Benthic Macroinvertebrate Picking Day

The Izaak Walton League and the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay teams met at Prince William Forest in Triangle, VA on July 27th. The teams spent the afternoon picking through preserved benthic macroinvertebrate samples to test and refine volunteer friendly sub-sampling protocols, as part of a new CMC benthic macroinvertebrate sampling protocol. These samples are picked through to remove organic debris and isolate at least 110 benthic macroinvertebrates from each sample, which are then sent off for identification at the EPA Region 3’s Office in Wheeling, WV. These data are utilized by the Chesapeake Bay Program to fill in data gaps in the Chesapeake Index of Biotic Integrity.