Embracing the beauty of gross as a fish ecologist Jens Hegg Wednesday, January 07, 2015

For my PhD I study fish migration using the chemicals trapped in their ear bones. Think of their ear bones like the black box of an airplane…containing all the information of where they have travelled in their life and a lot about what was happening while they were there.

These two sentences almost always catch peoples attention. It gets across the gist of what I do as a PhD student pretty succinctly and is sure to start a conversation. But, it misses a large part of what my work entails. First you have to get those ear bones (called otoliths), and like much of what ecologists do…it ain't pretty.

Salmon Ear Stones (otoliths)
Photo: Ben Sanford, NOAA Fisheries

Now, to be sure, there are plenty of ecologists out there who count birds on sunny days in the wilderness, or create models in the sterile confines of an office. But, for every ecologist with a clean and sterile study area there is an ecologist who is monitoring the genetics of jaguars by walking through the woods and collecting their poop. Ecology is usually about getting your hands dirty.

Hearing about the cool things you could uncover from a profoundly disgusting job was one of the first times I considered ecology as a career, actually. After a family dinner an older relative of mine, Curt Mack, and his girlfriend, were regaling us with tales of necropsies of dolphins that had washed ashore on a Pacific Northwest beach. (Note: I have no idea how far off base I might be on the location, creatures involved, and the people who actually did the work…it was a long time ago…but it was utterly fascinating and foundational). For some reason, though the work sounded utterly disgusting, what they could determine from it was fascinating.

This fascination may have had something to do with Curt being one of those older relatives who is not quite old enough to be uncool (and who might, for example, sneak a young relative away from an otherwise tedious wedding to have a milkshake in an old-west style saloon in Northern California without telling his parents. But I digress...). Dissecting a decaying dolphin would have to rank as one of the more disgusting things anyone has ever done, but I was rapt. I should note that Curt has always been a fantastic storyteller when coaxed into talking about his work with river otters, restoring Grey Wolves to Idaho (he was foundational to that effort, adding to his older cousin awesomeness in my eyes, but he's modest), or tales of sailing adventures in California or the Caribbean. He comes by his storytelling honestly, his father Burt is an excellent scholar and writer and tells stories with a twinkle in his eye. Whether it was the strength of Curt's story, the disgusting content, or both I don't know. Still, it got me thinking hard about ecology as a potential major and career.

Every Fall I head down to Lyons Ferry Fish Hatchery near the tiny town of Starbuck, Washington, to collect fish ear bones. Whatever romantic notions you hold about salmon spawning in the wild are entirely correct, keep them. But the industrial spawning that keeps fish in our Western rivers is not at all romantic, it's a bloodbath. After fish have been killed, eggs and sperm collected, weighed, counted, genetic samples taken, and all the myriad tags have been found and recorded, I add one more gruesome step. I cut open their head and steal those two bones that hold the coded "black box" information of its life's travels.

Dissecting for salmon otoliths, nestled right below the brain
Photo: Benjamin Sanford, NOAA Fisheries

It's bloody, tiring work to lift gutted 15 to 35 pound fish all day. It is also, perhaps unsurprisingly, hard work to cut open their skulls with a bread knife (by far the best tool for the job, believe it or not). After that, extracting the otoliths is a matter of experience and finesse. They are nestled just beneath the brain in two small fluid filled sacs. I've literally done this thousands of times now. A job that first took minutes now takes just a few seconds per fish. I almost never mis-cut or lose an otolith anymore. I've done this so long that I literally wore out my otolith knife this year and had to buy another one. I'm not sure I've ever worn out a knife before. I guess there is something to be said for craft, I respect the speed of skilled butchers a lot more now.

I actually broke my dissecting knife!
Photo: Jens Hegg

Otolith knife gallows humor.
Photo: Jens Hegg

Still, it wasn't until my friend Ben Sanford from NOAA Fisheries came to help me, bringing along a good camera and an artistic eye, that I could see the beauty in the gore. I have a strong stomach and a curiosity for yucky stuff, but the endless gore of the spawning room are not pleasant. Chinook have a distinct smell, quite musky compared to the clean scent of most other salmon and trout (I bet you never thought about the smell of a fish did you!). For the first year or two just the smell alone was revolting; having associated it with the bone-tiredness, tedious and long drives to and from the hatchery, and the blood of spawning season. I've mostly overcome that. I can take a break and eat a donut in the corner without a second thought these days (Yes, they keep donuts and coffee within arms reach of my dissection station…and all of us partake).

As gross as it is, what we're doing is important work. We can argue all we want about the value of wild vs. hatchery fish but, at least in the Snake River, we wouldn't have Fall Chinook without hatcheries whether we like it or not. Beyond that, I guess sometimes you just have to get up to your elbows in blood in order to learn something new about how the world works. So far I've published two peer-reviewed journal articles (1 and 2) on what I've found in these ear bones, and more are on the way. It's worth embracing the grossness in ecology, seeing it for the opportunity it is. Even though this will never be my favorite activity, it's worth understanding, appreciating, and yes...even trying to see the beauty in it all.

