with fish.