Laurie Hunt: Tomb Raider?

When Laurie Hunt heard about hundreds of dead fish floating in the Sturgeon River this month, she didn't just smell dead fish — she smelled opportunity.

"As soon as I saw the fish," says the St. Albert biologist, "I went, wow, this is more fish than we caught all summer sampling."

Sensing a chance to learn more about the river, she and her fellow researchers at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT) scooped up the bag-loads of fish and brought them back to their lab.

Now, Hunt has a northern pike on a measuring board and is eviscerating it with a well-worn knife.

"The stomach looks pretty empty, actually," she says, as she digs into its guts. "Sometimes we'll find parasites [or] worms in here."

Hunt, 45, is the associate program chair of biological sciences technology at NAIT and not one to get squeamish around nature. A mother of two young boys, she's spent a lifetime immersed in the world of wildlife biology — a world that's pitted her against spitting cobras, enraged eagles and Brobdingnagian boulders.

"I've had a fun childhood," she says, smiling. "Whenever I tell my kids, 'Be careful,' they say, 'Mom, you never were!'"

Indiana Jane?

Growing up near Edson, Hunt was the daughter of a fisheries biologist dad and a naturalist mom. Her dad would often take her on field trips to sample fish with gill nets, while her mother would help her rehabilitate wild animals.

"We spent one summer and raised three Canada geese," she recalls.

The outdoors became a place where Hunt says she felt safe and connected. Not surprisingly, she went on to take zoology and biology at the University of Alberta.

Hunt definitely has a bit of an adventurous streak in her, says her brother, Bill. "She's someone who definitely knows her own mind and is fairly motivated," and who is never afraid to take on new challenges.

That adventurous streak got her in a bit of trouble when they were in their late teens hiking through Kananaskis, Bill recalls. They were hiking down an avalanche-prone gully when he stepped on a rock the size of a fridge.

"I felt the whole thing shift," so he warned Hunt not to step on it.

"A minute later I look back and she's riding this thing down the shale path," he says. After several seconds, Hunt fell ahead of the boulder, which then rolled over her. Somehow, she escaped with nothing but an injured ankle. "It didn't really phase her that much. It scared the heck out of me."

Hunt keeps that same nonchalant attitude when asked about the other Indiana-Jones-esque moments in her life. There was the time when she and her husband, Dan (whom she met at the U of A), were walking through a national park in Borneo, for example, when a huge spitting cobra suddenly reared up beside her.

"It was as tall as I am," she says, and about a metre away. Then, with a thump, it hit the ground and slithered away.

Then there was her research project on prairie falcons — a project that involved rappelling off cliffs along the Bow River to inspect nests. The parents don't usually attack you while this happens, she says, but she did get dive-bombed by a golden eagle this one time. "She raked her talons across my helmet and kind of bonked me across the cliff."

Her post-graduate work saw her teaching courses in exotic places like Eagle Beach, Alaska — a brown beach with tall trees from which eagles would soar to catch fish at 4 a.m.

"We had grey whales migrating through, [and] orcas and sea lions floating by our camp on a regular basis," she said. "It was amazing."

Sturgeon scientist

Getting a taste for teaching, Hunt says she joined NAIT to teach foresters about the impacts of logging.

"I've always really enjoyed getting students out into natural environments," she says, so she always tried to give them hands-on, in-field experience.

Her work brought her to St. Albert about seven years ago.

"We love St. Albert," she says of her family, particularly its trails and its river lots. She was particularly impressed by the Sturgeon, she says, which, being high at the time, looked like a great place to go paddling.

That changed a few months later when the river became its usual shallow, algae-ridden self.

"I heard a lot of older people in the community talking about what a beautiful river it used to be," she says, and she knew many prairie rivers were having the same struggles as the Sturgeon.

In 2010, she and researcher Debbie Webb kicked off what is now a 10-year study of the Sturgeon River watershed. The study, which involves NAIT students, aims to get hard data on the life and waters of the Sturgeon.

City residents are very passionate about the Sturgeon, says city environmental manager Leah Jackson, but they can't protect it unless they have the kind of information that Hunt and NAIT are collecting. "St. Albert's lucky to have Laurie here in the community."

Hunt says she plans to keep working on the Sturgeon for years to come. "I want to make sure my kids have rivers to paddle and places to take their kids fishing when they grow up."