What are the responsibilities and job description for the Summer Fish Scale Reference Library Internship - UC Davis position at Cramer Fish Sciences?
Partnering with UC Davis, Cramer Fish Sciences (CFS) is excited to announce an internship opportunity for the summer 2025 quarter at our West Sacramento office! Work with our team to make a meaningful impact on restoring aquatic ecosystems. This internship will focus on mounting and imaging fish scales, building a reference library of images for known-age fish, and collating these images to train a computer vision program.
OPPORTUNITY DETAILS :
- Eligibility Requirements : T o be considered, applicants must be current undergraduate students in the Department of Wildlife, Fish, and Conservation Biology at UC Davis and in good standing.
- Location : West Sacramento, CA
- Hours / Duration : The internship is anticipated to be 15-20 hours per week for 8-12 weeks, beginning in late May to early June 2025.
- Deadline : Application deadline is April 1, 2025 .
HOW TO APPLY : Please submit your application, cover letter and resume on o ur website :
Successful applicants will be encouraged to apply for a Lloyd W. Swift award to support their internship.
BACKGROUND :
The bony parts of fish, including scales, have been used to answer questions about individual fish life histories since the 17th century. We still use them today as a non-invasive tool to determine fish age, maturity / spawning status, and migration strategies. This data allows researchers to better understand how populations are utilizing habitats in each life stage, allowing them to make meaningful management decisions.
CFS collects and analyzes scale samples from Salmonids throughout California and the Pacific Northwest. We have amassed enough scale images to form our own reference library of known-age fish for training and tracking purposes. Additionally, we are beginning to build a computer vision program that will age fish in an automated way and require organization of training images.
STATEMENT OF PROBLEM :
Scale ageing is notoriously difficult and subject to bias, so it is important to have a robust training set of known-age fish. Ideally, researchers will have a library of known-age fish from the system they are working in to train on, as each system's population can have subtle differences in life history patterns that appear on the scales. After years of collecting Salmonid scales, we have amassed a catalog of known-age fish we can include in our training materials. Now we just need a motivated individual to find and organize them. Additionally, we need to organize and annotate images to train a computer vison program to semi-automate scale aging to reduce processing time.
PROJECT GOALS :
To build a reference library of known-age Chinook and O. mykiss; to collate images of known-age fish to train computer vision program.
POTENTIAL TASKS AND RESPONSIBILITIES :
ABOUT CRAMER FISH SCIENCES : Cramer Fish Sciences is a fisheries research consulting firm serving the Pacific States and Idaho. We are a growing, employee-owned company whose mission is to rigorously apply the scientific method to afford our clients innovative, scientifically robust solutions to address a variety of fisheries and environmental challenges. Our team achieves this through effective and unbiased data collection, insightful analysis and interpretation, and clear communications and publication of results in scientific journals.
Salary : $17
