Here at Arkansas Tech it is all to common to have a major problem while working on a sampling project. A few weeks ago an outboard got clogged with sand and it had to go to the shop.

Today we went to do some sampling on a lake south of Fort Smith which is 90 miles from campus. The first problem was when we were backing the boat down the ramp and realized the key to the ignition was missing. Somehow the key got stolen this past friday. This was not so bad because a dealership was about 5 miles away so the professor left to pick up a key while the rest of the group did some shoreline surveys.

The next problem occured when we went to hook up the elctrofishing unit. The generator and the shockbox did not have the same connections so it wouldn't work. The professor then had to drive back and meet another student to pick up the other generator.

Two and half hours later we get the generator hooked up to the shockbox. We then realized that the lights on the boat won't work because there is not an AC outlet on generator. It takes 20 minutes to wire up the lights to the generator.

We then head out to do some elctrofishing. We start the generator and start adjusting the shock box. All of a sudden there is a pop sound in the shock box and smoke starts to pour out.

So for 9 hours of our work time we only got 3 shoreline seines.