Diario de isea

Now at mid-October we have reached the end of our sampling season, at least for fish traps and otter trawling.
We could decide to continue weekly fish traps off the dock into the fall and winter, especially as the water cools down and the isothermal profile sets up. We will continue capturing baseline temp, pH, and DO measurements from our dock until the end of the year.

Fishing picked up during August and September as we began to offer public sails again. However, pictures were not required or even asked for on our programs, so those counts cannot be officially added here I guess. In my next post I will give a summary of the total fish species and counts that we saw for the whole season.

2020 will be one to remember.
This was the first spring in ISEA history (since it began in 1989) that we did not conduct a single sail. No students or volunteers to take aboard the schooner Inland Seas to learn about the Lake Michigan food web due to the global public health crisis (still on-going) caused by the Corona virus.
Are longest running dataset includes using an otter trawl and a secchi disc. We have been watching and monitoring the forage fish community, as well as the secchi depth in Suttons Bay since 1995. We've seen the take over of the mussels (zebra, then quagga) followed by the dominance of the round goby.
In an effort to obtain some continuity, I have managed to get surface water measurements once a week, as well as setting out 2 minnow traps overnight off our dock once a week since mid-May. I also have a few secchi readings from May and will increase the frequency of taking depths into the summer months.
We will continue with a once a week protocol through mid-July. We will then be taking the ship out and will be able to get more samples. There is a possibility that we will do low-capacity sails for the public in August (which is a month we typically have the fewest observations for).
At this time though, it is very uncertain what the new school year will look like this Fall. Some schools may be allowed to go on a field trip with us, but many will not be able to. Each district is looking at doing something different. Some are looking into more supported distance learning, others are looking to use their outdoor spaces at the school.
Time will tell.
In the mean time we will try to record everything we see during our fewer sampling events in order to continue our monitoring efforts, albeit in a slightly different way from "normal".