2019 Field Season Completed!
The staff of the Illinois River Biological Station wrapped up a successful 2019 field season at the end of October. This year we completed annual fish and water quality sampling on over five projects covering areas along the entire length of the Illinois River and select pools of the Upper Mississippi River. We employed and trained 16 field technicians on all projects and gained two new Aquatic Ecologists who work on the Asian Carp removal project on the Upper Mississippi River. Many staff members also attended and presented at conferences and participated at workshops during the field season such as the National American Fisheries Society conference in Reno, NV, the Organization of Biological Field Stations conference in Brussels, Belgium, and the International Society for River Science conference in Vienna, Austria.
This field season, with the continual high water on both rivers, brought challenges in accessing and sampling portions of the river at times. However, we sampled some fish that we do not see often such as an american eel (Anguilla rostrata), paddlefish (Polyodon spathula), blue catfish (Ictalurus furcatus), hybrid striped bass (Morone chrysops x Morone saxatilis), trout-perch (Percopsis omiscomaycus), and blue sucker (Cycleptus elongatus). Check out our Facebook page for more field season photos!