Need Bio-chemist Help

[NormanMcLean]

Curiously, unlike most years, I haven't seen any early black stones yet or boatman in the quiet water. Still watching.

 

Don, I have seen the early black stones this year in late Feb/early March.

[rhuseby]

Don

 

I'm glad to hear you're able to find some testing possibilities. Another consideration, that may or may not relate to the chemical contamination issues is the flooding from the Clearwater last spring, and a few years before. Could this have been a source for contamination, if you find any?

 

One small point for clarity, in your post #20, the drop from 2700 fish to 900 is a 67% drop, going the other way would be 300%.

 

Also, Gopher boy, you may not be aware of the Quirk Creek project, but the initial population surveys that identified the brook trout invasion issue were done in 1947, 1975, 1987 and 1985. Those are actually frequent samplings for most streams in Alberta, and they are considered valid by fisheries biologists. I, and a number of other anglers who have been around a while, have also been asked to provide annectodotal evidence about changes in fish catch rates,etc over the years by fisheries biologists. In the absence of electrofishing and similar "scientific" counts, this information is considered to be highly useful. If you want to contribute to improving our fisheries, quite firing off uninformed criticism and get your butt involved.

 

Back to you, Don. Great initiative and good luck on the project.

[DonAndersen]

flyslinger,

 

Although the Clearwater did flow into Stauffer, the flow was controlled by what could be passed by the culverts on Clear Creek. Although it was ugly, the flow @ the B for W bridge was less than I've seen during spring run-off.

 

regards,

 

 

Don

[Mudflap]

Hope you have figured out what analysis you need, BTEX is likely not a concern, these hydrocarbons are all on the "light" end as you know and will all be volatilized from your "frozen" sample, I assume you were kidding. These guys below know what they are doing, give em a call on the herbacide suite you want and they will lokely ship you the bottles and preservatives ASAP. If I recall from the old days you have 48hrs for BTEX to be in the lab and a little longer for your bug and weed killers. A background or benchmark sample would be a good idea it would give more validity to your results if you end up with a detectable result.

http://www.alsglobal.com/Environmental/Lab...iew.aspx?key=10

 

Maybe I need to start using braided 20lb line on the creek so it doesnt melt. By the way are you the official beaver dam blaster on the creek?

[DonAndersen]

Mudflap,

 

The pop bottles are full of ice and are packed with the BEXT samples in order to keep them cold and reduce the flashing.

 

The beaver dams are now the responsibility of the Alberta Conservation Association - contact Thomas Winter @ 403-845-8366.

 

Don

[BillyGopher]

Apologies for not visiting this site more often to post sooner, but life gets in the way.

Are anglers voting with their feet by possibly fishing Stauffer less? Are there really fewer anglers? Where's the #s to substantiate that claim? If that is really the case, is it Stauffer in particular, or is it fishing in general that is seeing a down turn? Ab license sales seem to say it's fewer fisherman, not fewer fish in Stauffer. Further, is it Stauffer or is it a societal issue, where things like pace of life, price of gas, available time, city dwellers focussing on the Bow, etc that are keeping people from driving 45 min to 2 hrs to get to the stream? Another possible reason Stauffer may have fewer anglers is that it has a reputation of being fished heavily and those that do enjoy fishing small creeks may opt for other equally enjoyable waters to avoid what folks perceive as busy waters. Just pointing out that the reasons are many.

Groups like Trout Unlimited created the buzz about Stauffer by having a purpose on the stream, a purpose to "rescue" it and also to fish it, as people were involved with it. Part of the reason so many fished it was that it was a focal point, a meeting place, a discussion point. There has been very little done on Stauffer for the "hands on" folks the past decade. Sure, a few beaver dams pulled but there is little else happening, and that which is being done is being done by one or two, with little input from others. Hence, the upswing in popularity created by a purpose in nits heyday also caused the downswing, once the purpose was fulfilled. Stauffer's popularity truly follows the same curve as any other fad.

We can't do fisheries mgt by annecdotal review. We need tangible proof, a data set that looks at more variables than one's word of mouth review. To understand why, you have to appreciate what is, and we don't know what is until it is properly observed. Flyslinger mentions a creel survey that included fishing logs. It's been a while since that was even done on Stauffer, since Dave D and Tracy & Kat sat out ther eback in '92 or '93. It's fairly easy to do, even if only done by creel or journal. In terms of data, there is a massive difference from Quirk Cr. Quirk has had a database of angler effort, catches, controlled use, etc for a long time. Stauffer has one or two people that share with Fisheries staff. To compare the two is to not understand the differences and not pratice biology.

We don't have a data set that allows for management decisions to based upon. Please realize that. They are useless for showing any sort of trend in between. A good biologist recognizes trends but doesn't make management decisions based upon graphs with such gaps of information. "The best we have" isn't even good in this case, especially when looking for funding to show why the trend in the graph is occurring. Do yourself a favour. Go back to the pdf in the Stauffer link Don posted. Look at the graph. Now, you tell me what the population dynamics were doing for the decade in between. Were the numbers at a high, a low, trending up or down before the 10 yr interval sampling? You can't tell? Niether can biologists. And without creel cards, journals, etc from a larger than one person sample, they mean nothing.

