La Cienega Project
Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument

First Pupfish Move Day!!!

April 18th, 2005 was a good day for Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument and our partners at Ajo Middle School. We moved our first set of fish into their new home.

We started the day by collecting a water sample from the new Cienega to check water quality. Everything looked normal so we proceeded with trapping the fish. The students set seven traps around the Quitobaquito pond, stream and spring.

The traps are modified minnow traps, the fish swim in but they don't swim out. We left the traps in place for about 1 1/2 hours and went back to check them.

As we emptied the traps,we tried to determine if the individual fish were male or female and approximated their size class. The kids recorded the data and we put the fish into buckets for transport.

The buckets were carried over to Rebecca, our cheerful SCA intern, who helped students pour the fish into the high tech transport container. Blowing air into the container helped assure that there would be enough oxygen in the water for the fish to breath.

For the day, we trapped 159 fish of all sizes, moved them to the holding tank, carefully escorted them to the new Cienega and released them into their new home.

This crew of 8th graders worked really hard and we say a huge...

thank you!