Week 3, June 5th: Wonderful Weather We're Having

Luke
Jun 12, 2017
4 min read

June 5th, Monday:

The weather for this week is not promising to say the least. Last week while kayaking, Emily and I found a dead fish on the bottom of the lake bed that was belly up. From our angle, it looked suspiciously like a triploid grass carp, so we decided to investigate thoroughly to make sure. To make us more suspicious, multiple community members from around the lake had informed us that many fish were turning up dead, putting us on edge. If there was a disease going through the carp, it would be catastrophic for our project.

Emily and I talked with Larry Marsicano and Mark of the Candlewood Lake Authority about the potential fish issue. In regards to the multiple fish dying around the lake, they were both confident it could be due to 'stress of spawning', a sentiment that is shared by CT DEEP (Department of Energy and Environmental Protection). However, we still needed to identify the fish found by Emily and I, as we detected a reading for one of the carp nearby. Larry and Mark agreed it looked like a carp from that angle, so we set out on a canoe to retrieve it for observation.

Above is the photo of the retrieved fish. Upon observation and an expert opinion from a DEEP Representative, the fish was identified as a White Sucker. Thankfully, this whole situation was a false alarm, but it was indeed worth the time to investigate, as knowledge of fish death is critical for this project. Please report the sightings of any dead fish that appear to be carp-like! Later this week, we hope to focus on tracking more alive fish. Fingers crossed that the weather projection improves!

June 8th, Thursday:

Fortunately, the weather did indeed improve later on in the week. Today, Emily, Dr. Pinou and I, along with our boat captain Len, set out to sample the entire Sherman arm of Candlewood Lake. Usually high in milfoil, the Sherman region has the most sites in it's region, 17 to be exact. As two of these spots were release points in 2015, we were expecting to find a lot of fish.

Our expectations were met, and on top of the 6 fish Emily and I already knew from kayaking around Sherman cove, we found a multitude of other marked carp. In total, we managed to identify at least 10 carp.

With the carp found today and onwards, we began trying to pinpoint their exact location. As said in past posts, this is very difficult to do with a single antenna and receiver. However, by placing the antenna just above the water's surface, we can determine if the carp is truly in that specific location, or if we are just picking up its signal from far away. In addition, we altered the 'gain' of the transmitter. The gain can be explained as "how well the antenna converts input power into radio waves headed in a specified direction." This means by lowering the gain of the transceiver, we can effectively limit the range of signals we can pick up. If we can still hear a carp's signal when the gain is low (max gain is 16 units), then that is more confirmation that the carp is close to the spot, and us! Using these methods, we will hopefully be able to determine if the fish are moving, and therefore alive, with even greater accuracy.

June 9th, Friday:

Going out two days in a row is almost unheard of due to the awful luck weather-wise. Today, however, with beautiful blue skies, Emily, Dr. Pinou and I aimed to complete the remaining sites on the Lake, making it so every site has been sampled at least once. Joining us today was Captain Bob!

Our goal was rather lofty for today. We had a total of 18 sites between the New Milford arm and the 'Upper Middle Region' that consisted mostly of New Fairfield and Brookfield, and these sites were considerably more spread out than the Sherman sites. However, the team worked efficiently, and were able to rather easily finish all sites, with satisfactory results. Although we only found 1 marked carp in the entire New Milford arm, we found 9 others throughout the middle region. The lack of carp in New Milford is unsurprising, though. There were no release points throughout the entire arm, with the closet one being at the end of Vaughn's Neck, south of New Milford. In addition, there is very little Eurasian Milfoil in New Milford, meaning it is a very long journey for little food source, making it unappealing for the rather lazy triploid grass carp.

Today's tracking is very important, because now we have a benchmark location for the majority of the 50 tagged triploid grass carp. Throughout the rest of the season, we can compare any movements to these locations, as well as data from the past 2 years. With this data, we will be able to accurately determine if the carp are actively moving between sites in the lake, or if they are remaining stationary. This measure of fidelity is the main goal of this study, as it proves if the carp are doing a satisfactory job at handling the Eurasian Milfoil epidemic in Candlewood Lake.