School for Fish from BRWC Fish Ladder Project

12/2009

A school for the fish from the Blackstone River Watershed Council's fish ladders for the Spring.

PAWTUCKET - The excitement is building in the science wing at Jenks Junior High School, where after weeks of watching and waiting, the tiny eggs have finally hatched.

As a first step in their new role as participants in Rhode Island's ecological rebirth, students led by Jenks science teacher Tammie McNaught are raising an aquarium full of fish, brook trout that will be released into the Blackstone River next spring. They're raising the fish now as a practice run for the monumental task of one day reintroducing shad, a fish that at one time fed the entire Blackstone River Valley, back into the Blackstone.

The steps students take to replenish the Blackstone today could provide a host of benefits for generations to come, say backers of a new Blackstone River.

Construction of the Blackstone River fishladder project, now in its planning stages, is expected to begin in earnest some time next spring. Construction of fish ladders at spots like Pawtucket's Slater Mill dam or the Main Street dam are intended to create a pathway for fish so they can climb and swim their way all the way back to the revitalized Valley Falls Marsh, where they can procreate freely.

McNaught said she came up with the idea to connect her students with something important after she read a Sept. 17 story in The Valley Breeze about the long-anticipated fish ladder project.

"I thought this would be a great opportunity to connect our urban students to their environment," she said.

Add the educational components and it was a no-brainer to get involved, said McNaught.

By some time next week, fish measuring just under one inch will be ready for solid food, said Jenks students. By next spring they'll be finger length and ready to live on their own in the "wild."

Fish must be kept in water just over 50 degrees Fahrenheit and fed a very specific diet, said students. Of the 75 eggs that they were entrusted with to keep in their hand-made tank, McNaught said the hope is for a 70 percent survival rate.

In partnership with representatives from the Department of Environmental Management Fish and Wildlife Division, students will help with the task of releasing the trout into the Blackstone next March.

Christine Dudley is a supervising fisheries biologist with the DEM who works closely with educational fish programs like the one at Jenks.

A new population of a fish that was once a major source of food along the Blackstone can help re-establish Rhode Island's fishing industry, according to state and local officials.

Frank Geary, who serves as fish ladder/fish passage coordinator and director of the Blackstone River Watershed Council/Friends of the Blackstone, said that what young students at Jenks and schools across Rhode Island are doing cannot be measured in terms of the educational, economic, and environmental benefits that those students could realize as adults.

A new fish population would also be a boon to the recreation and tourism industries, benefiting cities and towns all along the Blackstone River, said Geary, and will provide quite a spectacle as fish flip-flop their way up the new ladders. The two Pawtucket fish ladders will come with at least a $4 million price tag in local, state, and federal funds.

"We need to get these students ready so we can begin reintroducing shad to the Blackstone and repopulating the Narragansett Bay," he said. "What they're doing is extremely important."

The Blackstone River Fishladder Project, which is being administered by the Pawtucket Redevelopment Agency, will help restore the ecological balance that the Blackstone had before the dams of Industrial Rhode Island were built more than 200 years ago, according to Geary.

What might seem to some a small boost for fishermen should have far-reaching implications for all Rhode Islanders, say some of the many individuals and agencies involved in the fish ladder project.

The fish industry is a $180 million-a-year industry in Rhode Island, said Geary. When species like herring or shad, anadromous fish that normally swim in a salt water bay like Narragansett Bay but travel to fresh water to spawn more fish, have ability to get upstream, he said, the population should automatically explode. Currently, fishermen aren't even allowed by law to hunt for certain fish due to their scarcity, he said.

Shad, which at one time were used by Native Americans both to eat and as a sort of fertilizer for their crops, are a source of caviar to this day.

Anadromous fish like herring, trout and shad supply food to pickerel and bass as well as humans. An increase in the number and variety of fish will also attract new and different birds, said Watershed Council Vice President John Marsland, bringing a certain "ecological equilibrium" to the Blackstone River.

When the fish ladder project is complete, it is expected that fish will find a way up over the Main Street dam at the Pawtucket Hydro plant, over the Slater Mill fish passage, over the Elizabeth Webbing fish passage, and finally to the Valley Falls Marsh, where the laying of eggs can occur in a natural habitat.