Profs and Pints Northern Virginia presents: “A Guide to the Potomac’s Spring Life,” with T. Reid Nelson, assistant professor of fisheries ecology at George Mason University and resident faculty fellow at the Potomac Environmental Research and Education Center. 

Spring brings new life to the Potomac River, where conditions become ripe for the birth of many aquatic organisms and the arrival of migratory fish. Yet for many of us who look out over the river every day what happens beneath its surface remains a mystery. 

Profs and Pints brings you a chance to learn in depth about the rich life in the Potomac with Dr. T. Reid Nelson, who has extensively researched the lives, growth, and migration of local fish species and the environments that they live in.

He’ll delve into why fish species migrate into the Potomac and head upstream to spawn as well as how they’re drawn there by seasonal events such as longer days, warmer temperatures, and associated growth in populations of phytoplankton and zooplankton. You’ll learn why the Potomac and its freshwater, estuarine environment provide ideal springtime conditions for larval hatching and rearing, and how various factors can create poor conditions and lead to population declines for valuable species such as rockfish, or striped bass. 

Dr. Nelson will introduce you to the migratory fishes that can be found in the Potomac this time of year, including various types of river herring, shad, and sturgeon as well as striped bass and white perch. He will talk about what drives these fishes’ amazing migrations and the costs and benefits of making them, and he’ll also fill you in on the fishes’ life histories and current population trends. 

He’ll also highlight some of the nonmigratory fishes that spawn in the river in the spring in response to its abundance of new aquatic life. Finally, he’s discuss the current, long-term, and future research is occurring at the Potomac Environmental Research and Education Center to ensure the persistence of these valuable aquatic resources. 

To get to know Potomac River life any better you’d need to get very, very wet. (Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Doors: $17, or $15 with student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk begins 30 minutes later.)

Image An H.L. Todd drawing of a hickory shad collected from the Potomac in 1880. (U.S. National Museum / Wikimedia Commons.)