Rocky Mountain College students from professor Kayhan Ostovar’s wildlife ecology class conducted the annual fish survey of the ponds on the ExxonMobil campus on Friday.
After setting out the nets Thursday, students collected the fish in large buckets and carefully identified, measured and weighed each one.
They will then analyze the collected data, which goes back yearly to 2012 at the ExxonMobil site and Lake Josephine at Riverfront Park.
The data is also shared with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks.
“This project helps students be able to do some analysis with real live specimens,” Ostovar said.
Most of the fish caught were crappie, bluegill, pumpkinseeds and suckers.
Due to COVID-19, the class was split into smaller groups for the field classes, with half the class working on Lake Josephine and the other half working in the refinery’s ponds, which were originally the gravel pits for the refinery’s construction.
The highly secure sites are not accessible to the public, and feature a large wildlife population of birds and other animals.
