Local students raise land locked salmon to be released into East Grand Lake

By Gloria Austin  
Staff Writer
    For about two months, students at Danforth, GHCA, Hodgdon Mill Pond and Houlton Elementary School will be taking care of a valuable commodity of East Grand Lake. They will be raising between 500 and 800 small salmon to be released in late May.
ON THE BOTTOM – A young man looks at the salmon eggs as they settle to the bottom of the tank.
    The school project began in 1994 and today, more schools are involved with the undertaking.
    “We have released more than 10,000 fry since the program’s inception,” said Donald “Bones” Ellis of the Chiputneticook Lakes International Conservancy or CLIC.
    Seven tanks have been placed within the local schools, two in Danforth; two in Hodgdon; two in Houlton and one at the Academy, said Ellis.
    On March 5, Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Biologist Dave Marsanskis, fish culture supervisor of Grand Lake Stream Hatchery visited the Hodgdon Mill Pond School to explain the process and answer any questions students might have about the project.
    In the sixth grade, few questions were asked, but the first-grade livewires all had a “fish tale” to tell Marsanskis.
    There are four lakes in Maine with land locked salmon, and East Grand Lake is one that anglers have success fishing thanks to the hatchery and the school project.
    Marsanskis’ work at the hatchery isn’t due to the salmon being endangered but to expand the salmon into areas that don’t normally have them.
    “We put the fish into places that can’t support a good population,” he explained. “Usually it is not a suitable spawning habitat, so we supply the fish and the fishing opportunities. We have four original strains of land locked salmon.” They are the West Grand or St. Croix strain, Sebago Lake, Green Lake by Ellsworth and Sebec Lake north of Bangor.
    “The Sebago Lake has a good healthy population, it is just not as big as the West Grand population,” said Marsanskis. “These are all unique strains that are genetically different.”
    In two small thermoses, Marsanskis transported the salmon eggs to the Mill Pond School.
    “There are 500 eggs,” said Marsanskis as he opened one of the containers. They will hatch out in a little while.” The thermos was handed around the room for a closer look.
    After everyone had a view, Marsanskis poured the eggs from the thermos into the water, watching as they gently floated downward settling at the bottom of the tank. The water is chilled to between 34 and 40 degrees and each week, the students will bring the water up a degree so the fish don’t hatch too quickly.
READY TO HATCH – Dave Marsanskis, fish culture supervisor of Grand Lake Stream, left, pours the salmon eggs into the tank and students will watch over the eggs until they hatch and release the salmon into East Grand Lake. Right, a close up of the two-eyed salmon egg phase.
    In the spring, female salmon are ready to reproduce and by November, the females are swelled with eggs. The biologist squeezes down her belly, pouring eggs into a pan, which are fertilized by the males’ milk that is also squeezed from his body. The fertilization process produces the green egg stage.
    “At this stage, the eggs are fragile and we don’t move them,” Marsanskis explained.
    Female salmon reproduce around two years of age with full maturation at three years.
    “After four years, the quality of egg isn’t as good,” explained Marsanskis. “The quality diminishes and it is not quite as viable as the fertilization rate drops.”
    Through its development, the fish begins to develop two black dots or eyes and then the yolk sack hatches out and they absorb the food turning into a thread-like body. As they mature, the salmon are miniature fish about an inch-and-a-half to two inches to be released.
    “The sacks are fat with food,” said first-grade teacher Brenda Griffin to the young students. “They are not able to swim around. They stay on the bottom.”
    The Grand Stream Lake Hatchery biologists get eggs from 400 4-year-old fish and 1,000 2-year-olds that they have in their tanks. Salmon grow to be around 1.5-to-3 pounds and typically die between the ages of 3 and 4. The hatchery has about 50,000 fish in production; 120,000 eggs will be used for next year’s production.
    The hatchery releases 80,000 salmon and the school 10,000 for a 1-in-8 percentile, proving the project is valuable and educational.