Two Days At The Flint River, AL

We went out Friday afternoon to the Flint to run driftnets, and back today to do transects for flow, depth, substrate and darters. It's finally cold, certainly when we get there at 9 a.m. We found a blotched chub, Erimystax insignis, today that's a rare species in Alabama streams. It likes fast riffle water over boulder and cobble, exactly where we found it. The Nature Conservancy rates the species as S2 in the state, so we certainly released the one we netted.

Here are Jeremy, Robert and Brian standing around a driftnet yesterday at the Flint. Both nets collected a large number of drifting leaves, not surprisingly.

This is a photo I took while holding one end of our transect tape measure line. Brian is handling the flow meter while Brittany records data. Jeremy is peeking in from the far bank, holding the other end of the tape. We make readings of depth and flow at one meter intervals, with the river being about 30 meters wide.