Syzdekistan

Today I came uncomfortably close to death.
At work, we are currently doing some native fish surveys on the Muddy River. We spent the morning checking hoop nets and minnow traps for native fish on the lower river right above Lake Mead. We caught a variety of introduced fish and a few bullfrog tadpoles and […]

[Read more →]

Last weekend, I had the pleasure of attending the Desert Tortoise Council’s annual symposium which was held here in Las Vegas. The symposium is where all of the tortoise researchers get together and present their research. There are also talks on other topics like Asian soft-shell turtles. This year, there was an excellent series of […]

[Read more →]

As I was leaving town for a fun night of razorback sucker larval sampling on Lake Mojave (I’ll explain that whole crazy process when I finally get to do it), Hot Pregnant Wife called me to say that she was beginning to have regular contractions and that I should start thinking about not leaving town. […]

[Read more →]

This video has been passing around the biologists at work. It’s the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long time. Like any funny thing, it’s funny because it is true.

[Read more →]

The last couple weeks have been pretty busy with lots of work travel. At least I get to go to glamorous places like Laughlin (motto: “Where cocktail waitresses go to die”), Mesquite (motto: “Where cocktail waitresses go to die”) and then back to Laughlin (you get the point). One of the conferences was on native […]

[Read more →]

Things have been warming up here slowly. There is still ice in the gutters and on swimming pools. At work a large section of the parking lot is roped off because there is a large patch of ice. I’ve actually seen people spreading on sidewalks (wouldn’t be easier to turn off your sprinklers?)
Yesterday and today, […]

[Read more →]

This morning’s low was 21° here at the house and it stayed chilly all day. The official low was 23° and some areas got into the teens. Las Vegas had a record low high of only 39°. Of course, further north it is a lot colder and Ely (where I worked last winter) had a […]

[Read more →]

Two mussel researchers independently determined that the mussels found in Lake Mead on January 6 were not zebra mussels but quagga mussels. Quagga mussels are in the same genus as zebra mussels (FAQ) and actually can out-compete them. In eastern Lake Erie, they have nearly eliminated zebra mussels. They also live in deeper water than […]

[Read more →]

This week I was at the Colorado River Aquatic Biologists (CRABs, cute huh?) meeting this week in Laughlin. The biggest discussion was about the discovery of the highly invasive zebra mussels in Lake Mead. The mussels were probably carried into the lake on a trailer boat from contaminated waters. The effects of the zebra mussels […]

[Read more →]

I haven’t have computer access to get detailed updates of Steve Job’s keynote address at MacWorld Expo for the last several years because I have been working in the field. Last year, since I was in the market for a new laptop, I was very eager to hear the news but had to settle for […]

[Read more →]