St. Vrain Valley high school students on Thursday shared their work on an endangered Colorado native fish project with Boulder County Parks & Open Space employees.
The students — four sophomores and one senior — are on the data science team that’s part of the larger, after-school aquatic robotics program at the Innovation Center. The data science team helps care for the spawning fish, collects water quality data and designs sensors to monitor water quality.
The multi-year project aims to reintroduce the northern redbelly dace fish to the St. Vrain River while educating students about the scientific process and threatened species. Along with Boulder County Parks & Open Space, project partners include Colorado Parks and Wildlife, Denver Zoo, Lyons Middle Senior High School, Ocean First Institute, and University of Colorado Boulder graduate students.
“That collaboration piece is huge,” said Jayme Margolin-Sneider, the bioscience pathway manager at the Innovation Center.
The fish, a freshwater minnow, was “almost wiped out” after the 2013 floods. It’s an important fish, the students said, because it’s an indicator species.
“They are really sensitive to the water around them,” said Niwot High sophomore Taryn McDermid. “We know if they die there is something wrong with the waterway.”
For the presentation, the student team learned to use ArcGIS Storymaps to present the data they collected.
“We have graphs,” said Niwot High sophomore Jenna Watson. “Graphs are cool.”
Along with collecting data, the students are building sensors that will go on underwater robotics being built by other teams. Their goal is to create a station that can measure water quality for months at a time. Underwater robotics also would take video, allowing them to check to see if the fish are still present at their release site.
Another project is learning to work with environmental DNA, which would allow students to test water samples to check for the presence of the small fish.
“We have all of these amazing options we can build into our project,” Erie High sophomore Bethany Lonsinger said.
The fish arrived a week before the pandemic started and had to be transferred from the classroom to the Longmont home of Mac Kobza, a wildlife biologist with Boulder County Parks & Open Space, and Mikki McComb-Kobza, the executive director of Ocean First Institute. They have mentored students through the project.
“You are doing real conservation science,” Kobza told the students at Thursday’s presentation. “You are doing things beyond just raising fish and releasing them. This is real, new research.”
Once pandemic restrictions lifted, the fish returned to the Innovation Center. A series of tanks, plus tanks for the brine shrimp they eat, serve as the hatchery.
So far, fish have been released at two sites through the project. The first fish release was into a privately owned Lyons-area pond. The second was at Pella Crossing’s Webster Pond, which was redesigned after the floods to serve as a fish nursery. The students released close to 1,000 fish there last spring.
One of the biggest challenges has been getting their sensors to work, a frustrating two month process, Silver Creek sophomore Mark Raehal said. Keeping the baby fish alive has been another challenge.
The Innovation Center students now are trying to recreate spring conditions in the tanks to encourage the fish to spawn early, with a goal of releasing more in the summer. The adult male fish have developed their trademark red bellies indicating they’re in mating season, but no eggs have been laid yet.
Niwot High senior Mateo Bandera, who is considering a career in science, called the experience working on the project “phenomenal.”
“It’s an amazing opportunity to advance my scientific experience,” he said.
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