(ABC 6 News) – A small crew of workers spent the day making their way along Dobbins Creek, collecting all kinds of fish using a method called “electrofishing.”

It’s a method that allows the workers to catch and collect fish of many kinds, without causing them permanent harm.

“The electrofishing gear just lightly stuns the fish so they don’t swim and then we can see them,” said Brenda DeZiel, the leader of the crew. “Then we can kind of scoop and net them and put them into a bucket.”

DeZiel was hired on by the Cedar River Watershed District as a consultant for a 16 year project taking place along Dobbins Creek near the Jay C. Hormel Nature Center.

The project is designed to track the diversity and populations of fish throughout the creek, in turn providing an idea about the health of the habitat.

“We want to see a diversity of good species,” DeZiel said, “especially sensitive species. And We want to see all the smallest to the largest in many age classes.”

According to DeZiel, Dobbins Creek is a sensitive ecosystem.

It’s faced significant changes over the last few years thanks to erratic weather patterns and land use upstream.

Much of the creek has been deemed an impaired body of water by the EPA.

But with this survey, the crew will be able to see how the environment might be coming back to normal.

“For the Dobbins Creek project, we are going to do what’s called effectiveness monitoring,” DeZiel said. “So we want to keep track of ongoing changes to hopefully see improvements over time.”