Today, I want to share a story about one of the things that I did for my internship as it shows how hard it can be to prepare for all the possibilities that could happen wile on the job. I have been participating in black tern surveys which involves kayaking around lakes and rivers in the area around the wildlife refuge that I work at. We do these surveys to get a general idea of the population size and time of year that they start laying their eggs. Having this information lets us know how different factors may be affecting their life cycle like high or low rain events and environmental restoration efforts at certain sites.

This was my second time doing one of these surveys and I was taking out our Forest Ecologist, Bruce, for his first survey. His job almost always has him in forests instead bodies of water, hence why this is his first time out on the black tern survey. One of my other coworkers had been out to the site we were going to and told us that there was about a fifty feet section that needed waded through before we would be able to get into our kayaks. She also said that the muddy water only went up to just below the knees. The water level in that area had gone down a little bit since the last time my coworker had been there two weeks previous. Because of this, we anticipated having to go a little further out before we could get into our kayaks. We did not expect how drastically the small drop in water level would affect our surveying efforts.

When we got there, everything looked about as we expected. There was a small stretch low water and vegetation that had to be waded through, but it seemed like there was water not too far out that could be navigated by kayak. Bruce and I brought our kayaks down and started walking through the mud and vegetation. We were almost immediately greeted by terns squawking at us to get away from their nesting area, success! We recorded our observations and measurements of the area and continued, still by foot. After going about one hundred feet out, we thought were in deep enough water to get into our kayaks. After struggling to get in (I ended up tipping my kayak once before being successful), we tried to paddle while terns were still flying overhead. After struggling to paddle twenty feet due to the incredibly thick vegetation, we both decided to get back out into the muck. My coworker was doing the same survey in an area nearby, so I called her to discuss how things were going for both of us. She wasn’t finding any terns in her site. Since Bruce and I were finding a lot at our site, we decided to try and continue. Eventually, we had to give up as the muck was all the way up to our belly buttons and our feet were getting stuck in the mud. All in all, we ended up taking about three hours to walk all of about three hundred fifty feet out and back to the shore. The smell of muck still won’t come out of my clothes and Bruce ended up getting swimmer’s itch because he wore shorts. It can be difficult to prepare for everything that may come up in the field.

Agency: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Program: US Fish & Wildlife Service

Location: Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge (La Crosse District/Trempealeau)