HAVANA, Ill. -- In the conference room at the Illinois River Biological Station, Jason DeBoer said, "I was interested in fishing growing up; a couple uncles got me started."
Sounds like a good start from uncles Steve Lurtz and Don Jaeger on DeBoer's path to becoming a large river scientist with the Illinois Natural History Survey.
There were some twists on the way.
He started at Grand Valley State University majoring in electrical engineering. Then during an internship with a high-end company he found "my escape was my fishing boat."
When he got back to classes, he "couldn't hack it any more" in an advanced circuity class. He dropped those classes and turned to environmental science.
"I fell into a world I enjoyed," DeBoer said.
Though the electric years did intersect with his eventual career.
"I can tell you more about the electrofishing gear than most biologists," DeBoer said.
He had an eclectic education: bachelor's in natural resource management from Grand Valley, two masters'--biology, emphasis in fisheries, Grand Valley, and natural resource sciences, University of Nebraska-Lincoln)--and Doctor of Philosophy in interdisciplinary river science from the University of New England.
His starting day at IRBS came memorably during the Illinois River's record 2013 flood.
"I stepped over a flood wall the day I started," he said.
He spent his first seven years working on the Illinois, the last five on the Mississippi.
William Starrett, former director of the nearby historic Forbes Biological Station, initiated the Long Term Illinois River Fish Population Monitoring Program (long term electrofishing-LTEF) in 1957 "to relate spatial and temporal changes of the fish community to changes in water and habitat quality throughout the entire Illinois River."
Originally, fish were "collected annually at fixed side-channel border sites" in late August or September with boat-mounted three-phase AC electrofishing gear at 28 sites: 25 on the Illinois, two on the Des Plaines River and one on Mississippi. LTEF expanded, beginning in 2009, and eventually switched to "pulsed-direct current (pulsed-DC) electrofishing protocols."
That start date in 1957 is significant, because the Illinois was basically functioning as a sewer for Chicago. Then came the Clean Water Act. Even with the good changes the act brought, over the last 10 years there are still physical abnormalities on fish, particularly in the upper reaches of the Illinois near Chicago.
"Things got a whole lot better with the Clean Water Act in the 1980s and '90s, but there are still things too expensive to remove at the treatment level," he said.
DeBoer noted there were islands that went away, swept away or filled in.
"Big thing now, of course, is the invasive species and carp and their effect on plankton and mussels," he said.
Climate change brings its challenges, particularly the more frequent and intense rains in Illinois.
"What that does in the heavily engineered waterways with locks and dams, there are more flashy rises," he said. "Rivers 200 years ago went through floods and it was healthy."
The spring flood rejuvenated the earth, the natural drawdown in the fall helped such things as waterbirds.
"What we have now is floods at any time of year of surprising [intensity]," he said. "We call those out of season floods. Plants and animals are not adapted to adjust at that time. . . . A heavily engineered watershed is working against allowing these floods to happen more naturally. High water is good for our plants and animals at the right time. Bad if it is not."
He finds some hope in the upper section of the Illinois system where native species show up in surprising places, such as the spotted gar in the North Shore Channel 10 years ago.
"I have to have a glimmer of hope, otherwise, you kind of feel defeated," he said. "I am a fisherman after all. We are the eternal optimists."
He's decent angler, fishing for bluegill and crappie. Lately, he's chasing big blue catfish and lake sturgeon.
Rivers are resilient, but the difference now is humans are drivers of about everything.
"That is one of the things scientists have pissing contests about, whether we are in the new geologic epoch," he said.
It was time.
When we finished talking, DeBoer gave me a tour of the station. In one room, a group worked on otoliths (part of fishs' inner ears and how fish are aged). It was cool when Megan Porter pulled out a slide of a silver carp otolith, then slid it under a microscope for me to see and count the rings, another slice of time.