 

In the bigger picture, my point in belabouring this thread isn't to beat on Don nor anyone. I picked Don's thread because Don's a big enough boy to know this wasn't "at" him. It's to raise the issue of the standards on which we base our fisheries management, what our hopes and expectations are. Is it acceptable to have no data, let things go, to lose track of science? The point is that more people need to understand what is required to do proper management of our fisheries, to stay on top of things and get involved and make sure that fisheries management plans for regions/watersheds/rivers that were supposed to be reviewed get reviewed instead of sitting idle for 10 years past due. If things go unchecked, at what point do we have any useable information to base management decisions? We wind up with a science deficit in this province and are further behind. Then what do we do to catch up? Simply fudge numbers or make them acceptable? Reach out and use a small, possibly unreliable data set out of convenience? Close down our research arms? In the case of my local river, that seems to be the case, as other projects get higher priority. It seems that there are two tiers of priority - you get funding or you don't. Is that what we really want for our fisheries/environment? Funny, I had answers right up until that last question.

[jonny5]

Good points here Gopherboy... I agree that it is unacceptable to fudge the numbers or find "convenient" data sets. But this still leaves the question of who and how to get a reasonably accurate estimate of population from year to year. Having these data could be of immense value to fisheries managment types, but data from every 10 years is not enough (especially with huge error bars), but they don't seem to have the resources to do the study every year, so the question remains: Who and how?

 

I would love to hear some practical suggestions from anyone listening.

 

Cheers,

 

Jon

 

 

In the bigger picture, my point in belabouring this thread isn't to beat on Don nor anyone. I picked Don's thread because Don's a big enough boy to know this wasn't "at" him. It's to raise the issue of the standards on which we base our fisheries management, what our hopes and expectations are. Is it acceptable to have no data, let things go, to lose track of science? The point is that more people need to understand what is required to do proper management of our fisheries, to stay on top of things and get involved and make sure that fisheries management plans for regions/watersheds/rivers that were supposed to be reviewed get reviewed instead of sitting idle for 10 years past due. If things go unchecked, at what point do we have any useable information to base management decisions? We wind up with a science deficit in this province and are further behind. Then what do we do to catch up? Simply fudge numbers or make them acceptable? Reach out and use a small, possibly unreliable data set out of convenience? Close down our research arms? In the case of my local river, that seems to be the case, as other projects get higher priority. It seems that there are two tiers of priority - you get funding or you don't. Is that what we really want for our fisheries/environment? Funny, I had answers right up until that last question.

[wtforward]

Been following the back and forth between GB and Andersen and if nothing else it

shows how the Klein + years have thrown away years of hard work through

the slash and burn of the various departments especially fish and wildlife.

It is like aging a good bottle of wine and then throwing it on the floor. There seems

to be very little interest in providing budget funds so that this important

monitoring can be undertaken again and if it were to start it would be 5 -10

years before the data would be useful to indentify problems. Hell they don't

even have potable water mapped out which impacts far more Albertans than

a spring creek. The recent election shows how happy Albertans are with the current

rule and Ed himself intrepreted the 61% that stayed home as people that were

happy with things the way they are and that is why they didn't vote! So.....

following Ed's logic they should be campaigning in the next election to have 1%

vote Conservative and have the other 99% stay home and intrepret that as everyone

being estatic with their rule. I do agree with GB. If you are looking to science

to explore solutions to a problem you need good benchline data from which to start.

Anything else from a result standpoint will not stand the test of peer review.

It is peer review that provides the credibility to move to the next stage...what

ever that may be. My 10 cents.

 

PS... How many on this site voted and for which party? Someone should run a poll.

Second thought cancel that. We all know the value of polls.

[DonAndersen]

Guys,

 

We could debate this forever without ever accomplishing anything. Whoa there - been debating this for a week or more and a lot of folks have provided insight and ideas.

So, I'm, going to look @ possible issues and others - - well....the debating society meets on Tuesday.

 

And GB - beaten paths mean fishermen - grown in paths mean few fishermen. Mind you, there was 5 of us there today.

 

Don

[ecoscapes]

Jonny5,

 

I'll attempt to answer your questions.

 

1] I don't have the raw data. I could contact the writer and see if he'll release them. Let me know on this one.

 

2] I think your are looking @ sections 1>2 regarding brook numbers/biomass. What the data doesn't show is the $80.000 and 3 years of work that was spent through Barry Mitchell and my efforts stabilizing 6,000 tonnes of silt, rehabing about 3/4 mile of stream length in these section. If this work was not done, I'd think that the brook trout would have nearly disappeared. Prior to the work in section # 1, there were few trout, now there @ some at least.

 

3] The brown trout #'s in section 2 - 1985 @ 1300>2005 @ 400, section 3 - 1985 @ 500>2005 @ 200, section #4 1985 @ 900> 2005 @ 300 - overall the decrease is about 300%. During the same period of time, the fencing for nearly all upstream sections was completed and the habitat enhanced.

 

4] Section 4 is the one that fared the best in terms of habitat replacement/repair and has had exclusion fencing for many years. I used to fish that area a lot- hardly worth the effort now. Few bugs. The land and area by in large has not changed in many years. It's a mostly a cattle raising area.

Sent you email via site regarding further testing & livers.

PS: A couple of things must born in mind is the work the has gone into the creek since the early 70's and was virtually completed by 2000. The big bounce in fish numbers occurred fro 1970>1985 when the exclusion fencing was done in all sections except for the top section in #1. Then they tapered off or fell. This seems counterintuitive. One would think that the numbers, as each part of the creek was rehabed would stay high or get higher. Didn't happen. Most curious. Further, unlike most streams, Stauffer rarely suffers any type of high water and flooding with the major source waters as springs. Sure, it's been high, but raging floods haven't happened. It's truly a benign environment as compared to other streams in Alberta.

regards,

Don