Get to know our 2025 Crews

Much like previous years, 2025 was a busy one for MBI. While mostly traveling to and from Illinois and Ohio this year, our crews successfully worked on at least 15 field projects from July through October. Here are some highlights that share the importance of our work and how our different crews operate. We separate our bioassessments into fish assemblage, habitat, macroinvertebrate identification, and water chemistry analysis.

Our Fish crew practices various electrofishing methods including boat, backpack, long-line, and tow barge techniques. These different sampling approaches play an important role in water quality monitoring to identify and assess the impact of pollution or other problem sources. Some of the locations we have sampled brought some good ID finds! Edward, our Fish Crew Leader, was most excited about finding his first Pallid Shiner, a small minnow species, present in many areas of the Mississippi River basin. Our crews also ventured across local tributaries around central and western Ohio.

MBI’s Fish Crew sorting fish in a small tributary in Columbus, Ohio (above) and our Fish Crew Leader with a Pond Loach in Columbus, Ohio (below)

One of our Macroinvertebrates crew picking bugs in Illinois (top) and collecting a Qual sampling in Columbus, Ohio (bottom)

Macroinvertebrates are great indicators in water quality and are a big part of our biological assessments. After speaking with one of our Macro Crews about their field season, It was obvious this team is composed of individuals that are passionate about the environment and learning more about stream ecology. One of our 2025 Macroinvertebrate technicians, Emma, shared her experience and described a wide variety of urban and rural streams they visited. This includes some with murky waters that can be hard to wade through, but also some that have beautiful park access and lots of Caddisflies. One thing Emma noticed was the amount of Honeysuckle throughout Illinois and Ohio, which can make stream access very limited. Some of her favorite parts of this field season were traveling to new places while getting to understand the ecological and biological aspects of these new areas. Emma will continue to learn more about macroinvertebrate families and is excited to move further into her career with this knowledge.

Not all our crews work on the same exact projects every year. While there are many overlapping sites, there is a combination of projects that require different parameters. MBI’s Water Chemistry Crew also had a mixture of rural vs. urban streams. Our Water Chemistry Crew Leader, Nate, really enjoyed the scenery on the Big and Little Darby Creek around Columbus, Ohio. He felt himself grounded and taking in the fresh air of both scenic rivers. Collecting sediment was one of the most hands-on methods that Nate felt he learned the most throughout the season. This crew had similar experiences with a variety of stream health conditions while sampling while also navigating the impacts of weather. Nate became more aware of how the size of the stream and the amount
of rainfall can dictate being able to collect water samples.

Our Water Chemistry crew sampling on a bridge in Columbus, Ohio (top) and packing water samples on ice to be given to the lab for analysis (bottom)

Now that sampling collection is over, we can move onto the data analysis and report writing to conclude a lot of our projects. MBI believes that science driven data collection will help ensure water quality for future generations and will continue to take strides in the water quality field. Thanks to all of our crews for their hard work and drive this 2025 Field Season. We could not do what we do without you!