Images

USGS Fishery Biologist, Pat Braaten, and biologists from USGS Columbia Environmental Research Center and the Fort Peck Field Office release a telemetry-tagged, female pallid sturgeon after recapturing her to check her reproductive status.   She was still full of ripe, black eggs, and had not yet spawned when she was netted.

Biologist, Dave Combs prepares a tracking boat (foreground) and a DIDSON survey boat (background) to search the Yellowstone River for tagged pallid sturgeon, Near Fairview, Montana.  Pallid sturgeon in Montana are tagged with radio telemetry transmitters that are detected with large antennas mounted the boats.

Black Bear Creek upstream from the 4th Street bridge in Pawnee, Oklahoma, 2012.

USGS SIR 2019-5043

Collection of composite soil samples, Mount Rushmore National Memorial, June 20, 2012. Water-quality sampling of groundwater and surface water and soil sampling was conducted during 2011-15 at Mount Rushmore National Memorial to characterize the occurrent of perchlorate and selected metals commonly associated with fireworks.

USGS research ecologist Jeff Duda collects discharge data on a side channel of the Elwha River. Two large dams on the Elwha River are being incrementally removed from 2011 to 2013 to restore river function in an important salmon-bearing river.

Biologists prepare to perform ultrasound and an egg biopsy on female pallid sturgeon, radio code 30, to determine how close to spawning she is or whether spawning may already have occurred.  Biologists from Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks determined that code 30 eventually spawned in the Yellowstone River on July 19-20, 2012.

Biologists were able to document the spawning of female pallid sturgeon code 30 as she released during a recapture event in the Yellowstone River near Fairview, MT.

A three-lined salamander (Eurycea guttolineata) discovered in Prince William Forest Park, VA.

Barred Tiger Salamanders and fathead minnows in amphibian type funnel trap, Kidder County, ND. 

USGS biologists drift trammel nets on the Yellowstone River, near Fairview, Montana to capture male pallid sturgeon.

A large male pallid sturgeon captured by the USGS on the Yellowstone River is scanned with a portable ultrasound device to determine if it is “ripe” and ready to reproduce.

Grass growing in areas that would normally be underwater near Normany Dam.

Photo showing a location where the water is usually eight feet deep for swimming is now several feet out of the water.

Recreation areas that are normally available for summer swimming are without any water.

The sun sets below the horizon as USGS telemetry-tracking crews follow the upstream migration of male pallid sturgeon, code 52, below Intake Diversion Dam, Montana on June 9, 2012.

In the stream is Martel Fisher (USGS) and Bart Powaukee (Coordinator Ute Indian Tribe Water Quality Department) and some of the Ute Tribe Water Quality Department employees.

Juvenile sand lance collected in a beach seine by USGS Western Fisheries Research Center scientists while conducting a survey for juvenile surf smelt on Bainbridge Island, WA.  Like surf smelt, sand lance are an important forage fish in Puget Sound.  

USGS Western Fisheries Research Center scientists identify fish collected in a beach seine while conducting a survey for juvenile surf smelt on Bainbridge Island, WA.

Tidepool snailfish collected in a beach seine by USGS Western Fisheries Research Center scientists while conducting a survey for juvenile surf smelt on Bainbridge Island, WA. 

The European green crab (Carcinus maenas), has invaded fisheries in Northern California and in British Columbia, where it may compete with the much more valuable Dungeness crab.

A syrphid fly (aka - hoverfly) lands on a flower at a local nursery to grab a quick batch of pollen.