Haunted House or Fish Spawning?
Photo: Benjamin Sanford, NOAA Fisheries

Your author at work, with a HUGE male Chinook Salmon.
Photo: Benjamin Sanford, NOAA Fisheries

Dissecting for otoliths
Photo: Benjamin Sanford, NOAA Fisheries

Snouts ready to be dissected for Coded Wire Tags which track where a hatchery fish was born.
Photo: Benjamin Sanford, NOAA Fisheries

Discarded snouts after CWT dissection.
Photo: Benjamin Sanford, NOAA Fisheries

Male Fall Chinook awaiting spawning
Photo: Benjamin Sanford, NOAA Fisheries

Two fish awaiting spawning
Photo: Benjamin Sanford, NOAA Fisheries

Yep, Blood stalactites exist, believe it or not.
Photo: Benjamin Sanford, NOAA Fisheries

Salmon eggs.
Photo: Benjamin Sanford, NOAA Fisheries

Egg in the sun.
Photo: Benjamin Sanford, NOAA Fisheries

What'cha lookin' at?
Photo: Benjamin Sanford, NOAA Fisheries

Egg collection
Photo: Benjamin Sanford, NOAA Fisheries

This knife belongs in a horror movie
Photo: Benjamin Sanford, NOAA Fisheries

The perfect spot is about an inch behind the eyes, but it's mostly learned by feel
Photo: Benjamin Sanford, NOAA Fisheries

A perfect cut makes it easy to remove the otoliths
Photo: Benjamin Sanford, NOAA Fisheries

Did you know that salmon can be actively decaying and still alive to spawn?
Photo: Benjamin Sanford, NOAA Fisheries

Blood in the water
Photo: Benjamin Sanford, NOAA Fisheries

Back from Whence Ye Came Jens Hegg Thursday, October 23, 2008

Salmon are pretty incredible creatures. I stopped by Spalding Park near Lapwai, Idaho (officially known as Nez Perce National Historic Park and containing an excellent museum of Nez Perce art and historical pieces reclaimed with the help of Walt Disney's wife, a native of Spalding, ID) to see the spawning Coho salmon this past week. I've never seen salmon spawning so it was an exciting moment. Watching them makes you realize that life is circular. Ashes to ashes and all that, but not in a depressing way at all.

The picture above is a spawned out female that I found while peering off the bank at a female preparing her redd. She had already begun the next cycle, the nutrients she carried from the ocean helping to keep her spawning stream healthy and productive for the next generation.

Salmon prepare a redd, or nest, in the gravel of the stream bed into which they lay their eggs which are subsequently fertilized by the male and covered. Each species does it differently. Coho are adapted to more silty areas and their redd making entails sweeping away the silt with their tails, while other species may mound the gravel more or less and choose particular sized gravel and silt levels to suit their evolutionary taste. The picture to the right show a female coho preparing her redd by laying on her side and flapping her tail to clear the silt from the gravel. The next picture shows what the redd looks like from above. The oblong patch of lighter colored gravel on the right side of the picture next to the bank is her redd. Bonus points if you can find the salmon in the picture. She saw me on the bridge and moved off her redd into the darker and more camouflaging area of the stream.

Coho were declared extinct in the Snake River and only recently have been reintroduced by the Nez Perce tribe. Lapwai creek runs into the Clearwater river at the park which is located on the Nez Perce reservation. The Park is named after Henry Spalding, a missionary from the 1800's who's grave marker is shown to the right.The park encompasses the mission site as well as the historic cemetery.

While I was there I had a bit of an epiphany about life and death. I'm not sure if the salmon were the spur to my thinking or
not.

A member of one of my classes, which centers around cross disciplinary issues of salmon recovery on Lapwai creek, is a Nez Perce Tribal member. While visiting the park earlier he mentioned that a close friend had died and that he would be buried in Spalding cemetery. I watched the grave being dug and saw it again when I returned to see the salmon.

I noticed that rather than dig the grave with a backhoe friends and family came out, peeled back the sod, and dug the grave by hand.
Regardless of your personal convictions I think most people are horrified when they learn how we bury our dead. I can say that when I die I hope I am not filled with immutable fluids and placed in an impermeable casket within a concrete box (to keep the grave from sinking as I decompose), and placed in a hole dug by some anonymous and surly city employee who will likely throw his cigarette butt in the hole when he's done.

I can only hope that I surround myself with friends and family that would see the social value in coming together to dig my grave the way it aught to be dug, by hand. I can only dream that I would be laid down in a simple pine box or shroud so that, like the salmon, I can go back from whence I came.