Students give small fry a start

[Spiel]

Students give small fry a start; Bid to restore vanished salmon

 

 

Fri, May 23, 2008

JASON BUCKLAND / SUN MEDIA

 

 

PICKERING -- Micailah McIntosh waded in Duffins Creek yesterday with thousands of tiny salmon zipping around her legs. Something was fishy.

 

The 11-year-old student at Oshawa's Coronation Public School had just released a huge watering can full of Atlantic salmon into the water. Her classmates all around were doing the same thing.

 

Micailah was lending her help to a city-wide effort to restore the population of the fish to Lake Ontario by releasing 27,000 salmon fry into its waterways.

 

"It's a great experience to help," said the tiny blonde. "You feel miserable 'cause it's chilly and you're all wet, but it also feels pretty good because you're helping the fish out."

 

Yesterday's fry release was part of a project to bring a self-sustaining Atlantic salmon population back to Lake Ontario within 10 to 15 years.

 

In the third of a five-year program, about 500,000 baby salmon -- some only 1.5 cm long -- will be let go into local creeks and streams by the program's end in 2009.

 

"These waters used to be just teeming with (the fish)," said Deborah Martin-Downs, Toronto and Region Conservation's director of ecology.

 

Atlantic salmon were wiped out before 1900 by farming, development on their spawning streams and overfishing.

 

Pacific salmon were introduced to Lake Ontario in 1968 and have become the basis for a popular sports fishery.

 

Environmental groups have their work cut out for them in restoring the Atlantic salmon population.

 

Only 5% of the fry released make it back upstream to spawn.

 

Still, Marion Daniels, management biologist for the ministry of natural resources, says restoring a piece of our heritage is too important to pass up.

 

"It's like bringing back a little piece of history."

 

If assessments made this fall show the restoration program is a success, it could be expanded beyond 2009.

 

Which goes to show, an environmentalist's work is never finished.