"Don't call it electrocuting fish," was our first lesson in electrofishing- a practice where you temporarily stun and collect fish and other aquatic wildlife to determine the health of a stream or waterway. We took our podcast on location to Howard's Creek in Whitewater Township with Sara Fehring and Sarah Meadows from the Hamilton County Conservation District. So, grab your rubber waders and your net and get ready to learn about electrofishing and why we collect this data on the fish population!
To learn more about Hamilton County, Ohio, our services and job openings, visit hamiltoncountyohio.gov.
"Don't call it electrocuting fish," was our first lesson in electrofishing- a practice where you temporarily stun and collect fish and other aquatic wildlife to determine the health of a stream or waterway. We took our podcast on location to Howard's Creek in Whitewater Township with Sara Fehring and Sarah Meadows from the Hamilton County Conservation District. So, grab your rubber waders and your net and get ready to learn about electrofishing and why we collect this data on the fish population!
To learn more about Hamilton County, Ohio, our services and job openings, visit hamiltoncountyohio.gov.
All right, we're back. Welcome to heart and hustle in Hamilton County podcast about Hamilton County government and policies and employees and the people working to bring public service to the residents of this community. I'm your host, Jeff Alito County Administrator with me, as always is Bridget Doherty. Hello, hello. Hello.
Bridget Doherty:Glad to be here.
Jeff Aluotto:So Bridget, we are just returning from our first ever on location podcast, right?
Bridget Doherty:It was so fun.
Jeff Aluotto:It this. This was with all due respect to all of our past guests. This had to have been our best episode of all time.
Bridget Doherty:I think we just lucked out. It was fantastic weather we were in a beautiful environment. I want to say we were in the middle of Harrison slash Crosby townships
Jeff Aluotto:somewhere. I forgot my passport so I didn't know quite where we wound up but we were we were out way on the northwest side in a creek, talking with an expert about what we had teased in a prior episode about electrocuting fish. And
Bridget Doherty:yeah, that actually that I know that our hosts for our on the location of events didn't really like that term didn't like electrocuting fish
Jeff Aluotto:did not go over well, let's just be honest, it did not go over well, but we did have the pleasure of meeting up with Sarah meadows and Sarah fairing to fantastic professionals from the Hamilton County Soil and Water Conservation District. And while they may have disagreed with our terminology, electrocuting fish so last time I'm gonna say it they had a tremendous amount to share with us about the natural resources we have in this county and how our professionals that soil and water go about studying our natural resources making sure that we've got a healthy environment here in the community. I thought it was pretty cool. It was very cool. So
Bridget Doherty:let's let's go right to the right to the creek
Jeff Aluotto:All right, so we are out here on location for the first ever on location, version of heart and hustle in Hamilton County. We are on Sara What river or stream are we on here?
Sarah Meadows:This is Howard's Creek
Jeff Aluotto:we are in Howard's Creek. We've been advertising and and teasing this edition of heart and hustle for Bridgette how long
Bridget Doherty:at least the last episode that we did. Okay, so
Jeff Aluotto:it hasn't been that long. But we are out here in our town it for a while we've been talking about it for a while we're out here on Howard's Creek. And we're going to if you're listening to this episode of heart and hustle, you are going to learn about some really cool things that Hamilton County employees and departments do to protect and preserve the environment. Not every job in Hamilton County is sitting behind a desk, you have the opportunity to do some really really cool things. And we're here with Sarah meadows and Sarah fairing with the Hamilton County Soil and Water Conservation District, which the mission of which is to protect and preserve the soil and water resources of our county. And we're thrilled to be out here with them today. And I've got my co host Bridget Doherty with me. Hello
Bridget Doherty:everyone. I location with wet feet already with
Jeff Aluotto:wet feet already. And we're going to be doing something today called electro fishing and we have a really fantastic resources resource with the county that is Sara meadows, who has walked us down to this location with something that looks like a proton accelerator on her back. So Sarah, welcome to Heart and hustle in Hamilton County. And tell us a little bit about what we're going to be doing today.
