And On To Sipsey Fork

I heard back from Jera at the Bankhead National Forest today. She's extended my permission to catch fish in Sipsey Fork inside Bankhead until the end of January. Going out next Tuesday still looks good, with little rain between now and then, and predictions of a sunny day with high in the mid-forties. We'll be looking to collect about 20 silverstripe shiners, hopefully that will be relatively easy as long as water levels aren't high. The latter is the bigger problem than temperature, since years ago we tried to collect at this site in February and were driven out by high water. But now we have better gear and more experience, and are maybe tougher and smarter(!), so I'm hoping for the best.

Much of the afternoon was spent on editing the black darter paper. I'm almost embarassed at how long and poorly organized the Methods section was. It's better now, but that was about 1.5 hours to do a serious re-write. The other big challenge is to summarize all of the (many) reported ANOVA tests in to one summary table; that should boil down the Results section in a big way. The good news is that they liked our ANOVA numbers and interpretations, but in current form it's sprawling. All of this is what happens when you try to edit down even an excellent Master's thesis in traditional format into a much tighter journal format. I feel like I'm in a remedial Scientific Writing course (but at least I'm passing).