News Release — Vermont Fish & Wildlife
October 15, 2014
Media Contact:
Adam Miller, Vermont Fish & Wildlife, 802-777-2852
Chet MacKenzie, Vermont Fish & Wildlife, 802-786-3864
GRAND ISLE, Vt. – A significant upgrade at the Ed Weed Fish Culture Station in Grand Isle is expected to pay dividends for the health of the salmon population in Lake Champlain.
VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Recently, hatchery staff, fisheries biologists and other officials from the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department teamed up to construct a fish trap on Hatchery Brook, the station’s discharge stream. The trap will improve the collection process for adult salmon during their spawning run into the brook.
After being collected, the adult salmon are used to reproduce and provide fertilized eggs for the state’s Ed Weed Fish Culture Station, where the eggs are hatched and young salmon are reared before being returned to Lake Champlain.
“Being able to collect fish in a safe, efficient and effective way for both staff and salmon is key to our overall fisheries management plan,” said Adam Miller, fish culture operations chief with Vermont Fish & Wildlife. “The improvements we’ve completed at the Ed Weed Fish Culture Station allow us to meet these objectives more effectively and ultimately produce healthy salmon for our Lake Champlain restoration efforts.”
Former methods used to collect salmon involved more handling and stress on fish, and were less efficient for hatchery staff and biologists.
“The new fish trap decreases the risk of injuries to adult salmon from handling and increases the health and condition of parent fish used to provide fertilized eggs to our hatchery system” said Chet MacKenzie, fisheries biologist with Vermont Fish & Wildlife. “It should also decrease the stress on eggs taken from parent fish, which may improve egg survival rates in the hatchery.”
The fish trap will also benefit the assessment of the department’s salmon restoration efforts by enabling biologists to more efficiently collect data such as lamprey wounding rates, fish size, abundance and age structure from large numbers of returning salmon.
Additionally, the fish trap will serve as an education tool where the public will be able to see fish when the trap is in operation, learn about salmon restoration efforts at the Ed Weed Fish Culture Station and in Lake Champlain, and gather information about fish culture and the impacts of non-native species, among other topics.
“We are always looking for ways to protect and improve the health and number of fish and other wildlife in the most efficient ways possible,” said Vermont Fish & Wildlife Commissioner, Louis Porter. “These improvements in how we trap fish so we can collect and fertilize salmon eggs were developed by hatchery staff and fisheries biologists, and their efforts to come together to put in place cost-effective solutions to improve our work will benefit the salmon population for years to come.”
The post Hatchery improvement expected to increase health of Lake Champlain salmon appeared first on VTDigger.