Volunteers helping Nipissing walleye

[kickingfrog]

Link to article also has a few photos:

 

http://www.nugget.ca/2014/05/02/volunteers-work-to-improve-fishery

 

 

About a dozen volunteers are working at various stations on the dock at the end of Wasi Falls Road on Callander Bay.

A few are collecting eggs and sperm from the walleye floating lazily in large plastic tubs. Some are mixing the eggs and sperm.

One of the volunteers, Gary Preston, has been working on this project for a good three decades. At the other end is Clarke McMillan, an 11-year-old MT Davidson student who started helping out last year.

“My uncle asked if I wanted to come down and see the hatchery,” McMillan says. “This year, he said if I wanted to come down I could go out in the boat and help count the fish.”

On Friday, absent from school, he was helping move the walleye from the plastic bins into a small “cage” hanging off the side of the dock.

“It’s fun,” McMillan says. “I just like to help out. It’s really interesting.”

His uncle, Rob Hyatt, has been working on the project to stock the lake for a number of years. He’s proud of the fact that the restocking project, which introduces about 1.6 million fry and fingerlings into the lake every year, is doing so well, considering it gets no provincial funding.

“We do it all by ourselves,” Hyatt says. “That and donations from some wonderful people.”

The project has a licence to collect two million walleye eggs each year. Once collected, they are taken to a small fish hatchery Hyatt runs where the eggs develop long enough so they can be introduced into the lake.

The project, run by the Lake Nipissing Stakeholders’ Association, has been going for about 30 years, Hyatt says, and he’s convinced it benefits the lake.

“Different people think different things” about how effective it is, he says.

He points out that the females deposit their eggs in the rapids and “hope the male fertilizes them.”

The association, he said, fertilizes the eggs in a controlled manner, letting the eggs develop in the hatchery.

“We don’t have much mortality in the hatchery,” he says.

Preston, who used to work for the Ministry of Natural Resources, estimates the mortality in the fish hatchery is about 20%, while in the wild it is closer to 95%.

The two million eggs collected, he said, is a small number compared to other lakes, particularly in the United States, where hundreds of millions of eggs can be collected.

But even these relatively modest numbers, he said, are a help.

“Every fish that survives is one more fish in the lake,” he said.

[musky666]

god read and good work by them, I got to believe every little bit helps. I know there are some big issues facing that waterbody, issues that wont likely be resolved anytime soon, but good to see folks still trying. I am learning more about the North Bay area all the time, could be a final destination for me in a few years when I retire. Hopefully I will be able to contribute my time as well.