Sarah Meadows:Well, thank you for having me on the podcast. I'm excited to get some people out here and get them wet and dirty and see what we're doing. We are going to be electro fishing which stuns the fish in order so that we can get a good sample and a good look into how the fish population is doing in Howard's creek here. So, when I describe what is electro fishing, why the heck do we do it? I like to start with an analogy. So if you want to know how is my aunt and uncle and niece and nephew doing how are they doing? There's many things that you could do. You could ask them how you guys do it. Okay, that's easy way or you could go look at their house. UK is their habitat healthy has their house in good condition. They have good shelter do they have Have all of their needs met a bathroom, a kitchen, a bedroom, all of those things, okay, their habitat looks good, that's a good sign check. You could look at their food supply, how's their food, the refrigerator stocked, they got a variety of all the foods they need to meet their nutritional needs. That's the other thing. And the final thing that you could look at is testing the quality of their environment. So how's the air quality that they're breathing? How's the quality of the water they're drinking, you could do all that. And then from that make a determination. Well, this was about five out of 10, this was eight out of 10. So they're probably doing pretty well, or, or whatever. Or you could ask them, right. And so the reason I went into all that is because when we want to know the health of a stream, that is what goes into it. We assess the habitat, are there trees, is the water clean, we do water chemistry testing. So that's habitat. That's like testing air, I was saying test the water quality. And the last thing is the food. So we'll check the macroinvertebrates, which are the bugs that live in there, which is another food source of some of the fish. Or you can just catch the fish and see who's there.
Jeff Aluotto:So that and so that's what we're going to be doing today is actually catching the fish, and using electric current to catch the fish so that you can assess how healthy is the stream? What kind of guys are living in here, right?
Sarah Meadows:Yeah, yeah. And so that's why the biological testing, catching the fish is so important, because all of those other things I've spent all that time explaining is what goes into determining what fish population lives here. All of those things have to be good to have a good fish population. So
Jeff Aluotto:the zoo, the type of fish that you wind up catching the UC, can give you an understanding of all those other things that you talked about how healthy is you're not going to get certain types of fish, if the chemical composition of the stream might be really bad, or if certain types of plants aren't there, you're not gonna see fish. So this gives you a, an indicator of the health of the stream through one sampling mechanisms that
Sarah Meadows:that's exactly right. And that's why this biological or fish sampling is so valuable. I will also say that it has taken me several years to get level three certified, which is the highest certification. That's the data that EPA uses and everything. And there are, I don't know, 20 people in the state that are level three certified. So there's no one in southwest Ohio other than myself now that have that certification, really. So it's just a valuable resource that can be used for by many groups to determine the health of the store.
Jeff Aluotto:Many people in the state of Ohio have that certification getting would you say, I don't know the
Sarah Meadows:exact number, but it's like 20 or 30, somewhere in there.
Jeff Aluotto:But the point being is very few and Sarah faring. We have this history at the Soil and Water Conservation District of just getting experts in their field. Right. So this is fantastic. So we're just thrilled to have you working for Hamilton County. And again, the purpose of this podcast is to tell people the work we're doing but also, if you're listening to this to hey, I want to I want to go into a field where I can protect the environment. But gosh, can I really do that working for the county? Yes, you can. And Sarah is living proof of that. So awesome. And well, before we get started might also just be going to take a couple of seconds and talking about where we talked about we're on Howard's Creek, right, which is a tributary of what is the
Sarah Meadows:Great Miami
Jeff Aluotto:Great Miami. Okay. And we're out at a UC University of Cincinnati research facility. Right. Let's just wanted to talk a little bit about where we are and the partnership that you guys have with with University of Cincinnati.
Sarah Meadows:Yeah, so this is the UC Center for Field Studies. It is actually an old shaker home that that house in the barn that was on the property used to be shaker property. And they renovated it in partnership with great parks. So this is sort of like a great parks, you see property partnership. And they use it as classrooms. And they recently also built the karf, which is an archaeological research center. So they not only do biological research, they do archaeological research here. They have rain gardens, and prairies and all of those other things that they use for educational purposes out here as well as the stream. They get students out here sometimes do
Jeff Aluotto:awesome. Well, thanks to UC and great parks for helping us with this today as well. So all right, Bridget, what do you what do you think?
Bridget Doherty:You know, I'm kind of ready to get started. I'm wondering, should we get to your safety mechanisms of this because you do kind of
Jeff Aluotto:like not I'm more I think we should just get the electricity out and shove it in the water right now. Right? No, probably probably a good point. But you guys said Was the food what do we need? What do we need to know?
