Once a month, a few of us stand in the river and count what lives in it. The creatures on the bottom cannot pack up and leave, so what survives there is a record of everything the water has been through. That record is how we know whether all the other work is working.
What a sampling morning is
Kick a net, tip a tray
Disturb a patch of riverbed, catch what drifts, and sort it in a tray. Mayflies, caddisflies, snails, leeches: each kind tells on the water differently.
Count kinds, not bugs
The score counts which kinds are present, not how many. Forty mayflies and one mayfly say the same thing: mayflies can live here. The sheet does the scoring as you count and tells you what it means before you leave the bank.
The trend is the point
One sample is a snapshot; years of them are a verdict. Every stretch we watch has its trend published on this site, in sentences, not just numbers.
Questions people actually ask
Do I need to know the creatures already?
No. You will be next to someone who does, the sheet has pictures, and the difference between a mayfly and a stonefly takes about two mornings to learn and is weirdly satisfying to know.
What is the rota?
A season pass instead of a ticket. Normal signup is one event at a time, which is wrong for the same four people sampling the same sites every month. Join the rota once and you are on every sampling morning for the season automatically, including ones not yet scheduled. Leaving is one click, no guilt.
How wet am I going to get?
Ankles to knees, by choice. Waders help in cold months and we have spares; in summer old sneakers do fine. The sampling spots are chosen to be shallow and safe.
Does our amateur data actually count?
Yes. We follow the Hoosier Riverwatch method, the same protocol used across the state, and the score is computed by the system from what you count, not from anyone's impression. Trend data like ours is exactly what flags a problem early.
Come stand in the river
Come to one sampling morning as a regular volunteer and see. If it takes, ask about the rota while your feet are still wet.