Working as a field technician in Western states, Mike Akland was sometimes tasked with killing brook trout — an invasive threat to the region’s beloved native fish. Now working in the Adirondacks, he’s on the front lines of protecting them.
The doctoral student at the SUNY School of Environmental Science and Forestry is studying what the coloration of brook trout tissue can teach us about the health of the park’s most iconic fish species, while setting the stage for a new brook trout monitoring program in a cluster of remote ponds on state land near Cranberry Lake.
The research, which includes a series of related projects helmed by undergraduate and other graduate students, is taking advantage of the school’s Cranberry Lake Biological Station, a longstanding boat-access-only outpost on the lake’s southeastern shore. Surrounded by Cranberry Lake Wild Forest and Five Ponds Wilderness, the 964-acre station campus serves as a handy launching point to study remote brook trout ponds little visited by other researchers…