Beach seining

Tuesday and Wednesday this week I helped a fellow student with her field work. We met at 4:45 am (that's so early!), loaded up a small boat and drove to the sites.  It was cold out, but fortunately not raining either day.

Why are we paddling a boat with 2 perfectly good motors?  We were in 2 feet of water!

Each day we'd put the boat in and motor a short distance to the beach.  Then we'd pull the seine at least 3 times, putting things in separate buckets each time. While 2 people were seining, 2 people would be getting buckets full of water, anchoring the boat in a place where it wouldn't be high and dry if the tide went out too far while we were seining.  The beaches are shallow enough in pitch that it was constant work to keep the boat in the water as the tide rushed out, and sampling had to occur right around low tide. 

Emily's goal for her project was to get 25 each of starry flounder and staghorn sculpin to keep, then measure and count everything else and throw back alive.  But sometimes we couldn't get 25 starry flounder and sculpin in three tows, so we'd have to keep going and going and going, until either we got enough, or the tide started coming back in and made seining dangerous.  Both days were were back at the lab by noon, so not bad!

Emily, too short to reach into the boat with her feet on the ground, so she's balancing!

Day two sampling location.  So pretty!