Blog

The technique of electrofishing is ubiquitous and universal for fish assessment work. When we teach the electrofishing course we focus, most appropriately, a great deal on the safety of passing electricity through water (pop quiz: those of you that electrofish what are the three mandatory safety features on an electrofishing unit?1). However, in priorizing

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Eighteen months ago I wrote about completing some fundamental field measurements when you find yourself in the field and you don’t have the gear to do so1. In that blog I described various ways to determine (i) direction without a compass, (ii) length and distance without a tape, (iii) height without a clinometer, and

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Gentle reader, please bear with me as we revisit a passage shown you only a month previous. There are many lessons in this brief text and here I wish to consider a second one. I have heard honest men swear that they have killed and cut open tiburons [sharks] and found so many things

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Gentle reader, I beg your indulgence to begin this blog with a long passage. There is a point to it, I assure you. I have heard honest men swear that they have killed and cut open tiburons [sharks] and found so many things in their bellies that they would have considered it impossible if they had

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I was recently on a vacation visiting friends in northern British Columbia when my mentor took me out to a spruce tree right beside his driveway and showed me a strangely marked tree (Figure 1). He asked me if I knew what it was and it took me several seconds to recognize as it

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Several years ago, working in the lowland streams of Nova Scotia, I set a series of minnow traps into the brook and left them for the overnight set. It rained that night. Heavily. Returning to the stream next day I found it overflowing, brown, muddy, and roaring through the channel. Pulling in the lines

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Preamble: Gentle reader, it has been four months since I have appeared before you. Obligations and opportunities required my absence for a third of the year but now I am back. I am very pleased to be able to appear once again on the page in front of you. Reflecting upon my absence, I

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Mid-winter. A time of thinking about summer work, planning, designing, scoping… And also writing those pesky proposals that drive the work we do. Having written a few proposals in my time as well as sitting on the other side of the desk and receiving proposals for work, I would like to distill a few,

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By Sean Mitchell It is December 2021 and Christmas morning is rising, evening star-like, on the far horizon. This is a time for loved ones to ask us what we would like for Christmas. Here I would like to offer some advice for valuable gifts to be left under the tree for practicing biologists

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By Sean Mitchell “The myriad jingle-jangle gadgets of some of our modern outdoorsmen would make our ancestral buckskin men turn in their graves. Their packs were light and their equipment meager, for these adventurous and picturesque wilderness men depended upon their skill and ingenuity in woodcraft rather than upon a lot of ‘things’.” (from

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By Sean Mitchell Come with me on select journeys of imagination. Mid-winter, deep snow, and a brilliant blue sky. Fifteen kilometres in the back-country, well above treeline, you are just about to turn back when you hear a strange grinding noise from under the snowmobile’s cowling… then see wisps of smoke coming out. The

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By Sean Mitchell What are your views on the technical writing that you develop? What about that which you see by others? Are you satisfied and feel enriched upon finishing your own report or reading someone else’s work? You should: the act of writing should be satisfying and enriching, as should be reading others

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By Sean Mitchell Found carcasses are fascination. Yes, I am that guy that stops on the roads to check out road kill; behaviour that has really honed my wildlife identification skills. I recommend it to everyone. Being able to identify a species from a carcass or even whole skeleton is not that difficult. But,

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By Sean Mitchell It happens to us all. We are in the field and we forgot our field tape on the desk in the office; accidentally backed the truck over our field vest holding the clinometer; we dropped the laser rangefinder in the deepest part of the river; our batteries pack it in and

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By Sean Mitchell There you are, early morning of a beautiful summer day, retrieving the minnow traps and fyke nets you set out the previous afternoon. This is always an exciting moment; you never know what you might find strayed into your traps through the night. Gently transferring the catch into a bucket you

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By Sean Mitchell Today’s working biologist or environmental technician sits at a nexus of many industries, disciplines, and requirements (Figure 1). Not only must we be knowledgeable and competent in our training (typically biology of some form) but also need to be familiar and conversant with a myriad of other tasks; activities such as

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By Sean Mitchell Freshwater fish are challenging to find, to count, and to sample. Whether in lakes or ponds, rivers or brooks, they are adept at avoiding detection and capture. Though this is true throughout the year, during the winter months — a time of cold water, long periods of darkness, usually ice cover

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By Sean Mitchell The fox pups leapt through the tall vegetation, their still-brownish coats contrasting with the yellowing grasses as the light declined at the end of day. They gamboled and wrestled with each other. Sitting motionless about three metres away, I watched as they rolled together in my direction until about half that

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