A few years ago, my boss was asked to sample some backwaters of the Colorado River in Imperial National Wildlife Refuge.  We hauled our sampling gear and boat down to Yuma, AZ and spent half of two very hot summer days (Yuma gets up to 120° in the summer!) collecting water, algae, plankton, and insects.  You know what’s hard?  This:

Me, sampling insects from the front of a john boat

Collecting on boats is an adventure because the boat moves backwards every time you push the net down into the vegetation, making actually collecting insects (and there were hardly any in this backwater anyway) very difficult.  Darn you, physics!

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