PELLSTON — On a rainy day in June, the Rivers, Lakes and Wetlands course at the University of Michigan Biological Station split up to cover a variety of habitats in northern Michigan.
Some students put on fishing waders and explored a marsh, and another team went lake snorkeling to survey fish.
Emma Thomson, who will be a sophomore on main campus in Ann Arbor in the fall, wore a wet suit, goggles and flippers and went for a swim at several different sites on Douglas Lake, where the UMBS campus resides, nestled on the shores into more than 10,000 acres in Pellston just south of the Mackinac Bridge.
“This is probably the most hands-on class I’ve ever had. And I love it so much,” Thomson said. “The Bio Station is great and it’s so cool to have all these different experiences that you don’t traditionally see in a classroom setting. It’s just amazing.”
On this excursion, Arielle Lytkowski, a U-M senior studying in the Program in the Environment (PitE), and Lauren Reese, a junior at U-M who is an ecology major in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, stayed on the shore to record information that Thomson yelled from the water.
At one point at a spot along Grapevine Point, Thomson caught a fish with her bare hands.
“What is it?” Lytkowski said.
“Yellow perch,” answered Thomson.
“Is it dead?” asked Lytkowski.
“No, it’s alive,” Thomson said, releasing the fish.
Lytkowski wrote data in her notebook, using a pencil so her notes will endure the rain.
“We’re observing the fish in various habitats,” Lytkowski said. “We’re doing a continuation of a study that took place in this class in 2008 where they looked at developed-versus-undeveloped areas and then the fish that they found in those areas. At the end of the study they suggested that habitat might have a larger impact on differences. So we’re adding habitat to it and looking at habitat differences in developed-versus-undeveloped areas and surveying the fish found there.”
This isn’t the first snorkeling trip for the project. Students rotate who swims and who records.
“I haven’t really snorkeled before I came here,” Reese said. “When I snorkeled last time for my project, it was my second time ever and so it was quite a shock. It’s a lot easier than it seems. But it’s really cool to see the things that we talk about in class and things that I love researching in-person with the goggles. It’s just so clear.”
The Rivers, Lakes and Wetlands class is led by Dr. Amy Schrank, a UMBS instructor, fish biologist and extension program leader for Minnesota Sea Grant at the University of Minnesota Duluth.
Her TA Jacob Yosowitz drove the pontoon boat for the Douglas Lake fish survey team and snorkeled alongside Thomson too.
“We found a couple schools of yellow perch and a couple lone log perch,” said Yosowitz, who is from Chicago and just graduated from U-M with a bachelor’s degree. He had studied PitE and did botany as a specialty.
Lytkowski, Thomson and Reese helped Yosowitz by shoving the pontoon boat off from the shore every time they switched sites.
“We have the seven-meter points marked off and we are going out here and we are measuring how many fish and what type of fish within the 15 minutes that we’re out snorkeling at each site,” Thomson said.
“I have grown up always fishing. Around Michigan we have a lot of lakes. These fish are so important to the lake life and all these different ecosystems out here. We just want to make sure they’re healthy and doing well.”
Though the pontoon boat has a canopy, it was no match for the downpour that came down when traversing the lake by boat.
“It’s really great. Even in the rain!” said Lytkowski, who wore rain gear.
Their last stop was off Pine Point, where Thomson skimmed the water with Lakeside Lab visible across the lake. It’s the closest they’ve been all day to the U-M Biological Station, the research and teaching campus founded in 1909 where they are in the middle of a four-week spring term.
After several hours on the water, they’ll meet up with other teams from their class in Houghton Lab to analyze data and identify trends.
For Thomson, her experience at one of the nation’s largest and longest continuously operating field research stations may just change the course of her academic career and life.
“Currently I’m undeclared but after this I think I want to go into PitE,” Thomson said.
Watch the video of the UMBS team’s snorkeling excursion and fish survey on the UMBS YouTube website.
