"Take Your Dads to Work" Day on the Chena River

Mayflies

Caddisflies

Stoneflies

By Dneuswanger on August 22nd, 2014

Today was “Take-Your-Dads-To-Work” Day for Jason, as both Markus Vayndorf (Jason’s father-in-law) and I accompanied Jason on a day trip to the Chena River a few miles northeast of Fairbanks. We were accompanied by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Biologist Bill Carter, who hoped to learn enough about Jason’s underwater video techniques to employ them this fall in a study of sheefish on the Selawik River in remote northwestern Alaska.

We launched our borrowed 18-foot Jon boat off a gravel bar in the Chena River around noon and motored downstream about a mile to a large logjam where Jason had filmed juvenile Chinook salmon during his dissertation project. The salmon fry were not in typical locations, but I finally located a small group on the back side of the logjam. Markus (right) and I (left) assembled the calibration frame in the bow; then Jason readied the Go-Pro camera array as Bill (in stern) and I lowered the calibration frame into the water.

Eventually we were able to obtain some underwater video while observing the juvenile salmon with a remote monitor onboard (some of Jason’s new gadgetry). Bill learned what he needed to know. Coincidentally, Bill and his wife had attended Northland College in Ashland, Wisconsin in the late 1980s—a decade after my wife, Sandy, and I graduated from there. I enjoyed visiting with Bill about our common beginnings in the field of fisheries.