Candace Rogers
Univ. of Arkansas
Worked on indentifying marine fish eggs, larvae.

During the summer of 2009, I had the privilege to intern with the Alaska Fisheries Science Center (AFSC), Resource Assessment and Conservation Engineering Division (RACE). I worked in the Ichthyoplankton lab under the guidance of Morgan Busby. Since I attend the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, all of my previous experience in fisheries dealt with freshwater fish. Therefore, I chose this particular internship in Seattle, Washington to gain some hands-on experience with marine fish.

I focused on three dominant species collected from 2006-2008 during six NMFS FOCI larval research cruises: Theragra chalcogramma (walleye pollock), Pleuronectes quadrituberculatus (Alaska plaice), and Hippoglossoides elassodon (flathead sole). My final presentation was entitled, "Abundance and distribution of marine fish eggs and larvae in the Bering Sea during the summers of 2006-2008."

The first step in my research was to verify the identification of marine fish eggs and larvae. I made these verifications using the "Laboratory Guide to Early Life History Stages of Northeast Pacific Fishes" (Matarese et al. 1989), and the knowledge of other scientists in the lab. Now, I am able to count myomeres on larvae and measure the diameter of eggs with ease. My next step was to input corrections into the database IchPPSI (Ichthyoplankton Data Entry Application), and retrieve biological data using IchBase (Ichthyoplankton Database). After this, I made several maps using ArcGIS to plot the abundance and distributions of the larvae and eggs. Results revealed Theragra chalcogramma as the highest abundance for larvae, and Pleuronectes quadrituberculatus for eggs.