Sarah Meadows:Yeah, so there are many different ways of electrofishing. This is a backpack electric Fisher. That's what we're going to be using today. As you said, we look a little bit like Ghostbusters. For everyone that can't see what's going on. You can't elect your fish from a boat, you can elect your fish from what's called a tow barge, which is a little bit like a sled that you tow behind you with like a generator and stuff. So that's a little bit higher powered for larger bodies of water. This is a cute little stream, babbling in the woods. And so we can use the smaller backpack electric fissure, it's perfectly adequate, has a little bit lower voltage and amperage that will set it to so if you accidentally stick your hand in the water while it's turned on, you'll get a little tingle, but it's not going to it's not going to be dangerous. Mostly,
Jeff Aluotto:I told you, my wife told me that the only rules you have for me today was not to come home electrocuted? Yeah, so we could try to avoid that. So
Sarah Meadows:let me talk about some of the parts of this. So the way that it works is you have an anode and a cathode a positive and a negative. And when you put them both in the water, the water completes the circuit between them. So it doesn't alternate doesn't go both ways. The current like most of the currents in your house do. It's a direct current, the loop goes one direction. So you have to have the anode and cathode, the positive and negative in the water at the same time to complete the circuit. And it goes always from the anode, which is this pole that I'll be holding with the metal ring on the end, and there's a switch on it. You see the switch is rubber and it's permanently in the off position. That way, if I were to trip and fall while I'm electrofishing it and I let go of it, it'll open and turn off. That's one of the safety features.
Jeff Aluotto:Go lawnmower right? You know, yes? Got it. Okay, yes, exactly
Sarah Meadows:like that. So I have to hold it down in order to turn the anode ring on. The other part is what we call the rat tail. And it is a sort of like a metal wire that's attached to the backpack that drags behind me in the water. That's why we call it the rat tail. And that's the cathode. So that's the other end of the loop. So it'll go between this, this ring that I can kind of put wherever I want to, and this rat tail that drags behind me, and it goes back into the equipment through this lithium battery, and back out the ring, and then a loop through the water. Cool. All right. So some other safety features, there's a big red button on top, you just put it down to turn it off. It has a water detector near the bottom so that if I get deep in the water or I fall and it gets wet, it'll automatically shut off. It has a tilt detector. So if I fall and I tilt forward or backward too far, it'll automatically turn off
Jeff Aluotto:there are what types of what types of fish would you expect to find in an electro fishing sample that would indicate a completely healthy string.
Sarah Meadows:So there's actually a lot more that goes into it. We we use, we capture the capture the fish. And once we capture our sample, we want to get 100% of what we can over a specified distance during a specified amount of time. And that will give us a good picture of what's there. We collect them, we weigh them and count them because the number of each species and the variation in size will also tell us something you want a healthy population. So you need adults that are making babies and you need babies to be the next generation. So you want a lot of different sizes.
Jeff Aluotto:So you're talking a lot about number size. Didn't hear you mention as much about types. Is that is it? Is there anything or if you find certain types of fish that would indicate maybe a more polluted stream versus another type that would say, hey, if we have this type of critter in here, the streams gotta be pretty, pretty healthy.
Bridget Doherty:Somewhere like an indicator species. Yeah,
Sarah Meadows:yeah. So some species of fish are more sensitive to pollution or they have a more specialized habitat that they need. And other types of fish are sort of opportunists. So they can live on scraps belly, whatever. They're like garbage disposals like a carp for eggs. sample. And they're not as particular about the amount of pollution and more tolerant of it. So sensitive and tolerant are kind of the words we use for different fish species. And ideally, we get a variety of them. Just because they're tolerant of pollution doesn't mean that it's bad to get those, you need those. Also, you need the whole variety. So there's a greater number of species as what we want not just specific, sensitive species, you want all of them, I just have to plug darters really quick. So darters are my favorite group of fish. They are the coral reef fish of freshwater streams, they are blue, orange, green, bright colored, striped and spotted. Yes, they're beautiful. They are beautiful little fishes. They typically don't get more than two to four inches, depending on the species as adults. So they're small. That's another thing that I'll say. You don't always want big fish. It's not a fishing contests. You know, you want the small species
Bridget Doherty:to show how often do you do this?
