Co-op students survey fish to track stream restoration

UC College of Arts and Sciences Professor Kenneth Petren is leading a project with his students to study fish in Cincinnati’s creeks.

Petren is director of UC’s Center for Field Studies, a former farm that features classrooms amid 18 acres of student research projects, woods, meadows and creeks next to Miami Whitewater Forest. The UC center offered paid summer co-op positions this year to students who wanted to conduct fieldwork and learn about the latest tools in stream ecology.

Under a bright summer sun, biology students clad in hip-waders stepped into the shallow stream at Lick Run Greenway, a park surrounded by two busy traffic thoroughfares: Queen City and Westwood avenues.

Completed in 2021, the $100 million Lick Run project re-established a creek that for the past century had been diverted through enormous pipes for stormwater diversion.

Today, Lick Run is an oasis of green surrounded by homes, businesses and industry. The city and Metropolitan Sewer District built a greenspace featuring a playground, walking path and basketball court.

The creek flows even in the hottest parts of summer. Fields of native, colorful wildflowers bloom on both sides. Mallards and geese patrol its rock-lined pools. Monarchs and other butterflies floated from coneflower to ironweed.

The students used a technique called electrofishing to survey the fish in the stream.

UC graduate Nathan Pack donned a backpack harness attached to  a rod that resembles a metal detector. The device emits a small constant current that stuns nearby fish. Standing on either side of Pack, UC graduate Madelyn Parke and biology student Elaina Marigney scooped up the fish with pole nets and placed them in a bucket with a portable aerator to oxygenate the water.

Once the students walked a designated section of creek, they climbed onto the bank to identify and count what they found: sunfish, bluegill and small catfish called madtoms. And then they returned the unharmed fish to the creek.

“The Lick Run project was one of the biggest restoration projects in the city. The whole place has been revitalized,” Petren said.

The variety of fish the students found is all the more remarkable because the creek is still essentially cut off from the rest of the larger Mill Creek by a tall concrete spillway, Petren said. But it’s not just fish that are coming back. Petren said they observed a wealth of insect larvae and other aquatic organisms that are indicators that the creek contains clean, oxygen-rich water.

“The aquatic community looks pretty healthy,” Petren said.

Petren will share the students’ findings with the Metropolitan Sewer District, which conducts a similar species survey every five years.

Petren said UC students will take water samples from the creek to conduct lab tests to look for traces of environmental DNA that could identify far more species. It’s the first time this powerful technique has been applied to Lick Run, he said.

Local 12 highlighted the project and the work of co-op students such as biology major Brady FitzGerald.

“I’m interested in all things biology and ecology, but especially birds,” he said.

FitzGerald is working on a new audio project at the Center for Field Studies that will capture and identify the calls of passing migratory birds this fall. It’s another way researchers are tracking populations of birds that are in decline across the United States.

Co-op student Marigney said while at UC she has also gotten to work at the Natural History Museum’s Geier Research Center, which serves as a repository for its massive specimen collection.

“I started off doing fieldwork, but I really like museum studies,” Marigney said. “Keeping a record of how places changed over time.”

Petren told Local 12's Marella Porter that UC is working with the Metropolitan Sewer District to determine if restoration efforts are succeeding.

“It's like a natural experiment to us,“ he said.

Featured image at top: UC students collect fish to gauge the health of the stream at the Lick Run Greenway. Photo/Connor Boyle/UC Marketing + Brand