Freshwater Mussel Research: Shifting with the seasons

Now summer's been and gone, so has team Healthy Headwaters' mussel fieldwork on the Sydenham River. Despite having to be patient with starting work, it's been a great summer. In our first season of mussel surveys we learnt a lot from working with others who have studied mussels in the Sydenham for much longer, and really enjoyed the opportunities for hands-on socially distanced learning. But while we love fieldwork, it's just one part of the science process.

In the month and a half since wrapping up our field season, we've now moved on to sample processing, data entry and analysis as we work to interpret our findings. Sitting at a computer doesn't match the excitement of plucking a mussel off the river bottom (instead of a mussel shaped rock), finding a new-to-us aquatic insect, or stops for sweet treats from Parks Blueberries on the way, but we're excited to continue digging away at what we've discovered. In all, we found over 1010 live mussels from 22 species across the Sydenham watershed so the hope is that will give us insight to the associations between different mussel species, benthic macroinvertbrates and their habitat conditions. 

We're grateful to have gotten a field season at all this year and so now it's time to trust the process as we explore and interpret our data. But of course we're field ecologists at heart, so we're already dreaming of next summer!