Propagating Aquatic First Food Species

Hello! My name is Finley Harris and I’m a sophomore Biology major. This fall, I interned at the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation’s (CTUIR’s) Artificial Propagation Lab, located at the Water and Environmental Center of Walla Walla Community College. The main purpose of this lab is to propagate aquatic First Food species as well as research their life cycles and behavior to better understand how we can protect and restore them. First Food species are native to the Umatilla River and play a key role in both their ecosystems and the culture of the Cayuse, Umatilla, and Walla Walla tribes. Some examples of First Food species that I worked with in the lab include rainbow trout, freshwater mussels, and Pacific lamprey.

I worked four days every week for 1–3 hours depending on the day, adding up to a total of about eight hours per week. Every day started with checking on all of the systems running in the lab to make sure they were working properly. I would log what temperature the water was and whether or not the water was actively flowing. My most important task every day was to perform condition checks on the mussels—logging how many were alive, dead, siphoning water, etc.—and feed them. Every weekday also had its own task. Wednesdays were for feeding the fish, Thursdays were for changing the water in the mussel pans, and Fridays were for sweeping and mopping the floors. There were many other tasks to be done every week, such as feeding the larval lamprey and checking the condition of the water in each system, which were done by my wonderful fellow interns.

The other tasks I did depended on what was going on in the lab at the time. At the beginning of my internship, we were keeping track of the growth of larval lamprey, so I spent a lot of hours counting every single lamprey in a pan (some had over a hundred!) and then selecting a few of them to take a picture of to later be used for measuring growth. Later on, I aided in moving those larval lamprey to new pans. Closer to the end, most of what I did was dedicated to maintaining the lab. I would scrub and siphon out debris in the mixing and settling sumps, clean out and organize unused pans, and clean algae out of fish tanks.

Working at the CTUIR’s Artificial Propagation Lab has taught me so much about the life cycles and behaviors of these aquatic First Food species. Going into this internship, I didn’t know much about these amazing creatures, and getting to learn about them first-hand has been an incredible experience. One moment I remember from early on was seeing the larval lamprey for the first time – I had learned a bit about them in class the previous semester, and getting to see that knowledge applied to real life was really exciting for me. I thought “Oh! They really do look like amphioxus!” (a very early Chordate).

Aside from feeding my own interest, this internship has also provided me with valuable firsthand experience of what it’s like to work in a lab with live animals. Working with animals has been a dream of mine ever since I was a child, and this experience has both strengthened my ideas of what career I may want to pursue in the future as well as given me practical skills and knowledge to support me on this path. This was an amazing opportunity that I will never forget.