So, what does a typical day out in the field actually look like? You're about to find out! Keep reading for a recap of Monday, July 7th—a day we were out at both BioBarge sites.
8:00am - picked up UCar at UW
Carpooling to our worksites means picking up a very official-looking UCar on UW's campus! To maximize safety during the pandemic, I've only been driving vans, with Sam, one of the SMEA graduate students, sitting all the way in the back row (masks on, of course).
8:32am - arrived at Waste Management [WM] site & greeted community scientist
Sam and I arrived at our first BioBarge site of the day just a few minutes behind schedule. Outside the Waste Management facility, one of our two active BioBarge sites, we met up with Maria—one of our legacy community scientists—before driving in together. Once we're inside, we usually stop to sign ourselves in at a shipping container that doubles as a sign-in station, but it wasn't open today, so we drove down to the dock access point.
8:37am - geared up for WM monitoring
Time to grab all of our gear and equipment! Depending on what we're doing or where we are, we rely on a variety of equipment that lives at our study sites. Here's a breakdown of what we needed for what we were doing today: invertebrate collection (bugs!) and fish monitoring.
baseline BioBarge safety necessities - things we have whenever we're collecting data, which we pick up from WM and (when relevant) bring to our Tukwila site!
PPE - masks and life vests
throw bag - a bag full of rope that we can toss to someone if they fall in the river—another person (on land / a BioBarge) would hold one end of the rope, which spools out as it's thrown to the person in the water, enabling the person on land to reel them back in—see video for a demo!
first aid kit
WM-specific gear
hard hats!
invertebrate collection gear
mesh sieve - a very fine sieve that strains any particles, debris, and—most importantly—any invertebrates from the water
plastic 2 gallon bucket
pressurized water pump with hose - key for rinsing down our invertebrate traps!
labeled 500ml collection bottles
fish monitoring gear
Secchi disk - a plastic black and white disk on a string, which we lower into the water until we can't see it anymore, allowing us to measure visibility for the day!
clipboards & data sheets
GoPro - we collect video footage every time we're out fish monitoring!
8:52am - started collecting invertebrates @ WM!
Once we had all our gear for the day, we headed down to the dock where WM's two BioBarges are anchored to collect invertebrates. Normally, invertebrate traps get emptied and collected on Sundays, 24 hours after they're set up on Saturdays—but with the holiday, our schedule was offset by a day, meaning I got a chance to experience a process I'm not usually a part of!
For context, GFL is monitoring invertebrate populations on and off the BioBarges to see if the floating wetlands are increasing the presence of certain invertebrates. Small insects and other invertebrates are an important food source for juvenile salmon and could help support the survival of these juveniles as they outmigrate to the sound.
Though Maria and I had both helped set up the traps before, neither of us had been part of the retrieval process. Essentially, we were just straining invertebrates and other particles from the water in the traps and collecting these samples in bottles for later lab analysis. Invertebrate "traps" are just plastic bins that we fill with soapy water—to kill anything that falls in them—and leave out overnight. Five bins get bungee-corded to a BioBarge, five are placed out on the dock (the "control site"), and five are placed in a nearby vegetated area (the "reference site").
Retrieving and emptying the bins meant we would take a bin, pour the water through the sieve into our 2 gallon bucket, then use the water hose to rinse out the bin and do a second pour through the sieve. Finally, we would use the hose to wash everything out of the sieve and into a collection bottle. We repeated this with each bin, ending up with five "barge" bottles and five "control" bottles (and a bucket of soapy water, which we dumped out in the parking lot). Getting to the reference site involves driving, so we saved that for later.
9:27am - fish monitoring @ WM
Now, it was time for our typical Monday fieldwork—overwater fish monitoring, aka recording our observations of fish around the BioBarges! First, we had to measure the water visibility by taking a Secchi measurement. We lowered the black and white disk into the water, stopping when we couldn't see it anymore and then measuring the section of wet string to determine the Secchi depth. This helps us contextualize how hard it might be to observe fish on any given day—on cloudy or stormy days, visibility tends to be noticeably lower, making it harder to spot fish.
Sam also set up a GoPro to run for the duration of our field day, attaching it to a pipe that she attached to the barge such that the camera was fully submerged. This would (hopefully) collect footage of any fish that swam nearby, adding to our data set.
Then came the actual overwater fish monitoring—science jargon for "30 minutes of sitting and looking into the water for fish." Starting on the BioBarges, we spent half an hour sitting on the central platforms, looking into the water within and around the barges for any fish. The most common fish we tend to see are perch, sticklebacks, and if we're lucky, juvenile salmon!
After half an hour on each barge (with multiple people, we can do both at once), we moved to the control site—the far end of the dock from the barges—and repeated the process. After 30 more minutes, we were ready to drive to the reference site! We dropped off our hard hats along with the sieve, bucket, and water pump before getting into our cars.
10:50am - invertebrate retrieval & fish monitoring @ WM reference site
The reference site is a quick drive from WM, a public river access point across a small channel from WM (but still on the northeast shore of the river). Here, we repeated the invertebrate collection process with the five bins located there, followed by 30 minutes of fish monitoring—this time, standing and looking into the river from the water's edge. That concluded our invertebrate collection for the day, but we still had more fish monitoring to do!
11:40am - drove to Tukwila site [TUK] for more fish monitoring
Next stop—the other active monitoring site, located along a greener section of the river on a generous community member's private property. After a lunch break, Sam set up a GoPro, and we conducted our 30 minute fish monitoring on each of the barges before transitioning to monitor the TUK control and reference sites simultaneously.
At the Tukwila site, the reference point is just down a short trail from the barges, so no driving necessary. And that concluded our fish monitoring for the day! We said goodbye to Maria, and Sam and I got back in our UCar to drop off equipment at WM.
1:15pm - returned to WM to drop off equipment
Last stop—Sam and I had to return all of our gear to the storage bins at WM, except for the data sheets, invertebrate collection bottles, and my life vest, which I'm holding onto for the season to minimize contact. While I figured out how to squeeze everything back into the bins, Sam retrieved the GoPro we had set up earlier in the morning, and we were on our way back to UW to drop off the UCar and part ways for the day.
Hopefully, this gives you a better idea of what a field day can look like! In addition to collecting invertebrates and monitoring fish, our team sets up traps and monitors the plants growing on the BioBarges, which we didn't do today. Stay tuned for more photos, footage, and stories about being out in the field!
