I got my first battle wound today. I was holding a juvenile sturgeon but only had a glove on my left hand so when the sturgeon suddenly flipped around, my first response was to grab it with my other hand. Sadly, my hand caught the sharp spikes on the side of the fish and my right palm now has to gashes in it. Though really they are pretty small cuts, but they did bleed a bit and hurt if I push on them the wrong way. oh well. It just makes me tougher.
I had this weekend off and Monday I switched from netting juvenile sturgeon to setting drift traps. The drift traps go in around this time of year to catch any baby sturgeon which have just hatched from eggs and are being flushed downstream. So Monday we took 8 drift traps and set them just downstream of slave falls. We then went up to slave falls for lunch, but found that the spill gates had been opened up alot and there was some pretty large waves around. We went into shore and were told that the water level was going to get higher so we shouldn't set anymore drift traps.
Before we headed home, we had to move one of the VRAP buoys that had floated downstream. This meant dragging the huge buoy into the boat, driving up closer to the slave falls generating station itself and putting the buoy back in the water. After some tricky work and a slightly scary moment or two because of such fast moving water and large waves, the buoy was good to go and we were headed back for home.
After all of that yesterday we got back but weren't sure what we were going to do today because we didn't want to set drift traps if the water was going to get higher because then the buoys don't have enough rope and things get more complicated. Last night though I got called and they told me I would be back working with the juvenile sturgeon project again while they figured out what to do with the drift traps. So I have now jumped crews again and will be continuing with the netting of juvenile sturgeon.
I am also pretty tired today since I have been in the sun all day and I didn't get to bed until late last night after I had watched Pittsburgh finally beat Detroit in the 3rd overtime period 4-3. But because of that, I am happy tired.