Rain, pain and more assorted goodtimes.

Alright, so I tried to have a catchy post title..it's more difficult than you think. Anyway, last wednesday night I met my students and explained the project and such to them. Thursday and friday we were out on the water getting them used to how things go and collecting our first data. We were out in dorothy lake where the sturgeon seem to be almost chubby looking but we don't catch very many. We aren't exactly sure why there aren't very many and why they're so chubby looking but I guess that is what the projectis trying to figure out. We continued netting the same way on monday and tuesday and also took some substrate samples. We get these by dropping an eckman or a ponar(not sure about spelling) down to the bottom and they have different mechanisms but either way they snap shut and grab a sample of the bottom, we pull it back up, pour it into a bin, mix it up a bit, record what the substrate materials is..so like sand, gravel, clay, silt etc and then we pour it through a screen and collect any of the bugs that were in the sample. Unfortuneately on monday it was raining and cold and windy so it was kind of unpleasant throughout the day. Tuesday was slightly better because everyone dressed warmer for the weather but it still rained and was a little windy.
Today we moved further upstream where it was known that there are more sturgeon. The sturgeon in this area are generally smaller lengthwise but are also much much thinner looking than the sturgeon we caught in dorothy. Again, it isn't known why so many fish stay further upstream and are so much thinner but we're trying to figure it out. After catching less than ten sturgeon per day mixed in with many by catch species it is very different netting where we were today. There were so many sturgeon and almost no other species of fish at all. I think our final count from all 3 nets at the end of the day was upwards of 150. But, let me just mention that this area is suspected by some to be a nursery area meaning that a whole bunch of the young sturgeon in this section of the river stay there to grow up, it's not the norm for the whole length of river for there to be that many fish in one area.
So I have mentioned about the rain but not the "pain" part yet. Really, it's not that bad and i'm being a bit soft I guess but today we were short on gloves so between the 4 of us we had 5 gloves. The guys pulling in the nets both needed 2 gloves which left me 1 glove to sample fish with. For anybody who hasn't seen juvenile sturgeon, they are spiky little monsters. haha. No, but really, they have a row of what are called "scutes" down each of their sides and their back and the younger they are, the sharper they are. So by the time I had sampled around 90 fish while trying to be quick because there were so many, my hands were looking a little rough. I have little scratches and cuts all over. But oh well, I suppose I should see the brightside here and realise how neat it was to see so many sturgeon and how nice it is to see all of them.
We're continuing netting in the same area for a couple days, though we are setting less nets because we only need to sample so many fish for each area, and because we didn't catch huge numbers in other sample sites, we can finish up in this area pretty quick. I think they were just going to set 1 net this evening and we'll pull that tomorrow but then just do a bunch of substrate samplses. But yes, all is well and I continue to hope for good weather.