Take one old green fishing boat. Add a gas generator modified with an auto muffler. Throw in two giant plastic tubs, four stainless steel salad bowls, two garage door springs, assorted wires and pipes, and wrap it all with lots and lots of duct tape, and what do you have?

You have a recipe for one aquatic monitoring marvel.

Although appearing quite homemade, the boat, known as an "electrofishing" boat, and its captain, Roger Thoma of the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (OEPA), have been patrolling Lake Erie for almost ten years, monitoring fish along different areas of the lakeshore to determine water quality. They are here today at Griggs Reservoir in Central Ohio to demonstrate Thoma’s eclectic method of fish sampling to five scientists from Belize, who have made the trip to Ohio to learn biological monitoring from one of America’s best.

The Belizeans, from the conservation organizations Programme for Belize (PfB) and the Toledo Institute for Development and Environment (TIDE), are here at the invitation of the Ohio Chapter of The Nature Conservancy, long a supporter of conservation in this ecologically rich Central American country.

Thoma says he has specially adapted his boat over the years for the deep-water electrofishing required on Lake Erie, and his refinements—although not pretty to look at—do the trick. The salad bowls play a lead role, having been bolted together to form two "electrospheres" which act as the negative and positive terminals in creating an underwater electric field. The spheres are hung at the end of long arms which arc out over the water and are hinged to the boat with those recycled garage door springs. Thoma uses a 7500-watt generator to send an electrical charge through the spheres, trapping fish in a force field that extends from the surface to up to 27 feet deep. The stunned fish then float to the surface, where they are scooped up in nets and dumped into one of two plastic "live wells" or holding tanks. (Carp get their own tank so they won’t injure smaller fish.)

On a normal workday, Thoma and his two-person crew take up to an hour to electrofish a 500-meter zone of shoreline, counting and recording the species and quantities of fish they catch. Other criteria, such as fish’s apparent health and weight, and habitat characteristics such as the aquatic vegetation present and shoreline shape, are recorded on data sheets for future analysis before the fish are released back into the lake. Thoma says he prefers to sample at night, when more fish are active in shallow water, adding that he can collect twice as many species and as many as ten times the number of individual fish as he can sampling during the day.

On this sunny September day, however, Thoma is more concerned with providing a general electrofishing overview to the Belizeans, who hope to be able to replicate some of his methods and equipment back in their home country. Victor Alegria, manager of PfB’s Hill Bank Field Station in northern Belize, explains that part of the country’s largest inland body of water falls within his organization’s jurisdiction, but that conservation staff lack water quality expertise and data to know how to appropriately protect it. Accurately determining species composition in the country’s deep-water habitats, for example, is nearly impossible using only nets to collect samples, so today’s field demonstration is especially valuable to his program.

During the Belizeans’ two-week stay in Ohio, they spent several days with OEPA staff to understand fish and macroinvertebrate (insect) community assessments and the concepts and elements of adequate watershed monitoring. With field staff from the Conservancy’s Ohio Chapter as guides, the team also visited The Ohio State University’s agricultural research facility, get a "behind the scenes" tour of the Columbus Zoo, learn how to construct a boardwalk over a wetland, visit a local company to be trained on analytical lab equipment, and visit a private nature preserve in the Hocking Hills.

Rich Shank, the Ohio Chapter’s Executive Director, first had the idea to bring the scientists to Ohio for aquatic training during a June work trip to Belize. Shank, a former director of the OEPA who holds graduate degrees in aquatic zoology and toxicology, knows first-hand of the agency’s biological monitoring capabilities and wanted to expose the Conservancy’s partners at PfB and TIDE to more exacting assessment methods. He explained, "We have a real opportunity here to further the Conservancy’s mission by sharing our expertise, deepening our relationships with our partners and giving these folks the tools they need to adequately assess and protect their native habitats."

Although aquatics have brought the Ohio Chapter and its Belizean partners together today, this international conservation alliance was originally forged by birds. The two places share more than 165 species of migratory birds that spend their summers in Ohio and their winters in Belize, including warblers, tanagers, wood thrushes and vireos. Conservationists from both areas realized that they needed to draw together to combine resources, knowledge and people to protect this extraordinary natural resource, and in the early 1990s, the Conservancy formally established an Ohio-Belize linkage to begin collaboration on migratory bird protection. Together, scientists in both countries developed shared conservation objectives, research projects and training exercises, and have expanded the scope of their efforts to include creation of sustainable economic development and eco-tourism initiatives.

As the Belizeans board Thoma’s boat—dressed in chest waders and rubber gloves to insulate themselves from any stray electric current—and navigate the flotsam of equipment strewn across the deck, they are full of questions about his fish-shocking methods. And an ebullient Thoma is only too happy to oblige them, with detailed descriptions of his jerry-built gear and anecdotes from his 28 years working on the lake. But finally, after a morning of explanations and careful preparations, it is time to get down to the business of collecting fish. With the push of a button, the big Honda motor purrs to life, and Thoma guides his boat—in all its handcrafted glory—away from the pier.