It’s all that’s happened in between that is truly remarkable.
During her high school years, Martin was an outstanding member of the Destination ImagiNation (DI) team. She now credits much of her vision for her future from her experiences in DI.
Martin said, “Destination ImagiNation taught me to think about things with a new perspective.”
Now, as she continues to study aquatic life, she says, “My focus is on a new angle that maybe can get different results to help more of society.”
Martin said, “During my experience on the Wabash River, I saw the biggest Blue Catfish that I had ever seen.”
She also referred to the experience as “nasty, dirty, bad smelling” and her first “crash course,” even though it gave her experience.
Other research experiences include: Survey of Indiana Aquatic Gastro-pods, an internship with Dr. Mark Pyron studying the Wabash River Fish Com-munities Project, Fish and Invertebrate Assemblages in Streams of Agricultural Watersheds in East-Central Ind-iana, and an internship with Dr. Melody Bernot, studying preferential uptake of inorganic nitrogen at multiple trophic levels, and the influence of urban hardscapes on water quality.
Various duties while working on the experiments included electrofishing, fish identification, algae sampling, chemical analyses, and D-net macroinvertebrate collections, among others.
Electrofishing is fishing that employs a direct electric current to attract and usually temporarily immobilize fish for easy capture.
Erika’s parents, Brent and Eileen Martin, are not sure what all of the experiments entailed, but they are both very proud of their daughter. Brent said she caught her first fish when she was four years old and talked about being a marine biologist starting in first grade.
At this point, she has accepted a graduate research and teaching position with the Kansas State University Department of Biology. She will also be pursuing her doctorate in fish ecology with long-term aquatic research at the Konza Prairie Nature Conservancy and other aquatic assemblage research.
“So many people do really, really care about what we (aquatic biologists) do, even though they really don’t understand what we do,” she said.
This is another article in a continuous series of occasional articles based on our small-town Marshall County youth making big careers.
If you want to nominate someone for this series, contact Managing Editor Maggie Nixon at 800-933-0356 or email: mnixon@ thepilotnews. com .
