Earlier this fall, we asked some of the Center for Limnology’s alumni from the last several years to send us updates on what they were working on these days. A couple of those updates ended up in our annual newsletter (which you can read here), but we got so many updates, we didn’t have room to share them all. So, here is the full list of updates – enjoy this peak into a “day in the life” of a limnologist!
Alex Latzka
Alex Latzka is a fisheries systems biologist with the Wisconsin DNR’s Bureau of Fisheries Management. Earlier this fall, Alex was helping out on an annual survey of Madison’s lakes conducted by the DNR Fitchburg Fisheries crew, when they pulled a channel catfish out of their nets. “Lake Mendota has a small but healthy population of big channel catfish like this,” Latzka says, “which is pretty unique among Wisconsin lakes.”
Most of Alex’s work involves crunching fisheries data at his computer so that fisheries managers can better understand and protect the health of Wisconsin fisheries. But, he says, “I try to get away from the desk a couple times a year to keep things exciting!”
Gretchen Hansen
Gretchen is an assistant professor in the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Biology at the University of Minnesota. Earlier this year, Gretchen and her 11 year old daughter, Billie, got to work with scientists at Yellowstone National Park on their lake trout suppression program in Yellowstone Lake. Gretchen serves on the science advisory board of a program that is removing hundreds of thousands of pounds of the invasive lake trout every year to enable recovery of the native cutthroat trout.
Martin Perales
Martin works as a senior project manager for the Napa County Resource Conservation District in California. He was out this year conducting steelhead spawner surveys in the spring along a reach of York Creek that was recently made accessible to anadromous fish through a dam removal project. Martin and his colleague, Paul Web, essentially waded upstream looking for adult steelhead and redds (fish nests).
Martin also sent in a couple of photos of him working fish up at on of the Conservation District’s rotary screw traps located on the Napa River, just north of the City of Napa, which is part of their long-term fish monitoring efforts. While they love all their native fish, Martin says, “we are most interested in keeping tabs on steelhead smolts leaving the river for the ocean. We weigh, measure, collect genetic samples, and PIT tag them in hopes of detecting them if they return to the river.”
Vince Buttita
Vince recently started a job with Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife to help lead a new Native Aquatic Species program with the goals of developing a research and monitoring program for the native inland fish, mussels, and crayfish of Washington. In the summers, he is managing a seasonal team of field technicians tasked with collecting eDNA from rivers across all of Washington (so any undergraduates who are interested in field experience hiking around in the Pacific Northwest working with eDNA should reach out!).
Jake Walsh
Jake Walsh spent his 2025 field season evaluating lake response to carp removal efforts as part of the Minnesota Aquatic Invasive Species Research Center’s Lab to Lakes Initiative. In addition to evaluating water quality and the aquatic plant community responses, his team was evaluating zooplankton and lake sediment responses, which brought Jake back to his time at the CFL working on zooplankton and sediments in Madison lakes.