Kate Abbott, a 29-year-old doctoral student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, is one of two women nationwide to receive the fourth annual Noreen Clough Memorial Scholarship — a $1,000 scholarship from bass fishing organization Bassmaster founded in memory of Clough, who was a trailblazer in the field of fisheries as the first female regional director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and passed away in 2015.
Abbott works with the Massachusetts Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit at UMass Amherst. One of the sites the research unit is studying is the Mill River in Taunton.
“I’m doing some water quality measurements,” she said. “Right now, I’m looking at the dissolved oxygen in the water, which is pretty biologically important for fish and other things that live in there. But this river is very interesting because it’s had three dam removals on it in the past few years from 2012 to 2018. It’s kind of a big restoration project for the state.”
Abbott, a native of Connecticut, applied for the scholarship by submitting an essay as well as her resume and references. The other winner of this year’s scholarship is Audrey Baetz of Northville, Michigan, who is studying at Nicholls State University.
Clough was an inspiration to Abbott, who decided to enter a career in fisheries after taking undergraduate classes in ecology and fisheries. After graduation, she decided to “get her feet wet” in the field by working for the state of Connecticut’s fisheries division.
“There was a really great female fisheries biologist on the staff and so I’ve had a few role models along the way, including Noreen Clough and some old bosses and supervisors,” she explained. “Typically I’ll go out in the field with a crew of mostly men and it’s just nice to see that balance even out over time. I think it’s definitely happening and I’ve seen it over my career.”
Although she never met Clough, who served as the Fish and Wildlife Service’s Southeast Region regional director, she heard about Clough through supervisors.
“It seemed like she did really great work,” Abbott said. “She was mostly focused in the southern division, so I wasn’t lucky enough to meet her.”
Abbott said the work she’s doing with the Massachusetts Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit at UMass Amherst involves studying how the removal of historic New England dams has changed ecosystems, particularly in terms of changes to water quality, fish communities and aquatic insects.
“The dams can serve to block fish passage, especially for migratory fish species along the coast, but also inland,” she said. “Fish like to find new habitats upstream and they can’t pass the dam in many cases. These small dams can also change the water quality by increasing the temperature of the water and just creating a big interruption in the flow of things — it’s trapping a lot of sediment and nutrients from passing through as it naturally would.”
Abbott said it’s likely that the ecosystems where dams were removed would see more stream fish as opposed to fish that live in ponds due to the change in water temperature. Besides Taunton, her research sites include waterways in Northampton as well.
Abbott, who said she’s honored to received the award, said the scholarship will be used to help pay for her doctoral program.
“I’m hoping to represent what Noreen Clough was working for and be able to serve as a mentor for other females in fisheries, and hopefully be able to meet the other awardee someday at a conference,” she said.
Chris Goudreau can be reached at cgoudreau@gazettenet.com.