Fisheries
I was introduced to the world of field experience while employed in the LSU Freshwater Ecology lab. I learned countless field techniques and teamwork skills. I also learned the inner workings of a research lab at a major university.
Streamwork
My first summer in the fisheries lab I learned how to backpack elecroshock and in my two years there I helped work on a State Wildlife Grant project and four grad student projects, two of which involved streamwork. (I personally define streamwork as scouting a location while documenting water quality and establishing transects, shocking the stream a series of times to collect a representative sample of fish, crayfish, and inverts, and processing the sample to ID what we collected and key out anything new.) In the lab, I processed data and invertebrate samples, and basically took on any task that came up. There was never a boring day.
The Basin
I also have experience in boat electroshocking and big water fish ID. The lab had multiple government-funded projects that took place in the Atchafalaya Basin during my time there, and they were some of my favorite experiences. Though I've driven family boats most of my life, through this job I obtained my boater's license and gained a ton of trailer experience.
Grad Projects
One of the grad projects I worked on studied the effects of culverts on crawfish movements. I got to tag crawfish using Visual Implant Elastomer (VIE) tagging and Coded Wire Tags (CWT). Another project I worked on involved capturing wild crawfish, bringing them back to the lab, and marking them. They were then put into simulation tanks and monitored to study interspecific and intraspecific interactions involving shelter, with and without a predator cue. I called these observation sessions "Crawfish Wars" and they were great.