Sarah Meadows:Well, that depends. We are starting a volunteer electro fishing program here this year, this will be the first year that we're doing it. And we'll go out a couple times a month to collect data on some of the sites that they have a decade's worth of water chemistry, volunteer data on already. So we'll be adding biological data to that existing dataset, which is really exciting. For the first time, there's a couple of different things that we'll use this data for, we'll use it for the volunteer data to add to that data we already have, like I said, and we'll also use it for some of our own purposes for stream monitoring and stream improvement projects and to get grants to fund these stream improvement projects. And so it's kind of as a as needed basis. You might need to do it before and after a project to show that it was effective. You know, are there more species here than there were before and we can help out our partners as well who might be wanting to get grants, because like we said before, there's not a lot of people that can do this. So and it's it's very valuable. It's I don't know what the monetary value is think if you hire someone to do it, it's several$1,000 For one site,
Jeff Aluotto:what's the overall purpose from a county wide perspective in terms of doing this?
Sarah Meadows:So one of the values of us being able to do it ourselves, aside from the EPA, and Midwest Biodiversity Institute also does regular sampling across the state, they have set sites that they usually come to on a five year cycle, to just check in, they'll assess those completely, not just fish and determine how healthy it is. But there might be sites that we'll need sooner than that, or we don't can't pay someone to do it. Or it's a site that they're not willing to sample that we can just go out and get that data on the sites that we need data on that it doesn't already exist.
Jeff Aluotto:And so this equipment, Sarah, you were telling us earlier, this was actually funded through a grant, right?
Sarah Meadows:Yes, so we applied for a grant through the ohio Environmental Education Fund, which is an EPA grant. And the reason that we got an education fund grant to do science, scientific data collection, and by this equipment, is because there's a couple of different audiences that we want to reach. So there's a huge value, as we've been talking about, in getting this data for ourselves and our partners, but also, through the volunteer program, engaging the general public in a way that hasn't been done before, and letting them see and assist firsthand in doing this level three, high quality data collection. And we also plan on doing some public works workshops, you know, they have to get a lot of permits and obey a lot of regulations in their, their work. So we plan to have some opportunities for them to come out and see some of the fish that live in the streams that they probably didn't realize live there like those colorful darters Those are fun, charismatic one.
Jeff Aluotto:And that's really cool that you're that you're doing that because you have a lot of people working in public service, who whether they're engineers or public works, officials, like you said, Sarah, and, you know, they, they're responsible for a very valuable aspect of developing this county, right, but to make sure they understand the specifics of here's the interaction between what you're doing, and the health of the natural environment is really important. So it's really cool that you're reaching out to those different industry sectors as well as just the the residents of the county for volunteers. So that's awesome. Yeah, we're looking forward to it. And you can tell us here has done this multiple times because she flipped the pole up with her foot, like like my kid might do a soccer ball. So, this is clearly we are we are in the hands of an expert here. So to do this in in in common areas, you do it in the riffles. Or where's the best way to do it?
Sarah Meadows:All of the above. Because remember, we want a complete picture, we want all the species, some species prefer the pools, some species prefer the riffles. So we really want that complete picture. There's a lot of specific ways that you sample, for example, we're gonna walk downstream a little bit and walk back towards you, you always want to sample upstream. And the main reason is that so when you're walking in the creek, and you stir up all the mud, it goes behind you. So you can see what you're doing. We also have some polarized sunglasses to help it see the fish better. And you kind of do everything you can to sample, get a complete sample and get all of the species that are representative of this particular Creek. You don't want to miss anything like
Jeff Aluotto:into the like, exactly call them but like where the stream arose out, like behind like trees and stuff, do certain types of fish that might live back there, that might be more.
Sarah Meadows:So absolutely, just trying
Jeff Aluotto:to get a good sample of all the different areas.
Sarah Meadows:Yeah, like there's a big log with some sticks and leaves and stuff jammed up to it, we're probably gonna stick it right under there and see if there's anything hiding in there. That's a great habitat spot to get. And there's some different sampling techniques to get them out of the riffles and all that stuff. So what to see what we get
Jeff Aluotto:great. Now my natural inclination would be to walk right alongside of you and mess up everything you're doing. So I'm assuming you want us to stay here while you guys do this, right. I just don't want to I don't want to mess anything up here.
