In Environmental Statistics 2017-2018, we spent the majority of our time at the Rocky Creek research site. We visited other rivers including a couple in West Virginia, and a few others around the greater Charlottesville/Albemarle area, including Buck Mountain Creek and Wards Creek. At Buck Mountain and Wards Creek, we found evidence of mussels. We expanded our monitoring of these creeks by measuring benthic invertebrates, E Coli, phosphates, nitrates, flow rate, temperature, conductivity, turbidity, dissolved oxygen, biological oxygen demand, pH, and ammonium on a monthly basis. We used the grid method established last year to locate the mussels. The objective was to locate the mussels and ultimately determine their movement. We located and tagged approximately 30 mussels with the intent to track their movement. Perhaps the most fun thing we did was look for mussels! We spent most of the Fall days looking for mussels because they were on the surface and easy to find. During the winter days we spent most of our time organizing and collecting monthly data, but did not mark mussels. When we did our mussel count, there was so much data that it had to be divided into a two-day event. The first 50 meters of the creek was surveyed the first day, and the last 50 meters the second. We have completed the second year of a four year mussel tagging study sponsored by Brian Watson of The Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries.

We located seven of the Vico Mussels at our Buck Mountain site. We have searched Piney Creek and one other section of Buck Mountain, finding no indication of mussels. We suggest next year, further searching at Buck Mountain should occur. We did not search Wards Creek this year for mussels. This year, we have found that the pH at Wards creek has been high, and the Benthic scores have been low. Perhaps there is some runoff coming from the farm located near Wards Creek causing these high and low levels.

      As with any class, especially a class involving studying endangered mussels, there were many struggles and failures. Some of our struggles included: tagging and finding the mussels effectively, spotting the mussels, bringing all of the equipment (including lab quests), function of the equipment, turbidity readings (often many negative readings were recorded because the water was so clear that it was almost equal to the zero reading, and because we need to use the same vile for distilled water and the sample water), issues with water level, and  having enough working waders. While some of these struggles were out of our control, in order to fix the water data issues under our control we suggest: being as organized as possible, make sure when calibrating the high number goes first and low number goes second and that the voltage reaches a stable number, communicating well with your peers, and always being prepared for the elements.

We also suggest in order to fix the mussel issues we had to wait at least 20 seconds before gluing the tag onto the mussels (to allow the surface to dry), and having a three separate teams when collecting mussel data: one team to find the mussels, one to tag them, and one to locate them. The optimal mussel finding team should have two people both in the river looking. One person should be ahead and the other behind using the scopes. The optimal tagging team should have four people. One person gluing the tags onto the mussels, one measuring them, another taking pictures of each tagged mussel, and one for writing the data down. The third team should contain three people to record the locations of the mussels. One person should be in the river following behind the mussel team. Two people should be on the shore, one taking the measurements from the downstream and upstream posts and taking compass angles, and the third person writing down the measurements.

We have also developed a program for identifying the mussel species by adding photographs of unidentified specimens to a database. This program will give a suggested identification for that mussel using percentages. All photographs are then sent to Brian Watson for positive identification before we enter the data into the state database.