Hamilton class without walls participates in electrofishing population count

Standing alongside Skalkaho Creek in front of 18 students in waders ready to get in, Fish, Wildlife and Parks Fishery Technician Leslie Nice asked the group how many species of trout there are in Montana.

The Hamilton High seniors offered a few guesses — "Four?" "17?"

The group was there Wednesday to go electrofishing — a process of attracting and stunning fish in order to collect and study them. That day their mission would be to assist in doing a population count of the fish in the creek.

To help jog the students' memories, Nice asked them to list the names of the trout in the region.

All together they said: "Rainbow, brown, bull, cutthroat, brook."

Teacher Vanessa Haflich asked her students if she had made them learn this already.

"Yes and we had a quiz over it, too!" Haflich said.

Haflich's students are part of the Classroom Without Walls, a field ecology class offered at Hamilton High School. As part of the class, she takes her students out on field trips like this one about once a week to help the kids get real life experience of what working outdoors can look like — and help assist fieldworkers to collect real data. The class serves to show students what careers are possible in the environmental sciences.

The class the week prior had gone to a trout hatchery in Arlee as well as the Owl Research Institute in Polson to learn about methods used to capture and band saw-whet owls.

Alongside the creek east of Hamilton, Fishery Biologist Jason Lindstrom stood next to Nice addressing the kids.

"Most importantly, Corvallis caught a lot of fish last week," Lindstrom said to spark some rivalry competition.

The students in Corvallis' Classroom Without Walls conducted what Haflich later explained was a "mark run" where they collected the fish — 150 of them, according to Lindstrom — clipped their tail and released them back. The Hamilton kids fished the same section of the creek a week later to compare how many fish were tagged versus how many total fish we caught.

"Using that data, we can then do a calculation to figure out what is the estimated total population of fish in this section of stream," Haflich said.

In groups of three, students followed Nice upstream in the creek in ankle- to knee-deep water as she stunned fish using an electrode — a long white pole with a hollow rectangle at the end connected by a red cord to a generator humming several yards away.

"There's a little guy!" Nice would say every few yards.

She encouraged one of the two student "netters" behind her with mesh nets on a pole to scoop up the fish that were both drawn to the electrode and temporarily stunned. The "netters" wore bright orange gloves for protection and would pass them around as kids took turns catching the stunned fish.

Two classmates joked before getting in the creek they'd electrocute themselves. But Nice said the electric currents only reach about a 4 feet radius and that it's a common misconception about electrofishing that the entire river gets electrified.

After catching a fish, the netters would then transfer the fish into a bucket held by the third student. That student would then relocate the fish in the bucket into what Nice later called a "live car," which almost looked like a fish tank made out of mesh that allowed the fish to be submerged in the water to stay alive but still trapped.

Nice said they do the majority of their fish population counts during the summer.

"Cutthroat, rainbows are spawning in spring, brown trout, blue trout, brook trout in the fall, so a lot of fish are not moving right in the middle of summer," Nice told the students.

After about an hour of walking upstream and collecting fish, the students transferred the fish into a large oval-shaped metal bucket and gathered around Lindstrom as he took out a tool that allowed him to both measure the length of the fish and weigh the fish at the same time.

Student Chloe Greek, who was recently recognized as a semi-finalist for the National Merit Scholarship, wrote down the weight, size and species of each fish as Lindstrom called them out.

Greek is looking to pursue a career in the environmental sciences, but not every student in the class is.

Jacie Duce said she's "not much of a STEM girl" and prefers the arts and dance, but still has a love for Montana and outdoor recreation and wanted to learn more about it. She said she liked the field trips and learning how to identify bugs and catch owls.

"That was really cool," she said.

Tessa Lewanski didn't know what to expect with the electrofishing trip, but said it was fascinating to learn how it worked.

"...and actually being immersed in being able to help and everything, not just watching," she said.

"It's a little nerve wracking because I'm worried we're gonna do something wrong and, like, ruin their experiment," she said with a laugh. "But it is really cool to be a part of it."

Haflich said the kids are doing exactly what professionals would be doing on any other day, and that "authenticity" helps "give a lot more meaning to what we're doing."

Greek tallied up the number of fish collected. The group caught 122 trout, and five sculpin fish, coming in about two dozen short of Corvallis' total.

"Nice work guys!" Nice said.

Haflich has been teaching for 16 years, this class specifically for the last six years. She said her goal is to get kids excited about being outdoors and seeing possible job opportunities in natural resources, environmental science and wildlife biology.

"Maybe this is the only time they'll ever experience this, but I think it gives them more of an appreciation for where they live and this kind of science," she said. "Some of these kids do go on to stick with it, which is really exciting."

Haflich said she thought the class would be helpful for kids interested in going into a science-based career or pursuing a science scholarship.

"I think it's also opened up some doors for kids, and maybe given them the confidence to pursue some of those early on internships in college, to kind of get some of that early experience," she said.

She said some class alumni have gone on to do field work in their first few years of college, like setting up trail cameras to track grizzly bears.

"I tell them I'm jealous, because they're things that some people in those degrees might not experience until their senior year of college," Haflich said. "The fact that they have jumped in, and are so passionate about it, and getting that experience right away is pretty cool."

She said she feels fortunate so many organizations have "a passion" for getting kids involved and are willing to work with them. She said she's worked with Lindstrom and Nice since the class started six years ago.

Nice said it's fun for them to share the knowledge and have the students get to experience something that most people would never do.

"I just like seeing the smiles on the kids' faces," Lindstrom said.

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