Sarah Meadows:Yeah, yeah, that'd be fine. We're not gonna go that far. Well, so here's another thing to think about. See, we're standing right next to a little riffle here. And there's a pool right in front of us. So we're gonna go down to the bottom of the pool and work our way up towards this riffle. And what's gonna happen is we won't get much at first. But soon as you get to the top of this pool up at this riffle. It's like you're hurting the fish. You got to be prepared as a netter. Which is you? You know, you can know mentally when we get to the top of that pool. That's when you're gonna like, be ready. Scoop, scoop, scoop, scoop scoop. Yeah.
Jeff Aluotto:Because right now, I see no fish, right. I mean, so yeah, I'm imagine that is deceiving.
Sarah Meadows:That is what's so interesting about it. People look and they say there's nothing in here. This little riffle is what? I don't know, four inches deep in the deepest spots here. There's fish in there. You wouldn't think that's darters love the riffles.
Jeff Aluotto:We're gonna test you on this era. So here we go. See what happens here.
Sarah Meadows:Yeah. Now watch, I'll eat my words, we won't get anything. It's even amazing how well though big fish you can hide. Like you don't see anything, you might get a big one turn it up, you don't know. So let's see, just to describe what's going on right now. I'm holding the lever down, I got my ring. I'm directing the ring underneath of rocks along the bank, I'm kind of stirring out the fish so that Sarah here can scoop them up and put them into our bucket of water. And I will say that we're not getting 100% of the fish that we see. Scooping is a lot harder than you would think. Here's a good one little guy, but he's colorful. They're actually drawn to the electrical field. So when they're stung, they're drawn to this ring that I have. And most fish float because they have a swim bladder. But the ones that we're catching here is mostly darters. darters are the only group of fish that do not have a swim bladder, because they like to sit on the bottom. And they'll hide under rocks and dirt out and catch bugs. It's why they're called darters. They sit on the bottom kind of positioned like like a seal upon their fins. And they sink because they don't have a swim bladder that makes them float. Now we're getting to the top of the pool here so there's a little bit more fishes. Yep.
Bridget Doherty:Know fish were harmed during this taping. There it is.
Sarah Meadows:Yeah, so there's quite a few crayfish living in this cool. We saw lots of those hurdles, tadpoles, anything in there will be impacted by it. But just like the fish, they usually just get stunned in some way. So here if you want to help, I'm going to put this bucket over here for you.
Jeff Aluotto:Oh my gosh, yeah, look at that.
Sarah Meadows:I have a little tank there. I'll put them in so you guys can see them and I'll point out different species. We've got some darters we'll get I'll pick out some colorful ones for you to look at.
Jeff Aluotto:So the little in this is similar to what you told me when we first started. The little fish that I saw They got zapped, and then he was backup swimming around and like seven, eight seconds. You got some big guys in here. There's still a
Sarah Meadows:little bit out of it. Yeah. They'll take longer to recover.
Jeff Aluotto:That's what you said earlier you said the bigger guys are kind of more sensitive to this.
Sarah Meadows:Right? Yeah, it's all about surface area, they have a bigger surface area because their body is bigger, so they conduct more current through them. I
Jeff Aluotto:would never have guessed that I would have thought the little guys would have been affected more. But that's really interesting.
Bridget Doherty:Is that a? Is that a normal sample for you? Know, Oh, do you do much more?
Sarah Meadows:We do 200 meters.
Bridget Doherty:Okay. Probably only did how many meters would you say? So you could really be out here a nice half day. Hold all day.
Sarah Meadows:Yeah, you have 3600 seconds to do 200 meters. It's very specific. So you have an hour to to fish, that does not include setup, getting your equipment down. And then this next part actually sometimes takes the longest depending on how many you get.
Jeff Aluotto:Is there a difference between doing this in the winter versus the summer?
Sarah Meadows:Fish behave differently in different times of the year? Because it's cold and they're slower and kind of hunker down, and there's less food? So they're not trying to use up energy? Yeah, yeah, there's, it's really important to select a good site that will be representative of the waterway that you're sampling. So by waterway, I mean, all of Howard's Creek. If we're going to take one 200 meter sample on Howard's Creek, you better make sure that that represents all the habitats that are on all of Howard's Creek. So you have to really select a good spot.
Bridget Doherty:I get questions about Sarah, what did you study in school? Like, how did you get to this point?
