Back on the Genesee River

I returned to the Genesee River with help on Friday of last week (July 11 2014) and we had great success. We tagged another 250 lampreys before releasing them!

Here's a picture of Justin DiRado tagging one of our animals. The scale the animal is weighed on is in the foreground.

An up close pic of the syringe with the dye used to tag the lampreys. On the animal in the picture you can already see the orange line that was drawn first.

A fully anesthetized lamprey ready to be measured. At this point it is more of a wet noodle than a lamprey.

A close up of the oral cavity of the ammocoete with the skin exstensions that cover the oral opening to strain out the larger particles and only allow small particles in to the gill area. This animal is upside down. The muscular portion at the bottom of the picture is the oral hood, it is used to help burrow.

One of the largest (>200 mm, or >8 inches) lampreys we collected during this trip. This animal was transforming into an adult and will breed this coming spring (Spring 2015) before dying.

A work up station where animals were brought before being processed. Justin and Chris Powers are in the picture. They don't look too busy, but we were just about to clean up and head home at this point.

We only recaptured 5 of the original released animals but one of them was Brooker! Here Brooker has its marks refreshed and is then ready to recover. It was released again so hopefully it will be captured a third time. Brooker did not move from where it was released last month and only grew 2 mm, but put on 0.5g. Neither of these sound like a lot, but Brooker only weighed 5.56g, so it put on ~10% of its body weight in a month!

Oquaga Creek

Just returned from another sampling trip, this on a tributary to the Delaware River. The Delaware River is special because it is the only river in the United States that does not have a dam on the  main stem. It runs free all the way to the ocean! As a result many migratory fish spawn throughout the Delaware River, including sea lamprey.

I sampled on the closest tributary to Route 17, which for the lamprey is literally their last stop. They cannot move further west on the Delaware. In days past when the Susquehanna was available to migratory fish lamprey likely drove up in huge numbers to spawn through the Susquehanna as well.

Picture looking downstream just after quite a bit of rain and from the bridge which crosses the stream here.

This is the fishing access point where I parked. The NYSDEC just (as in yesterday) cleared this area of brush. They probably did not realize they were making more lamprey habitat by exposing a bunch of loose sand which will now wash into the stream and create sand bars just in time for this year's lamprey to find a new home.

The stream was literally crawling with lamprey. This tiny bucket had 54 animals in it when I took this picture. You can see some are on top of the sand because there is no room for them to burrow. As soon as the picture was done I released them back home.

Here is one of the smaller animals I tagged. This animal was from this year's breeding adults most likely and is hoping to one day have a chance to spawn, but that is many years in the future (probably a decade or more). Meanwhile, he can wear this pretty fluorescent dye. The finger is for scale, I am not pointing an interesting site out to it.

Another small animal with even more tags. I abandoned this effort early on as tagging a small animal this much is very time consuming.

Finally, one last picture of the site looking upstream. I suspect if you could see them there would be more than 1000 lampreys in all the pictures of the site on this blog now. But we will have to wait to find out how close my guesstimate is to the real number until I re-sample.

Roe Jen

I did not expect to tag animals on the Roe Jen this summer, but after working at another site where I thought I could get access to plenty of lamprey and having no luck I went to the park in Germantown.

A picture of the Roe Jen looking downstream.

And another of the bridge that runs through the middle of the park. The picture is taken from the beach/mowed area that allows easy access to the Roe Jen.

This damselfly (Calopteryx sp., the dusky wing damselfly) was out looking for prey and a mate.

Two pools that both held lamprey. The top one had about 30-50 animals, while the bottom one had just a couple.

A bag of marked lamprey ready to return to the pool from which they were captured, fully recovered and aching to go free.

Two images, both of the same animal. Here the animal has been marked, measured for length and weight and is ready to recover before being released. It has four marks on the body. The one above the head helps me determine if my tags are not blurring or losing color. The other three give the animal its unique code.

Dyke Creek

I began my research for this summer officially on Friday at Dyke Creek, a tributary of the Genesee River. My work this summer is to tag larval lamprey with non-toxic dyes so that I can identify them to individual when I recapture them. Below is a picture of number 907 (let's call him Booker S. Lamprey).

Hopefully I will find him/her again (I don't actually know the sex, to know I would have to kill the lamprey and I don't want to kill them). I released it and it quickly swam back into the sediment and disappeared from sight. It looks so calm out of the water because it was under anesthesia at the time of the picture.

Other lampreys preparing to get tagged below.

Good picture of the stream and habitat that these guys were living in when I found them. The orange flags mark where I sampled for the lamprey.

Another tagged lamprey, this one is harder to read in the light, but it is number 901. It is sitting on the inches scale. Immediately below it is the metric scale in cm's.

All of the lamprey I collected at this site are American brook lamprey (Lethenteron appendix), which are non-parasitic and native to New York. As I recapture individuals I will try to post before and after pictures. I will certainly make a big post about Booker if I recapture it.

Sea lamprey in the Delaware River

I had the opportunity to look for spawning sea lamprey in the Delaware River last week as I prepared to sample it this summer.

The image above is not of a lamprey of course, but of a dragonfly emerging into its adult form. This is a Gomphidae (family), and there was a large hatch while I was there. The rocks and nearby vegetation was covered in these guys. Bad news for any insect smaller than they. All dragonflies are accomplished and voracious predators.

Here is a great picture of a large lamprey nest. You can easily see all the cleared areas that the lamprey have prepared and the cleaned stones at the base of the nest. I did not see any adults in the nest when I came. They may have moved on or been scared off by something before I arrived. The nest is about 2-3 feet across.

The video above is of two lamprey preparing to spawn. They move stones and remove sand from the area in which the eggs will be laid. These two were alone, sometimes you can find large numbers of adults all digging nests nearby one another.

All in all a pretty interesting trip. Hopefully more great finds to come this summer in the Delaware!

American Brook Lamprey in the Genesee River

Although lampreys are frequently associated with vampires and parasites, most lampreys are actually non-parasitic, they never feed on a fish. These species are called "brook" lampreys and are often much smaller than parasitic species. In New York we have three species of brook lampreys and I went to find American brook lamprey today. I went to the Genesee River, where the NYSDEC has numerous records of American brook lamprey, to see if I could also find them.

The one above is an ammocoete.

Adults swam by me as I waded in the stream. They were on their way to find a mate and produce the new generation.

This little guy was not terribly pleased that I detained him for a pic, he gave me the evil eye before I let him go.

Above is the stream from which these guys were captured.

I also went to another site and captured this guy quickly.

This site was actually a fishing access point, I doubt many individuals looking for trout realize they are literally stepping on lampreys!

These guys were all over the place at the above site. They are actually one of our largest caddisflies. They construct cases to protect themselves. This little guy seemed very content with being picked up and scraped my fingers to see if it could find any tasty algae. Caddisflies are important indicators of water quality.

As a side note I believe I am the first person to post pictures of American brook lamprey from the Genesee River. If I am going to be part of the Rat Race I need to carve out a little section I can call my own.

The run is on!

The spring must be upon us because the lamprey are starting to run! Today I made my way to Cayuga Lake to receive a bag of sea lamprey from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) who trap them as they try to spawn. These animals are controlled to help increase sports fish numbers and to limit the amounts of scars on angled fish. Enough chat here are the pictures: