Eggs begin Hatching!

During my visit with 3rd graders at Belle Sherman this morning, we witnessed the first of our brown trout eggs hatching. The newly hatched alevins will spend a good deal of time building strength before they are ready to swim out of their nursery basket, but they were pretty active already this morning. Newfield reports that they have eggs hatching today also- we anticipate that everyone's eggs will hatch within the next couple of days.

Send in your pictures & make your survival predictions (See Student Data page for charts of survival expectations from each school!)

TROUT EGGS ARE HERE!

On Thursday, October 21, we visited DEC's Bath Hatchery and collected roughly 1000 brown trout eggs, which were distributed to classes at nine schools over the course of the day. Students are awaiting hatch day at the following schools, so watch for reports from participating classes!

Belle Sherman Elementary
Cayuga Heights Elementary
Northeast Elementary
South Hill Elementary
Enfield Elementary
Caroline Elementary
Newfield Middle School
Groton Middle School
Boynton Middle School

Special thanks, also, to the folks at DEC, and to Michael Lenetsky, Owen Lenetsky, Josh Filter and Colleen Kearns for all their help!
- Bill Foster, Project Mgr.

Groton is ready!

Today we spent some time today getting the trout tank ready for tomorrow's egg delivery.  We are very excited!  Mercedes prepped the tank by testing water pH, ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate levels.  A special thanks to all of our sponsors and volunteers for making this happen.

NORTHEAST TROUT RELEASE!

ON May 28, fifth graders from Mrs. Mayer's class release their trout to Fall Creek at Monkey Run. Mysteriously, only two two browns survived to release day at Northeast, but "Big Bertha" and "Big Bart" were healthy and ready to go, and everyone had a fantastic time. Fall Creek, by the way, was rated as "Good Habitat", according to our Izaak Walton League assessment protocol. Enjoy some wonderful pictures, courtesy of Cayuga Lake Watershed Steward, Hilary Lambert! Thanks to Mike Kniffin and Gian Dodici of the US Fish & Wildlife Service, Cortland Office for helping out!

Click on this picture to for a set of beautiful photos, taken by our own Cayuga Lake Watershed Network Steward, Hilary Lambert!

Enfield Trout in the Classroom Wiki is UP!

If you would like to read about the THIRD GRADE Trout in the Classroom Project, enjoy some artwork and HEAR ABOUT IT IN THE STUDENTS OWN VOICES, please click the link below:

http://voicethread.com/#u348038

Our Wiki page is located here:

https://enfieldbrooks.wikispaces.com/

BELLE SHERMAN & SOUTH HILL TROUT RELEASE!

The 2009-2010 Trout in the Classroom program drew to a fine conclusion on Thursday (Jule 10) with the release of 26 healthy brown trout fry at Lower Buttermilk State Park. South Hill 4th Graders from Ms. Wilkie's, Ms. Lee's and Ms. Eckley's classes did a fantastic job, raising and learning about their trout during the year.

Along with their own trout, our South Hill students also agreed to release an additional eight brown trout, raised by 4th graders at Belle Sherman Elementary. Students in Mr. Millers class, along with helpers in Ms. Port's, Ms. Gainess and M.s Devers' classes also did an excellent job this year - and won the prize for most successful aquaponics experiment!

Special thanks goes out to Matt Herman at Belle Sherman; Regional Wildlife Biologist Tom Hughs and the Finger Lakes Regional State Parks naturalist crew; Michael Lenetsky and the restof the Trout Unlimit volunteers; and the parents to made this all possible. Check out this VIDEO FOOTAGE from BUTTERMILK FALLS, provided by parent Larry Clarkberg!

Caroline Release

Friday was our final day with our trout! What a journey it's been! We've studied them since they looked like this:

Now they are all 3-4 inches long and are ready to be released into the Cayuga Lake watershed. Luckily, 6-Mile Creek is right in our backyard! We put our trout in buckets,
and hiked out to the creek behind Caroline.

Bill did some exercises with us, like examining the plant growth, insects, temperature, and pH of the stream environment we were to be releasing our trout into.

Finally, it was time to release the 40-50 trout we had! (We used to have around 80-90 but had a horrible low pH problem last Monday which caused us to lose half the fish).

Goodbye fishies! Good luck in nature!

Hydroponics in our Aquarium

Miss Coffey here from Caroline Elementary School... We're currently on spring break, but that doesn't stop me from working or taking care of our trout!!! Yesterday I went into school for awhile to get some stuff done. As I fed the excited fish, I saw that our hydroponics experiment was working! The grass floating on the top of the tank is growing!
(Click the picture to see a closer view)

Over at Caroline Elementary...

Out trout are getting SO big!!! And they're always hungry! We did a little experiment yesterday with all of the worms resurfacing outside on that wet day and dangled some over our trout aquarium. We were laughing as they actually leapt out of the water to get them!

Join Us At Ithaca Fishing Day - Saturday March 20! (Click on image to enlarge!)