Sarah Meadows:Well, I'm gonna get some fish out for you while we're talking. Perfect. That's okay. So I have a biology degree and a chemistry minor. And originally since about fifth grade. I said I'm going to study marine biology. So I took all the like ecology type courses and stuff in my biology degree. I did a study abroad and marine biology and learned all the those research techniques and everything. The Galapagos Islands. Wow. So I lived there for five months and did did all kinds of stuff. So that was pretty cool. So what was I saying? Oh, marine biology so well, I ended up marrying this is a Hamilton County podcast, right? Yes. I ended up marrying a West sider so I'm stuck here. No, Cincinnati has to know what that means.
Bridget Doherty:As a West sider. Yes. Hailing from shivian. Yes, I totally understand that.
Sarah Meadows:So I redirected
Jeff Aluotto:our new our listening audience goes well, beyond him will be able to county, roughly 400 square miles and just socially, historically, always. Divided east side, west side. Correct. So we now know that
Bridget Doherty:what high school did your husband go to Colerain. Or you go up there, I gotta say in watching all of this, it seems like you really enjoy your job
Sarah Meadows:I do. I will tell you a little bit more about my background. Well, actually, both my parents worked for great parks growing up. So I kind of grew up in and around nature, it's close to my heart. And in college, I got a college job as an environmental educator, do a naturalist kind of stuff outdoors. And I really loved teaching people about the environment and showing them interesting things that they might not have expected to see in it so they can learn about it and foster the love of their own of nature. And this job, I get to kind of do both things. I get to teach people about nature and collect the data, and I get to get people out doing it with me. And so I think that's really cool. So I'm picking out some different species here, picking them out of our bucket. And so what are we seeing the most of here? I haven't looked at all of them yet a lot of shiners. So, there's different groups of fish. There's sunfish like bluegill. There's starters which we've talked about, there's shiners, which are the little kind of minnow fish. And it's good to have representation from all the different groups. predators like bass are good to have. We've got Creek Chubs are a minnow there's some blacknose dace is another minnow there's a darter here. This is called a fan tail darter. There's so right now it's springtime. And so the males are looking real pretty. The males are the pretty ones sort of like in birds. In this the species that are dimorphic that have different males and females. The males are very pretty. This is a blunt nose minnow, so He's got these tubercles on his nose. That means he's handsome. Really? That's his breeding tubercles he's very bright colored striped down the sides very bold. He's a handsome guy.
Bridget Doherty:I would have never thought that there would be this many fish in a creek, just in a small creek. Yeah.
Jeff Aluotto:And you mentioned you mentioned bass. Do you pull bass out of the creek this size? Like I mean, obviously smaller. But
Sarah Meadows:yeah. Hanging out in the pool. Sometimes. Sometimes it's just a good place for the young to grow up safer before they get bigger and go out. Let me show you this starter.
Jeff Aluotto:These are the guys you were talking about the kind of suit at the bottom on their on their fins. And
Sarah Meadows:yeah, yeah. And this guy is a nice colorful one. You guys can see all the orange and blue stripes like a parrot or something. Yeah. Hey, he's back. Yeah, he's flopping around, buddy. He's got the stripes on his dorsal fin there and all of his fins. Really?
Jeff Aluotto:Yeah. You never really see them up this close to realize how colorful they are. I mean, it does almost look like a tropical fish.
Sarah Meadows:When I put them in the tank. Do you see he immediately went to the bottom? He's down there. This guy's got a nice orange colored tail. That's his breeding colors to that might be Oh, Sam shiner soon shiner to be a sand shiner. Yeah, so get your hands wet. Yeah, thank you. Because fish actually the reason that fish feel slimy, if anyone ever touched a fish, when you're fishing with your grandpa, when you're little or whatever, that's actually a coating, like a sort of a mucous coating on them that protects them from getting infections and getting sick. Oh my gosh, he's really cool. His dorsal fin is the makes him distinct from all the other darters. He's got a short, spiky dorsal fin, you see his front dorsal fin, it's much shorter than that. And it's like spiky, we have to look at every single one Id every single one, sort them, weigh them, count them. And it takes a while. So that's why this part actually sometimes takes longer than doing the sampling. What would you
Bridget Doherty:like people to know about your job and how important it is?
Sarah Meadows:Well, like I said at the beginning, the biology is just part of the picture. But it's an important part, because you can go see how your aunt and uncle and their niece and nephew are doing assessing all this other stuff. Or you can just go ask them.
Jeff Aluotto:So how will we use this? What's the next step in terms of using this data? We don't collect the data just to collect it. But what are we? What are we using it for?
