Is That a Trout?

Kick nets were used to collect invertebrates

The ESD staff recently went out on a field trip with the Menominee Indian High School Bio II class.  The class visited two local streams to sample for water quality and look and the fish and bug communities.  They will be using the information they gathered to make comparisons between the two streams which look similar but have some various differences.  Jeremy and Jonathan from ESD assisted the class with an electrofishing demonstration and captured the fish species present for the students to photograph and measure for their class logs.  The students also took substrate samples and collected the various macro invertebrates in the samples.  The macro invertebrates can be used to determine the water quality based on the species found and the abundance.  Finally, the class collected some water samples to determine the pH and measure the dissolved oxygen.  Overall, the students had a great time and learned about some the fish and bugs that inhabit our local streams.

A water sampled is prepared for measuring dissolved oxygen

A brook trout is measured and photographed

Invertebrates were sorted into trays according to species

The northern hog sucker is a common fish in reservation streams