Fishing for an outdoor career

Seth Beaudreault gets paid to ride in helicopters, fish, and chase off bears. Even before he graduated last May, Seth had begun working for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. His program, within the Department of Natural Resources Conservation, helps students find field research projects, summer jobs, internships, and cooperative education positions that give them real-world experience while they're still in school. "Summer placements are the best way for students to build their resume and learn about their personal interests," says Professor Mike Ross.

Placements are national. Students have spent summers at oceanographic and marine fishery institutes, on research vessels, with conservation agencies, as well as with state and federal agencies.

"Seth is a wonderful example of a student who really followed through with his summer placement," says Ross, who was Seth's advisor. The following excerpt, written by Seth, describes his summer placement experience as a fisheries technician in Alaska.

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After my sophomore year at UMass, I got a volunteer internship as a fisheries technician for the Bureau of Land Management in Fairbanks, Alaska. I loved it, so I tried to get a paid job for the following summer.

I got an amazing gig working as a fisheries technician for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service in the Togiak National Wildlife Refuge. At 4.7 million acres, it's the third largest National Wildlife Refuge. I headed up there not knowing what to expect, but definitely excited.

The seasonal staff stayed in Dillingham for the first couple weeks of June, receiving lots of training: Boat Safety, Aviation Safety, CPR/First Aid, Firearm Safety, Cultural Awareness, and most importantly, Bear Awareness.

After the training I was headed to the Goodnews River, where I would be living at a field camp with just a few other people. We flew out to Goodnews Bay, a Yup'ik Eskimo community of a couple hundred people, in a tiny plane - the most common form of travel in the area and the only way to get from village to village.

After unloading our gear and watching the plane vanish in the distance, the other fish technician and I had a good laugh at our situation. Suddenly we were alone in the wind and rain, waiting for a stranger to pick us up in this tiny Eskimo village. Eventually a little jet boat came bouncing over the waves and took us upriver.

Camp was situated on a high bank of the river, overlooking the specta-cular Ahklun mountain range. It consisted of three weatherports, which are like tented one-car garages. One was to store our gear, another was to cook and hang out in, and the third was for us to sleep in. That was it.

The whole point of the camp is to monitor the salmon that migrate upstream in the summer to spawn. There are similar camps on many rivers in Alaska, with crews counting the salmon every day and reporting the numbers to Fish and Game, who then use the numbers to decide how many fish to let the commercial fisheries catch. If enough salmon make it upstream to ensure a productive batch in the following years, then people can fish. If not enough fish are coming up, the fishermen are out of luck.

To get the most accurate salmon count possible, we set up a weir - a fence-like structure that only lets water through. The salmon were restricted to going through two passages; one was to let the fish through, and a few times a day we would sit over it and count. Sometimes we'd get 1,000 going through in an hour - sockeyes, kings, chums, pinks, and silvers.

The other passage was called the trap, and this would let fish into it, but not out. We would let the trap fill up with fish and then go to work. One of us was the wrestler, who actually got into the trap to net the fish and hold them on the measuring board while someone else plucked scales and another person recorded all the data. Wrestling the fish was a blast, but also pretty grueling because those 50-pound king salmon can really knock you around when they don't feel like being picked up. None of the fish really seemed interested in being held or measured and their strength amazed me - they were here for one reason only and that was to spawn. We were just obstacles in their way.

I was also assigned to gather genetic samples from a somewhat smaller species of fish called the Dolly Varden, a trout-like fish whose colors turn strikingly beautiful in the spawning season. My boss told me to catch as many as possible, whether by dragging a 100-foot seine net through the water, or my favorite method: rod and reel. Yes, I was getting paid to go fishing on a pristine Alaskan river. And yes, I felt a little guilty, but just a little.

Life at camp was good, and full of surprises. The thousands of migrating salmon were like a dinner bell ringing to the local brown bear population and our camp had quite a few visitors. We carried 12-gauge shotguns just in case, but we never had any major problems with the bears. Usually we'd just yell at them or fire a cracker shell into the air to scare them off. The one night I neglected to bring my gun to bed, I was woken up by something huffing and puffing as it brushed past my tent. I just kept quiet and luckily the bear moved off on its own. They had so many salmon to eat, they didn't really need to bother with us.

Our crew went for lots of hikes and saw some amazing sights: herds of caribou, pairs of sandhill cranes flying overhead, and bears roaming the tundra loading up on blueberries. Arctic terns dive-bombed us when we got too close to their nests. The area was teeming with life. I loved the breathtaking views of the mountains and the expansive landscape with not a sign of humankind on it. I felt lucky to be there.

Another amazing aspect of the area was the people. We made friends with a few folks down in the village and they were very generous, welcoming us into their homes and teaching us how to make traditional smoked salmon strips. The Eskimos in this area rely heavily on salmon, caribou, birds, and marine mammals for food, and life can be quite a struggle. They survive in one of the harshest landscapes in the world, taking responsibility for catching the food they eat, and trying to maintain a unique culture in spite of the rapidly changing world around them.

I spent three months at the camp and returned home to Massachusetts just before beginning my senior year at UMass - a different world. As soon as I touched down in Boston, part of me wanted to turn right around and go back up north - the pace of life here is so much faster. Looking at the cars whizzing by, I felt really lucky to have experienced the quiet remoteness of Alaska with its unique wildlife and people.

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Postscript: A few days after graduation I packed my bags and headed back to Alaska to work at the Togiak Refuge once again. This time I was the Crew Leader and I was in charge of a small group of technicians at a remote field camp. We were catching Dolly Varden and surgically implanting radio transmitters into them. Later in the season I got to fly around and track our fish from a plane to see where they went to spawn. I also did some aerial surveys of bald eagles, walrus, and sea lions.

Currently I'm looking into graduate school opportunities and making plans to visit Central America over the winter.

Related links
Wildlife and Fisheries Conservation