There’s a group of people gathered in a Bessey Hall classroom a little before 9 a.m. on a Saturday, and they’re strangely excited despite not being able to sleep in.

They are the members of the Skunk River Navy, a group of both new and returning volunteers who spend numerous Saturdays each year cleaning and monitoring the health of the Skunk River as it flows through Story County.

I, along with many others present, have never gone on a navy cleanup mission before, so we listened intently as James Colbert, associate professor of ecology, evolution and organismal biology and founder of the navy, began to speak.

He had the group of approximately 40 new and returning volunteers introduce themselves; among the group were several biology learning team mentors and navy veterans in blue and red “SRN” baseball caps.

The same hats in bright orange denoted “Admirals” Colbert, James Holtz, academic adviser in ecology, evolution and organismal biology and Justin Rice, graduate student in ecology, evolution and organismal biology.

Colbert explained the itinerary for the day, which included water testing and organism collection as well as trash pickup. We used a number of canoes for trash collecting. We didn’t ride in them, but filled them with garbage and pulled them like miniature versions of trash barges.

Colbert also told the story of how he was first inspired to invent the Skunk River Navy in 1998, after coming across an old bathtub in the river one day; during the navy’s subsequent cleanup missions the group has removed tons of trash each year, including other unexpected and unexplained objects such as bicycles, refrigerators, and even a – thankfully empty – Port-o-Potty.

It takes a special type of person to actually want to touch, let alone haul, some of that stuff.

We were all herded into three vans and made our way to the entry point just off Duff Avenue. The nearly two-mile stretch of river we cleaned that day is a section of Squaw Creek that merges into the Skunk River, and our drop-off point was near U.S. Highway 30 , just east of town.

Once we got to the river, our first order of business was to divide ourselves into small groups; each group performed a simple chemical field test on a sample of creek water. Phosphate levels looked fairly normal, as did those of nitrates, temperature and dissolved oxygen. Clarity was fine, and pH was a little high, but explainable by limestone deposits upstream. On the whole, conditions of the water looked good for stream life; I was surprised given the stream’s location in the middle of Ames.

Our next task involved collecting bugs and other small creatures in the area. Shrieks were punctuated with laughter as we finally stepped into the water for the first time, the cold water seeping into our socks and shoes. I felt my feet sinking into the sand, and it took me a bit to get used to my sluggish movement in the water.

We scanned the water and turned over sticks and rocks looking for small invertebrates, depositing them into ice cube trays filled with stream water; one group also managed to snag a slightly bewildered leopard frog.

The organisms were also good indications that the water is in fairly good shape. Colbert told us that several of the flies we found are very sensitive to certain environmental conditions and could not survive if certain water quality problems were present. After we documented and examined our captures, they were released back into the stream. The frog looked especially relieved.

After 10 a.m., it was time to move on to trash collecting. Following our “flagship” canoe full of tools and a makeshift yellow banner emblazoned with “SRN,” we pulled the fleet of canoes out onto the water and started scanning for trash.

Most of the trash was what one would expect: discarded beverage containers filled with mud, food wrappers, plastic sacks wrapped around twigs and innumerable golf balls. Other stuff seemed a bit more random: four or five shoes (of which we never found a matching pair), a chipped pitcher from a child’s tea set and a length of loose videotape lying in a knotted heap. We cracked morbid jokes about the possibly shady circumstances under which the objects were cast into the river.

Other large objects required a fair bit of teamwork. Volunteers quickly swarmed an iron girder and a large wooden cable spool and precariously balanced them on canoes. The canoes started filling up, and we broke for lunch along the bank around noon.

After quickly refueling on sub sandwiches and bottled water – and temporarily emptying our shoes of sand – we continued down the river. A buried picnic table, a crate trapped under a tree, tires sunk into the mud and a metal door stuck in the sand gave us the most trouble as we resorted to shovels, a chain saw and chain to pull the stubborn objects from the water.

We reached the drop-off point around 3 p.m. By then, the canoes were overflowing with refuse and our shoes were overflowing with sand yet again. Most of us were at least partially soaked from stumbling into deep parts of the river, and the combination of walking through thigh-deep water, wet clothes and the mud caked onto my shoes made me feel like I weighed as much as the garbage we’d collected.

We formed a human chain up the side of the bank, as trash bag after trash bag was quickly passed upward. We looked decidedly like a colony of ants as several hands worked simultaneously to send the large debris up to the trash bin. The same method got the canoes out of the water and onto the trailer in a flash.

As we stood around wet, muddy and tired, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of triumph. The huge mound of trash was a testament to the good we’d done for the river that day; I know I won’t be littering anytime soon.