My First Blog Post - Bass Study

By Gayan Jayasinghe
Plattsburgh, NY

It was around this time last year that I was in Florida enjoying my Spring Break. The warm weather was awesome! It was almost 75 degrees. The ocean breeze on the South beach made it feel like it was 55-60 degrees. The white sandy beaches were beautiful but the water was cold, which balanced the very humid weather. We spent about a week in Miami, it was really a great time. When the break was coming to an end, my friends weren’t looking forward to return  to the 35 degree weather in Plattsburgh. They wanted to stay longer!

I knew in about two weeks though, all the snow was going to melt and the sun was going to shine in plattsburgh too, finally! The Field work at the Lake Champlain Research institute resumed for the season, which is good news, especially to Mark Lamay, who was growing tired of spending 7 months working with microscopes in the lab. Now, it'a time to start collecting zooplankton, Phytoplankton and Mysid samples for the new season. This collection is done as a part of the long-term monitoring program for Lake Champlain, which is conducted by DEC-New York.

There was another ongoing project that was launched at the same time. George Maynard, who is a Graduate Student at Lake Champlain Research Institute, and Alex Vaklav were studying, “The Effects on the Dispersal Patterns of the Largemouth and Smallmouth Bass after the Major Bass Fishing Tournaments.” Their two year field work was coming to an end, with the last three Bass tournaments in the summer of 2012. School work was my priority at the time, consequently I couldn’t spend much time in the lab or out in the field but once summer vacation came around, I was fully engaged with their field work.

There were three major Bass tournaments in the Lake Champlain in the summer of 2012. Before a tournament, we would usually go to different sites of the lake, catch and release fish, while recording data. During the Tournaments, we put radio transmitters in the healthy fish and other fishes were also floy tagged. We go back to the same sites, after every tournament, catch the fish and record the data to check whether we see a similar dispersal pattern. Plus George, Alex and Dr.Mihuc fly around the Lake Champlain in a rented aircraft to track the fish which we put radio transmitters. The whole purpose of this study was to observe the effects of Major fishing tournaments on the dispersal patterns of Largemouth and Smallmouth Bass.

Our tournament work has been featured in the local media a number of times. Below is an Environmental news segment which featured in the WPTZ News back in August 2012

Special Thanks to:

• Dr. Tim Mihuc and Mr. Mark Malcoff at LCRI
• George, Alex, Luke, Mark and Erin at LCRI
• WPTZ Plattsburgh

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Gayan Jayasinghe

I am a Biology graduate from SUNY Plattsburgh, NY. I was employed at Lake Champlain Research Institute, Plattsburgh, NY during 2011-2013. There, I studied, longterm trends of zooplankton in Lake Champlain. One day, I hope to utilize my skills and experience towards a conservation of aquatic biology and make a worthy contribution to the science.

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