{13} Mentored Research Adventures

Right before Thanksgiving break I was in the lab trying to get last minute work done before I left for home. I'd already worked for my allotted 3 hours for the day and was minutes from preparing to go home when Dr. Belk came barging in. "Run downstairs and grab some waders, then meet me outside in two minutes" and with that he was gone. Umm.. What? Not knowing what we were doing, my lab partner and I got waders and met Dr. Belk and another student by the truck and inquired after our task. "Electroshocking," he answered. NO WAY!! This is going to be awesome. Electroshocking is when you have a metal rod that you put in the water and drag back and forth, temporarily shocking the fish into immobility so that they can be caught in a net without their resistance. We raced down to the Spanish Fork river and jumped right in. With mud up past my knees in parts of the river, the going was slow and slippery. With one leg freed from the mud and the other still buried, falling into the water was a serious concern. Only one of us ever fell and one took on some water because of the high water level in parts of the river, but that was the extent of our disasters. With our nets and buckets, we caught the fish that we needed. Racing back to campus, we were 45 minutes late for a parasitology class, the one we were collecting fish for. It was amazing to think that while I was out having fun shocking and catching fish, it was actually for a purpose. Those little fish would be dissected in class and the parasites they contained would be examined in the hopes that they can be removed from the river. Science, it turns out, is actually a lot of fun.