You're listening to shortwave from NPR.

Emily, this is the sound of a bunch of biologists going fishing.

Fish on.

That sounds super fun.

Fishing like with hooks and poles?

Not quite.

One of the biologists, Gus Wathen, is walking through the water with two poles, yes, but

they're attached by wires to a device on his back.

It looks like a backpack at a ghost busters, and it runs an electrical current down the

poles into the water that stuns the fish.

Get them off!

Just temporarily.

That allows the other three biologists to scoop up the fish with nets and drop them in

a bucket, or at least in this case the salmon and the steelhead, the rest of them they

throw back.

As far as fishing goes, this kind of sounds like cheating, but I'm guessing these scientists

are gathering salmon and steelhead specifically for some purpose.

Where did you record this?

We're waiting up a small stream in eastern Oregon called Bridge Creek.

I was there filming for the nature show Oregon Field Guide, and this was last August during

one of the worst droughts the Pacific Northwest has ever seen.

Fields baked and streams dried up, or they float so hot that the fish died, but you wouldn't

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