eDNA survey, eleven sites, one Washington watershed — protocol, species list and raw sequence

Origin: Commissioned by They Buried
Dated: April–July 2026
Extent: 63 pages
Status: accepted
Redactions: None.

Chain of custody

Pre-registered before the first sample: sites, volumes, laboratory, and an undertaking to publish the entire species list whatever it contained. Sites were chosen with the help of four people who report sightings in that watershed. Raw sequence deposited in a public repository on the day of publication.

Held by: They Buried; sequence data public

Excerpt

VERTEBRATE DETECTIONS ......... 41 species
  UNASSIGNED READS .............. 1.4%
    on second pass, wider library:
      largest component ......... Microtus sp. (vole)
                                  — reference absent from initial library
      residue ................... degraded sequence, unresolvable

  UNKNOWN PRIMATE ............... none
  HUMAN ......................... 11 of 11 sites, including the sampling team

Transcribed by the data desk. Line breaks follow the original. Bracketed matter is ours.

Editor's note

The lab required that the meaning of 'unassigned' be printed before any result. Unassigned means absent from the reference library, not unknown to science, and it is misreported as the latter nearly every time.

Cited in

They Found Life Under Four Kilometres Of Ice. Then They Found The Tank.Deep History · Aug 23
Two Hundred And Eighteen Hairs. The Most-Cited One No Longer Exists.Cryptids · Aug 22
The Track Grew Four Shoe Sizes Between Dawn And Noon. We Filmed It.Cryptids · Aug 22
The Sequence Was Not Withdrawn. It Was Replaced, By Its Own Second Author.The Body · Aug 18
We Filtered Sixty Litres Of Creek. The Unknown Reads Were A Vole.Cryptids · Aug 10