Dayna Wiley wasn’t raised with a fishing rod in her hand.
“Growing up in North Dakota, we didn’t have a lot of lakes around where we lived,” said Wiley, a Fargo South High School graduate and current senior at the College of Saint Benedict. “So there weren’t a lot of opportunities to do that (go fishing) nearby.”
Which meant Wiley was entering a new realm in the summer of 2024 when she embarked on a research project with CSB and SJU assistant biology professor Trevor Keyler.
Working in concert with Brooke Vetter, an assistant professor of biology at the University of St. Thomas, Keyler was preparing to examine the impact that noise from motorboat traffic has on the foraging patterns of bluegill sunfish.
To do that, he and Wiley spent last summer collecting bluegills from both Lake Sagatagan on the SJU campus (which does not allow motorboats) and nearby Upper Spunk Lake in Avon (which does).
They then transported the fish to a 500-gallon tank in the basement of the Peter Engel Science Center at SJU where, using sound equipment Vetter and Keyler purchased together, the pair simulated motorboat noise and separately observed its impact on the minnow consumption of both populations.
When the research concluded, they returned the fish to their respective lakes.
“We put a count of minnows in the tank and looked at how many the fish consumed with engine noise and without,” Keyler said. “The bluegills from Upper Spunk had heard engine noise before, so we needed to see how they behaved versus the ones from Sagatagan which hadn’t.”
Wiley – a double major in both biology and classical languages – rapidly came to enjoy the process.
“I’d never even touched a fishing rod before, much less handled live fish,” said Wiley, who works as a student naturalist at Outdoor U and is also a teaching assistant in the Ancient Mediterranean Studies department.
“So it was really cool to get in there and learn how to do that stuff for the first time.”
In the end, Keyler and Wiley’s research showed no statistically significant differences with or without noise in either group, suggesting the sound from boats does not measurably impact bluegill foraging behavior.
“We’re going to continue to study this summer to make sure that’s the case,” Keyler said. “We’ll amp up the number of trials so we have even more statistical power. But as of right now, it doesn’t seem like the noise impacts foraging.
“That’s important information for lake associations and other groups considering the impact allowing motorboats might have on different species. We’d have to look at other species to make the same statement for them. But when it comes to bluegills, it doesn’t seem like boat traffic has a measurable effect.”
The research was important enough that Wiley and Keyler were invited to present at the American Fisheries Society’s annual national meeting last fall in Honolulu, as well as at the Minnesota chapter of the organization’s annual meeting in St. Cloud this past February.
“I gained so much confidence from those experiences,” Wiley said. “I hadn’t presented to a large group of people like that before, but we got our poster set up and Trevor asked if I was ready to hold down the fort. I got our spiel down and figured out the best way to communicate it.
“Being able to take a research project we worked on to such a wide audience was amazing. I met so many different people and made so many contacts. It opened a whole new world to me.”
Wiley said the unique features of the CSB and SJU campuses provide a rich tapestry of opportunity for projects like the one she worked on.
“The access to lakes, and to nature in general through the (Saint John’s Abbey) Arboretum, is something unique here,” said Wiley, who had the chance to work on a second research project looking at marine plastic pollution in the Caribbean Sea during a study-abroad trip to The Bahamas.
“It’s so nice to be able to go out, catch fish in a lake, then carry the bucket back to the science building. You can’t get that many other places.”
In fact, Wiley enjoyed the experience so much she is planning on taking a fishing trip to celebrate her graduation later this month.
“I was gifted a fishing rod and a tackle box for Christmas,” she said. “So my partner and I are planning on going on a fishing trip up to Detroit Lakes.
“I’m excited for the chance to catch something other than bluegills for the first time.”
