NANFA-- National Water (and Fish) Monitoring Day:Headcount

Hoover, Jan J ERDC-EL-MS (HOOVERJ_at_wes.army.mil)
Fri, 20 Sep 2002 17:03:16 -0500

Members -

If you are planning to participate in the National Water Monitoring Day (see
post of 3 Sep 02 pasted below), please reply to me off list. Tell me where
you will be working, members who will be involved, and whether you will be
sampling fish. Thanks.

- Jan

National Water (and Fish) Monitoring Day

The Clean Water Act and the North American Native Fishes Association were
both started in 1972 ! Let's do something as a group to celebrate these
anniversaries.

Friday 18 Oct 2002 is National Water Monitoring Day. Thousands of volunteers
are needed to test local waters (especially those not regularly monitored by
state and federal agencies) so that areas of degraded water quality can be
identified and delineated on a national scale. I urge all interested
members of NANFA to read about and participate in this worthwhile effort:
www.yearofcleanwater.org/events/volunteer.htm
This could also be a great excuse to organize a field trip, collect some
fish, and, possibly, begin our own tradition of annual fish-habitat surveys.

Previously, some members have suggested that NANFA establish a national fish
monitoring day, similar in spirit to the Audubon Society's Christmas Bird
Count. Nothing has come of this, I think, because there has been no focus
for the collection of such information. Here is the focus and here is an
excellent opportunity for beginning such an effort. We can collect water
quality data according to the specs of the water monitoring program,
habitat and fish data according to our own guidelines (for suggestions see
NANFA field collection data sheet:
www.nanfa.org/misc/collection_data_sheet.pdf ).

Test kits cost $16.50 and are available through the Year of Clean Water
website. These kits allow volunteers to test dissolved oxygen, pH, water
clarity (i.e., Secchi transparency), and temperature up to 50 times. The
kits are easy to use and recommended for ages "8 and up." The NANFA BOD has
indicated that it may be able to help defray cost of test kits for
reps/members that choose to participate. Use of this particular test kit,
however, is not required. You can use other test kits or water quality
probes. Also, the date is symbolic. Data will be accepted if they are
collected any day during the period 12-27 October.

Sampling sites are registered online. I did so today. It was easy. You
just click on the map of the US until you find your water body, enter the
latitude and longitude (it changes as you click on the map), and then
provide some background information (where you will sample, name of stream
,etc.). It only takes a few minutes.

There are a lot of areas so far with few or no sampling stations registered:
e.g., Gulf and South Atlantic Coastal Plain, much of the midwest and Great
Plains. Many states have had no volunteers. Until today, only one site had
been registered for Mississippi.

I do not know yet whether the water quality sampling will be a recurring
national effort. If it is, it will be encouragement for us to continue and
expand our own work. If not, it could serve as a launching platform for
our own organization-wide effort at data acquisition and outreach. Also, by
notifying our local newspapers, this could serve as good publicity for the
organization and possibly even a recruiting tool.

I hope that many of you will commemorate the 30th anniversaries of the Clean
Water Act and NANFA by joining in. Contact me if you are interested. I
would like to compile all our data, trip reports, photos, and anecdotes, so
that someone (me, if no one else steps forward) can write an article about
the first-ever National Water (and Fish) Monitoring Day for American
Currents.
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
/"Unless stated otherwise, comments made on this list do not necessarily
/ reflect the beliefs or goals of the North American Native Fishes
/ Association"
/ This is the discussion list of the North American Native Fishes Association
/ nanfa_at_aquaria.net. To subscribe, unsubscribe, or get help, send the word
/ subscribe, unsubscribe, or help in the body (not subject) of an email to
/ nanfa-request_at_aquaria.net. For a digest version, send the command to
/ nanfa-digest-request_at_aquaria.net instead.
/ For more information about NANFA, visit our web page, http://www.nanfa.org