Sarah Meadows:So after you look at every single fish that you catch you IDM you sort them and weigh them and write it all down, you take that back, and you calculate what you call and IBI score, which is an index of by biological integrity, which takes into account the variety of sizes of a species, the number of species, the variety of families of fish. So it takes into account all the things that you could to get a numerical score, there is a database, EPA and MBI, which is Midwest Biodiversity Institute, they do regular sampling on those five year cycles. It's publicly available that EPA just did and last year, they did an assessment with MBI and Cincinnati MSD on the Mill Creek in Hamilton County. And so in December, they did a presentation on all that information on are those sites still attaining the status that they should? Or they still warm water or whatever they're supposed to be? If not, what do we need to do to get them back to what they're supposed to be?
Bridget Doherty:And I think that'd be really helpful for residents of the county to just kind of wonder, okay, there's a creek in the back of my house in you know, green Township, you know, what's the health of that creek?
Sarah Meadows:Right? Yeah, that's that's all publicly available information.
Jeff Aluotto:All right. Well, you know, we've been out here now for probably better course of an hour now. I'm just we could probably continue watching Sarah. She's going to continue to pull up fish out of this bucket for about the next two hours. Unfortunately, on heart and hustle in Hamilton County, our time is a little bit more limited. But this has been absolutely fascinating. I think we provided a window into the environment in Hamilton County that we just simply didn't know about, both from a natural perspective but also into career opportunities and professions that go on within Hamilton County government that I am going to wager most people would probably not know that they had the opportunity to pursue if they're interested in science and in the environment, etc. So Sarah and Sarah really want to thank you for your time out here today. This has been incredibly illuminating, Bridget any
Bridget Doherty:No, I just think what you do is, is kind of fun. And I just think, you know, like having having to be able to do this as a profession is is awesome. So I really thank you and I thank you for keeping track of all of our great streams in this county, it never ceases to amaze me how different this county is from like our urban core to being out here in Whitewater Township, Crosby Township, and how beautiful it is, to thank you for what you do.
Sarah Meadows:And anyone that's really interested, I will say this is the first year we're getting our volunteer program up and running. So we probably don't have extra spots for that. But in future, we're hoping to have some, like demos and workshops. So anyone that's just interested in what this is, look out for those events, we'll just have people out to see what it is. So it's all about
Jeff Aluotto:figuring out a way we'll we'll definitely advertise for that, and amplify that on your behalf. And then also just Sarah, just thanks to all of the employees for the Soil and Water Conservation District for everything they do every day to help with the environment, whether it's on the soil side of things, or stream health, like we're talking about here or on the environmental education front as well. So thanks everything you guys do,
Bridget Doherty:I will say one plug for soil and water is they have great social media. So to follow soil and water to find out about those volunteer opportunities, and just all the really cool things that they're doing for our environment. All right, great. Sounds good. Thanks, guys. Thank you so much. We really appreciate it. We'll see you back in the studio.
Jeff Aluotto:Excellent. We'll be back shortly.
Sarah Meadows:Thanks for coming out with us.
Jeff Aluotto:All right, we're back inside. I've got the mud boots off. And we're back at our studio here. Bridget, you have to it that had to been one of our most epic episodes of all time. It
Bridget Doherty:was so cool that now I want to go out to planning and developments, fire hydrant crew and go and test fire hydrants throughout the county. I feel like we got we're onto something. We got to keep it on the road.
Jeff Aluotto:I think you're right. We have to do that. And I love the idea of fire hydrants. I think we also need to get out season building inspectors in the field really bring to people who are regular listeners, the work. All employees of Hamilton County, not just those that are in an office, but people that are out serving the community actually in the community, I think it'd be fantastic. But before we go, Bridgette, would you agree with me that this episode was in fact our most shocking episode of all time? All right,
Bridget Doherty:there you go. I found that button. There we go.
Jeff Aluotto:So, for all of you, who've listened to this episode, I want to thank all of you for listening to heart and hustle in Hamilton County was a pleasure to be out with Sarah's out on the west side, talking about the natural environment. And we'll be back with you shortly to talk about some more valuable public services that county government brings to to the community. So on behalf of my co host Berger Doherty please check us out on Apple podcast, Spotify and other providers. And as always, you can find this podcast on Hamilton County ohio.gov on the county administrator's page. I'm Jeff Alito. We'll see you next time.