Sturgeon Patrol

The service learning project changed my views on learning. It opened my mind up to a whole new method of acquiring knowledge. Before Bio 160 I have never really done a whole lot of volunteering. Just a couple of hours here and there for school.
What I liked is how the project that I picked related to class. In this project we covered a couple different areas that were discussed in class. One of these areas that the project targeted heavily on was wildlife conservation. While doing sturgeon guard I had the chance to step back and look at the impacts humans have on the world around them. When looking at the sturgeon I can see that without the help of conservationist they might not be around today. With the management of the DNR a healthy population is maintained and people still have the chance to fish for sturgeon. Without the management, the sturgeons are very vulnerable to over harvest by humans and their population would be in jeopardy. I felt that Andy and I helped do our part in conservation by being there and making sure no person decided to harm the vulnerable spawning sturgeon. By volunteering in this field I realized that humans need to realize their impacts in this world and they need to be aware of what they can do to help maintain and improve our world.
Another aspect that we covered during this project was having a chance to witness the biology of animals as we disused in class. One of the most obvious sights was that of the reproduction of fishes. We not only got to see how the sturgeon naturally interacted with one another but we also had the chance to view close up encounters of the actual spawning process. We not only witnessed it, but because of class, we understood what was happening and why the fish acted in such a manner. Besides the sturgeon we also witnessed other wildlife. We saw carp, suckers, ducks, downy woodpeckers, robins, and many more. We even had the chance to hear a beaver slapping its tail on the water at us to warn others of our presence. It was nice to take what we learned from lab and be able to identify all sorts of different animals.
The biggest thing for me personally to get out of the project was to volunteer in a field that I am interested in getting a career in. Being a fisheries major, this project was right up my alley. I had the chance to talk to the wardens on duty about studies being done on the sturgeon and also how the fish act and why. I plan on taking the knowledge acquired and using it when planning for that dream job. Overall I feel this project was a success and I plan on volunteering for this next year.