A Geographer in the Wild

I got to hold a fish!


This was the highlight of my summer, professionally speaking. I am currently a cartographic technician STEP at the USFWS’s Columbia River Fisheries Program Office while I finish my Master’s in Geography.

My native habitat as a geographer is in front of a computer using GIS technology. My regular duties include supporting projects with spatial analyses such as habitat patching for bull trout, and visualization of data typically in the form of maps. I also work with GPS technology, and now – FISH!

Considering I spend most of my working time in an office I really look forward to the opportunities when I can get out in the field. This serves two purposes: First, I find it beneficial to the quality of my work to see the places I map and experience it firsthand, and second, it’s so nice to take a break from the computer once in a while.

I have been working on a map of the White Salmon area for the office and was excited to see the study site in person. It makes a place more real when you can go there and see the terrain with your own eyes. From a mapping perspective, going out with the field crew provides me the opportunity to see what’s important to them and I walk away with a better understanding of the data collected and the conditions it was collected under.

Our office is currently moving fish above Condit Dam on the White Salmon River so they can spawn upstream. This is in anticipation of the dam’s removal, http://www.columbian.com/news/2011/sep/17/salmon-moved-to-native-waters-before-condit-dam-br/. Specifically we’re moving Tule fall Chinook and I was able to go out for the first week of field work. The whole week was full of firsts for me. I got to see the hatchery and the weir, wear waders that didn’t leak, assist in catching, tagging, and transporting fish, and, of course, hold one! It was a great experience and I hope I can go out again soon.



Submitted by Nadia Jones

A Summer’s STEP on the Columbia

Summer 2011, for me, was spent as a STEP (Student Temporary Employment Position) student working on the Hatchery Assessment Team with the USFWS’s Columbia River Fisheries Program Office. Just as any proper summer should, mine was filled with bush-whacking trail adventures, acquisition of new skills, technical difficulties (associated with our electronic equipment), challenges, rewards, and of course FISH!

My summer challenge was re-acquiring my “stream legs.” After nine months of classroom studies, keeping my waders from collecting their own stream water samples from the field each workday was a task in itself. Especially due to the unusual higher summer flows and lower water visibility – overall concealing inconspicuous slippery and shifting stream rocks and making stream walking entertaining to say the least.

Netting was probably one of the most rewarding aspects of this job, especially netting multiple steelhead at once and getting to shout “double rainbow,” or even better “triple rainbow” (an Eagle Creek crew thing). Also, netting a really large cutthroat, steelhead, or especially an adult Chinook (which only half-way fits in the net), was pretty exciting. Rocking the shocker and handling fish were also much fun and very enjoyable.

In the field I observed not only the creek, but Eagle Creek as an ecosystem: deer, kingfishers, adult Chinook salmon, juvenile steelhead and coho salmon, Pacific Giant salamanders, garter snakes, and lots of sculpin – even a sculpin consuming a fellow sculpin!



As summer comes to a rapid and unfortunate close and books, lecture halls, and exams dominate the next nine months of mine, the experiences and memories of working in the astounding and beautiful Pacific Northwest with all the awesome and friendly people of CRFPO will stick with me forever. Working for USFWS was a great experience – thank you to all CRFPO’ers for an amazing summer adventure!

Submitted by Megan McKim.

My Time with the Lovely Lamprey

Working with the US Fish and Wildlife service has been one of the best experiences of my life thus far. In 21 years of existence I cannot say that I enjoyed working as much as I did here. I looked forward to every day and what it could possibly entail. Most days included trekking through dense woods with praying mantis probes for arms while simultaneously getting bitten by numerous amounts of mosquitos. Sweating through entire shirts was inevitable and wiping dirt off my face or picking tree parts out of my hair was pointless. But I would not have wanted it any other way. I got to see things that most people will never see in their lives. Gorgeous 100 ft. waterfalls that are in the middle of nowhere, breathtaking valleys six miles into a hike that you had to bushwhack to get to, bald eagles flying right over you, riding the white caps in the Columbia River Gorge and watching the sun come up, just for some examples. I felt lucky to have this opportunity every day and I could never replace the memories I have from this job. On top of all of that beauty I got to study one of the coolest, most interesting fish out there. Lamprey are so understudied and so misunderstood. I would feel honored if I were able to engage in future studies that help to create more public awareness about these creatures and help eradicate the negative connotation that is most commonly associated with them. This job has excited me into wanting my Master’s to focus on some aspect of lamprey and I can’t wait to do that.


