Revamped fish hatchery doubles capacity

[Spiel]

Revamped fish hatchery doubles capacity

 

 

 

Saturday, October 25, 2008

Alana Toulin / The Chronical Journal

 

 

Consider it a luxury condo for young fish.

 

With $17 million invested into it, the newly reopened Dorion Fish Culture Station has everything a gilled creature needs to thrive as it grows.

 

The recently completed three-year expansion project features upgrades including an enclosed building to protect the fish against predators and the elements, a specialized isolation facility, a waste treatment program for the water discharged from the hatchery and even an energy-efficient geothermal heating system.

 

“This is really a state-of-the-art facility for fish culture,” said station manager Sohail Siddiqui.

“It‘s the most modernized fish culture station (in Ontario) right now.” The goal is to produce enough fish to help stock area lakes and restore some of the declining fisheries. With the revamp, production capacity at the Dorion station has doubled.

 

Right now they‘re working mainly with lake trout, but there will be opportunities to produce other species native to the Great Lakes, said Natural Resources Minister Donna Cansfield. “We‘re able to produce about 1.4 million fish and then about 700,000 eggs,” she said. “We‘ll be able to use that to transport to Northwestern Ontario, but also to southern, eastern, and western Ontario because of the size of the station.”

 

The Dorion Fish Culture Station can also be used as a space for research. “If one of our scientists decides they would like to do particular research on a particular fish, then this is where they would come to do it. They have been doing this in other hatcheries so it could happen here as well,” she said. And when work is done to help restock Great Lakes with fish, the effects are felt beyond biodiversity and the environment, Cansfield said. “It gives us an opportunity as well to help with tourism in the north, which is critical. We can stock the lake and it encourages people to come and enjoy Northwestern Ontario,” she said, adding that it‘s important for people to be able to enjoy recreational fishing and fishing for food.

[Wild]

Great news Spiel! Does anyone have more info on the town of Dorion?

[fishindevil]

Wow great fishery news for a change glad to see that some of the money is going to good use,and it would be even better if there was one built in each of the 4 corners of the province !!!

Edited October 29, 2008 by fishindevil

[tjsa]

Great news Spiel! Does anyone have more info on the town of Dorion?

 

Dorion is 45 min. NE of Thunder Bay, closer to Nipigon than TBay. The fish culture station is about 15 min. up a road just west of the Wolf River on a small spring fed creek called Spring Creek, which flows into the Coldwater River, also a kilometer west of the Wolf River. There is another station operated by the MNR on the Wolf River itself, but I do not know what they do there. The Dorion Fish Culture Station has been in operation since the 1930's. It has brood stock from the Nipigon Strain of brook trout, which is used to supply Thunder Bay and Nipigon districts with a "put and take" fishery for them in summer and winter in local lakes, along with trying to re-establish existing populations of native fisheries.

 

They have also reared lake trout for re-introduction for some lakes.

 

http://www.mnr.gov.on.ca/en/About/2ColumnSubPage/257251.html

 

for more info on Dorion, just Google Dorion Fish Culture Station.

[Wild]

Thanks Tjsa I hope to pass by that way in the future and would like to check out the station.