Connecting the Clearwater, water sampling works to provide data for a big picture

Shortly before 10 a.m. on Salmon Lake, an eagle swooped in front of a boat that started collecting water quality data a couple hours earlier. The bird of prey dipped into the water, grabbed a fish and flew away.

"You don't see that every day," Colleen Stone, who was volunteering that morning with the Clearwater Resource Council, said.

Later on, a herring flew across the width of the six-mile long lake. Brea Dehm, aquatic technician with the Clearwater Resource Council, said these moments, and being able to be out on the Clearwater Chain of Lakes, is definitely a cool part of her job.

This summer and into the fall CRC will collect water samples four times on six lakes in the Clearwater Valley. The effort is made possible by the resource council's staff and funding that requires quotas of data collection, but also volunteers who help collect and process data and offer their boats. The bank of data collected - including aquatic invasive species and nutrient information - helps scientists get closer to a holistic picture of how the lakes change over time.

Bob Rock has been taking staff and volunteers out on the water for CRC for three years. His family has lived on Salmon Lake since the '60s and he built his home on the lake in 1986.

"What I've realized is spring runoff is critical for us," Rock said.

Rock said the runoff does a couple of things: it takes sediment down the valley from Summit to Salmon Lake, which brings in the shoreline of Salmon Lake across from the highway, but it also flushes sediment out of Salmon Lake and toward the Clearwater River's confluence with the Blackfoot River in Greenough. Sediments can contain nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus, which can cause algal blooms.

There haven't been any algae blooms reported in the chain this summer, but they've popped up on the lakes over the years. Seeley Lake and Salmon Lake have experienced a few blue-green algae blooms, which can turn into harmful algae blooms that lead to beach closures, and in the worst case, can kill dogs. Montana's Department of Environmental Quality has an online reporting system where citizens can upload the location, description and photos of algae blooms in water bodies statewide.

Everything that happens north of Salmon Lake is ultimately realized in the last major lake in the chain.

"Whatever they do up there, if they log, if there's a fire causing sediment, that sediment gets in the water and eventually comes down here," Rock said.

That connectedness is clear with the aquatic invasive species testing CRC does, too.

For this, Dehm either dragged a net just under the surface of the water or lowered it to different depths in the lake. She said aquatic invasive species, like zebra or quagga mussels, live just under the surface of the water and often settle at depth.

The crew tested about nine different spots in Salmon Lake for AIS and each time Stone cleaned the net after Dehm collected the sample. Dehm said this is to make sure that if there was a zebra or quagga mussel collected, it wouldn't be transported to a different part of the lake. Spots near boat ramps, recreational sites and inlets or outlets are common testing locations as they experience the most traffic. A boat check site is located at the Clearwater Junction and has been there since 2009 encouraging traveling recreationalists to stop and make sure they're not bringing AIS to and from their destinations.

So far, Montana does not have any zebra or quagga mussels in its waters.

Other samples collected were for dissolved oxygen, nitrates and nitrites, phosphorus, chlorophyll A and clarity. To get some of these readings, Dehm filled out a log sheet as Stone lowered a device into the water, meter by meter.

Dehm said she has started to see trends in the numbers as the device drops down in the water even just two months into her position with CRC. As the device approaches the thermocline - or a distinct layer in water that can show how temperature changes with depth and is typically where water temperature changes the fastest - different nutrients and fish start to show up.

Karen Williams, aquatics director with Clearwater Resource Council, analyzes the data collected by Dehm, Stone and others. Trends depend on the metric, she said, and on how much data has been collected.

Aspects like dissolved oxygen have been collected for years since CRC has a device that provides the readings. Nutrient testing is more expensive since results have to be sent to a lab, thus CRC has only recently been able to conduct this testing.

Williams said big picture-wise the sampling is trying to help scientists better understand the trophic status, or a measure of how much life a lake can support, of the lakes - how they are trending and how they compare to other lakes, like Flathead, in the region.

Trophic statuses can tell scientists a lot about what kind of life thrives in a lake. Cold water fisheries with low nutrients are referred to as oligotrophic while warmer lakes with a lot of nutrients and algae are called eutrophic. Williams said lakes in the Clearwater Chain shouldn't be eutrophic, and once a shift is made in that way, it's almost impossible to go back.

A couple hours after the eagle got its snack, Rock put the group's end of the day song on the boat's speakers. He'll go back to his home on Salmon Lake and Stone and Dehm to CRC's office to process the water samples they collected over the past few hours.

Stone is a fifth-generation Montanan with a ranch in Ovando and joked that she got "suckered" into volunteering by Jon Haufler, executive director of CRC, when she lost to him in a golf match. (Stone also coaches Seeley-Swan High School's golf team.)

Rock joked that other than the insight about the spring runoff, volunteering with CRC made it clear to him he's glad he's not a water biologist.

Jabs aside, Dehm knows these people care, and the local knowledge they provide is invaluable.

"It's nice when you have people from here. They know," Dehm said.

On Sept. 6, the Clearwater Resource Council is hosting an event called Clearwater Clarity: Understanding and Safeguarding our Water Resources at the Blackfoot Conference Center at the Double Arrow Lodge. It's free and includes lunch. Register by RVSPing to crcwaterquality conference@gmail.com or call 406-219-1364.