All around the world, citizen science is connecting regular people to real science that they can do themselves. More and more people are tracking bird migrations, monitoring water quality, and classifying galaxies. It’s a huge movement and scientists and natural resource agencies are just beginning to realize its value. Anglers could be a natural for citizen science.
What would happen if trout anglers broadened their passion for fishing and trout to include a love for the science of stream ecology?
What would happen if anglers learned more about how their favorite fishing streams changed over time and what factors drove the observed changes?
I have wondered how this confluence of angling and science might change the angler, might change fishing, and then, how it might in turn change the places anglers fish. The synergy of combining angling and science could have far reaching benefits.
What could we expect when anglers become passionate about science? They would know more about the condition of their local streams and what factors degrade or improve those conditions. They likely would gain a better appreciation for how our fish and wildlife agencies work. Certainly, they would become more informed advocates for sound stewardship of our rivers and their watersheds. They might even become better anglers.
Trout Unlimited sees this potential. In 2015, TU made Angler Science a national strategic priority for our organization and began developing technical manuals, special equipment, and training to offer more angler-based monitoring opportunities. It’s a growing trend and TU members now participate in a wide variety of citizen science activities, including:
- Collecting macroinvertebrate samples to monitor water quality
- Collecting stream temperature and stream flow data
- Collecting data on the timing of aquatic insect emergence (the River’s Calendar project)
- Tracking impacts of oil and gas development and associated pipeline construction on eastern brook trout populations (the Eastern Shale Gas Monitoring Program)
- Surveying steelhead habitats and collecting redd count data (www.wildsteelheaders.org)
- Collecting algal samples to track nuisance Didymo blooms (the Discovering Didymo’s Distribution project)
Furthering this trend are interactive Internet sites, web mapping capabilities that facilitate data storage and display, and technological improvements in monitoring equipment. These developments have broadened the scope of what is feasible to monitor while bringing down the cost of many monitoring efforts.
Of course, we recognize that there exists a vast network of data on stream condition, on different insects that indicate the amount of pollution in our streams, on relationships between fish and their habitats, and on the myriad of things that scientists study. But, all these bits of scientific knowledge are of little interest to the average person until they understand them. Angler Science will help make these kinds of data and the need to collect them more meaningful.
Recently, TU staff reported on the values of engaging anglers in monitoring streams by describing two angler-based monitoring programs: stream temperature monitoring efforts across the West, and a more geographically-focused effort to track impacts of oil and gas development in the Marcellus Shale region of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Virginia. The report is available as a feature article in the latest issue of the Journal of Soil and Water Conservation.
The monitoring programs not only produce useful data and provide an early alert to problems facing trout and their streams, but they also help diversify local chapter projects and offer programs that appeal to young and old audiences. The Blueback TU Chapter in Oregon organizes snorkel surveys on the Siletz River that helps to understand and better protect the steelhead resource. They have a waiting list of willing participants for their surveys.
Scientists know the importance of long-term monitoring in detecting environmental change, and in teasing apart natural variation from changes wrought by human forces. But government agencies often lack the capacity to adequately monitor nature, change, and human influences, especially across many years when data are likely to be most helpful.
So, I am brought back to my original question of what might happen when anglers bring their passions to conducting stream surveys, tracking invasive species, or counting steelhead redds.
In her 2014 book, Diary of a Citizen Scientist, Sharman Apt Russell writes about her fascination with tiger beetles and how her interest in these fascinating riparian predators opened her eyes to the emerging field of citizen science. She writes that “more and more people are watching birds, taking water samples, staring into the heart of a red spiral galaxy, marrying curiosity with collective power, waking up and thinking—what am I going to study today? … This is falling in love with the world, and this is science, and at the risk of sounding too much the idealist, I have come to believe they are the same thing.”
I think she is on to something.