Recently, junior Gavin Gretzinger job shadowed with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources for a day.

He was able to have this opportunity because of a guest speaker who came to talk to Mr. Dory’s Personal and Professional Skills class.

“I had a few friends that thought of me when the WDNR representative came into PPS to talk to them, and one of them was kind enough to send me a picture of his email so that I could connect with him,” said Gretzinger.

This ended up in his being able to miss a day of school to job shadow the DNR.

“On the day I was there we went up to Sturgeon Bay to run musky nets to see if we could catch and tag any musky we caught,” said Gretzinger. “Unfortunately, we did not catch any musky, but we were able to count and record many other fish species including smallmouth bass, bowfin and a few walleye and northern pike.”

Describing the process of what they did, Gretzinger said, “First, we had to set up a few nets and then we ran the nets they had set out the previous day which included hauling part of the net onto the boat and scooping out the fish, a few at a time, with a smaller net, so we could record them and then put them back into the bay.”

He said that for the most part, he was there to scoop the fish out of the nets, but was also able to help with recording and counting the fish they caught.

After high school, Gretzinger wants to get a degree in Wildlife Biology so that he can become either a fisheries biologist or a wildlife biologist.