Project Pitches

The interns have been hard at work coming up with their research questions and reading up on the background literature. In preparation for the next steps, they each wrote a project pitch to summarize their research goals and why their work is important to us at Makah Fisheries. Read them below!

Ryana

During a research project about river otters they were collecting river otter scat and they ended up finding a lot crayfish in their scat. So where are the crayfish? My research project is about finding out where the crayfish are. This is important because it is good to know what part crayfish play in the ecosystem and it is also important to know where the river otters are finding these crayfish. Crayfish live in fresh water habitats; they are typically found in lakes, streams, rivers, and creeks. Crayfish like grassy areas, rock piles, and weeded areas. So for my project I set 2 different kinds of crayfish traps in 6 different fresh water habitats. The 2 traps we used were minnow traps and fukui traps, the minnow traps were a round shape and the fukui traps were rectangle shaped. I set 8 traps total in each spot so there were 4 minnow taps and 4 fukui traps in each area. The 6 habitats I set them in were 2^nd bridge, Back track marsh, cat tail marsh, the Tsoo-yess main channel, the serpent channel, and Pilchuck creek. So far, it seems like the crayfish are up river and the minnow traps work better then fukui traps.  

Shilaily

I’m trying to figure out a long term resource on salmon in Neah Bay to see how the length and weight changes over the years. My question is “What is the length weight curve of Chinook salmon landed in Neah Bay?”  I’m using data from the fishermen and collecting the lengths and weight of some of the fish caught here in Neah Bay.  I’m also looking over other people’s graphs from other places to compare their graphs to mine to see what differences there are. I’m doing this project because it is important to see if the fish are doing well or if something is happening to them.  Looking at the graphs over the years to see how the conditions are, if the conditions are bad from like; climate change, and food, the fish will most likely be skinnier, shorter, and slowly growing. If they are declining in weight and length that is telling you something is wrong with the environment around them or something is wrong with the salmon. If they are growing fast or becoming fatter or longer that is saying it is doing good, having lots of food, and surviving good in their environment. It’s good to know the growth of the salmon so you can see if the environments good and if the fishermen are going to have a stable job in the future. With the graphs you can predict how the salmon will grow in the future, if they are declining that can be a problem with the food chain that includes the salmon and also the fishermen catching the salmon.

Ethan

My project is finding which marking works best on invasive European green crabs and Dungeness crabs. The things we’re testing on the crabs are epoxy, nail polish, paint pens and permanent sharpie markers. What we’re doing is drying off the crab then cleaning half of the crabs with rubbing alcohol, for the other half of the crabs we are just using a towel. After we clean and dry off the crabs we mark 4 of the clean ones with one of the marking methods and the dirty ones we mark them with a different design but the same type of marking method. Then we do that with all of the types of markings. We are testing this so we know which marking sticks on the longest. The reason for doing this is so we can use the markings to have an estimate of how many green crabs there are in the area. Also we are looking to see if there is any effects from the markings on the crabs, we also can’t have it so a predator can easily see or smell them. We also have to make sure the crab doesn’t die to the chemicals from the marking. We want to know how large the green crab population is because it has a big effect on salmon and Dungeness crabs. They are effective on salmon because green crabs like to pull eel grass and it could remove an entire ecosystem and that’s where a lot of baby salmon hide from predators and when there’s no eel grass the baby salmon are open to predators. They are also effective on Dungeness crabs because they like to be aggressive towards other crabs which end up starving and killing the crabs.

Paul

What is the diversity and species richness of dead marine birds on different beaches over time and what environmental factors affect the mortality rate? It is important to know the diversity of the birds because we can find trends in the mortality of the birds and if that correlates to a time of year or if it is due to environmental factors. Such as, if it was an El Niño or La Niña year. To answer this question I will analyze data provided by COASST which is a collection of dead birds wash ashore on the Hobuck and Tsoo-Yess beaches. My hypothesis is the amount of dead birds found on the beach will be higher if there is an abnormality in the temperature of the water or the weather.