By Kim Luke

Back in 2019, I began a project called the Carp Dependent Ecosystem Urgent Management (Carp-DEUM) Project. I started this project as an undergraduate and continued it as a junior specialist and graduate student until 2022. The project was focused on the common carp (Cyprinus carpio) population in the UC Davis Arboretum and the potential benefit of excluding carp on water quality. While we caught plenty of carp during our sampling, we also got to look at the overall fish community and found lots of black bullheads (Ameiurus melas), green sunfish (Lepomis cyanellus), and native Sacramento blackfish (Orthodon microlepidotus). 

There were two phases to the project, a sampling phase and a carp exclosure phase, and both came with their own obstacles. It turns out steep concrete banks are not good seining beaches, and creating areas that fully exclude carp requires much more effort than I, as an undergraduate, could manage. With help from my labmates, I learned new sampling techniques and came up with solutions to keep the project going. And while the project had its hiccups, it gave me management experience early on in my career and provided hands-on sampling experience right on campus to about a dozen undergraduate students. Even projects that don’t work out as planned can offer valuable learning experiences. Good science can be messy and hard!

And the project isn’t done yet. Over the last few years, since the project ended, the UC Davis Arboretum has undergone construction to restore areas to a more natural wetland habitat, including areas near places the Carp-DEUM project sampled. Since that construction finished, another undergraduate at UC Davis has started studying the fish community to see how fish communities and water quality have changed post-restoration. Be sure to keep your eyes peeled for future blog posts about their work!

If this visit from Carp-mas past has filled you with fishy holiday spirit, try making some Gingerbread fish! I used this recipe for the gingerbread cookies and this recipe for the icing. Don’t forget the almond sliver scales!

About the Author 

Kim Luke is an environmental scientist at the Delta Stewardship Council and the current president of the California-Nevada chapter of the American Fisheries Society. She worked at the Center for Watershed Sciences from 2019-2024, starting as a student assistant and working her way up to assistant specialist.

Further Reading

Luke, K., J. Durand, R. McConnell, A. Sturtevant, N. Suzuki, A.L. Rypel. 2020. Initial Sampling of the Carp-DEUM Project. California WaterBlog.

Luke, K., and Brian Williamson. 2020. Contemplating the Carp. California WaterBlog. 

Main Project Page: https://watershed.ucdavis.edu/project/carp-deum

* To celebrate 15 years of the California WaterBlog during this season of giving, consider making a gift to the Center to help us create more meaningful opportunities for students across our programs.