Before being hired in May of 2009, I had never heard of lamprey. I’m not going to lie, at first I was a little bummed that I wasn’t going to be working with salmon or some other type of more “fish-like” fish. I grew up fishing and hiking so I had fallen in love with the image of what is more commonly linked to the word ‘fish’. But I immediately learned to love lamprey and my love has only grown over the last two summers. I worked with Pacific lamprey (Entosphenus tridentatus) and Western brook lamprey (Lampetra richardsoni). Pacifics are generally grayer in color with a lighter caudal ridge and a darker fin (a fade) while Western brooks are generally more olive colored with a dark caudal ridge and a clearer or speckled fin. The westerns also usually have a yellow stripe that runs from their anus to the tip of their caudal ridge. It amazes me that they are blind for the larger part of their life and have managed to exist since before dinosaurs were around. They live in the sediment in creeks and rivers during their ammoceote phase (5-7 years) filtering out nutrients from the water. Ammoceotes are the life stage that I mostly was working with but I would see the occasional transformer or adult. Pacifics are an anadromous fish. They transform into macropthalmia (macs) and out-migrate to the ocean where they feed off of the blood of other fishes. Western brook lamprey transform and stay in freshwater to spawn and die. These fish have been able to withstand and adjust to catastrophic world events that wiped out everything else and yet humans have presumably managed to make enough of an impact to cause a huge decline in the numbers of lamprey migrating back from the oceans to spawn. We have been around for a miniscule fraction of the time that lamprey have existed but have impacted them as though we were working to kill them off all along. There is a lot of good work being done to create better Pacific lamprey passage through dams and decrease mortalities of both out migrating macs and adults coming back to spawn but population counts have shown a steady decline in numbers, especially more recently. I am anxious to see what is done in the near future to improve their situation and hope to be involved in some way.


Lamprey have grabbed my heart and I am so interested and excited to study them more. I love my team (LAMPREY ROYAL!!) and thank you so much for teaching me and making this experience what it was. I have grown as a student and a person by being part of the STEP (Student Temporary Employment Program) and I have gained knowledge that could never be taught in a classroom.

Submitted by Michaela Satter

For the Love of Fish

One of the most gratifying aspects of the work and culture at CRFPO is working with students. Long-term (a.k.a old) employees, such as myself, get to share their experience and passion with students. In turn, these students share and develop their passions with us, as well as rekindle the passion we sometimes forget about. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife has a program called STEP (Student Temporary Employment Program). Each year we try and hire a number of Biological Science Technicians through the STEP program. This program (and these students) help us get important work done and helps students get invaluable practical experience as their resumes begin to take form.


In 2009, the Conservation Team at CRFPO was fortunate enough to hire three STEP technicians, Kim, Michaela and Brian. These students worked on various projects for the C-Team. Their experiences (okay, job responsibilities) included work with bull trout that are listed under the Endangered Species Act and with Pacific Lamprey (although not listed under ESA, a species of concern). They were able to work in areas that ranged from the mainstem of the Willamette River (yes, they had to drive a boat on the river) to remote wilderness areas in NE Oregon (yes, they had to camp). They got to network (work side by side) with federal, state, tribal and city biologists. Among other things, they learned how to electrofish, operate big boats, identify larval lamprey, and put PIT (Passive Integrated Transponder) tags into fish. Like all of us, they had good days and bad days “on the job”. Fortunately the good days far outweighed the bad days. How do I know? Well … Kim was a second-timer (would you come back for more if you hated it?); Michaela is hoping to be a second-timer; and Brian never left!

The work that these students completed was incredibly valuable to the species we are trying to help conserve. I get to use results of their work every day. More importantly, the passion they expressed for the work and the gratitude they expressed for the opportunity was infectious. They are the future. And the future is bright!

Submitted by Tim Whitesel, Conservation Assessment Team