Monday July 10, 2023
San Francisco Chronicle —
The only boat on Lake Tahoe cruised through the dead of night toward the West Shore. Its pilot throttled down near a GPS marker on his navigation screen, then went aft to lower a long mesh net off the craft’s stern to a depth of 300 feet.
After being winched back to the surface, the sock-like net dripped with water, appearing empty. But it wasn’t. Its catch had been funneled into a thermos-sized canister at its end. Using headlamps, two biologists aboard in hiking boots and hoodies unscrewed the canister and scoped out their quarry.
“We got shrimps?” asked Erik Young.
“We got shrimps!” Brandon Berry replied.
Young carefully poured the contents — a dozen or so tiny translucent bodies in a few ounces of water — into a sterilized glass jar and then sealed it, marked it, and slotted it among about 20 other vials the researchers had filled that night.
“Catch of the day!” he exclaimed.