Finger Lakes TROUT In The Classroom
A Project of Discover Cayuga Lake, in partnership with the Leon Chandler Chapter of Trout Unlimited.
Monday, March 25, 2024
Macroinvertebrates as Indicators of a Healthy Stream
Monday, March 11, 2024
Cannibalism happening in tanks across the region
A bigger trout digesting a smaller trout in a tank at a Union Springs classroom in 2015 |
Trout, like many fish are cannibalistic and will likely eat smaller members of their own species. This is an example of natural selection, as some trout are better at adapting to their environment.
When visiting schools, I always ask students for an update about what's going on in their tank, especially since they are spending a lot more time interacting with their trout aquarium than I am. One of the first things I usually hear about is the possible cannibalism happening. I often ask students why they think this is happening. Then I'll ask them which kind of trout has a greater chance of surviving in the wild, the small trout or the bigger trout that is able to eat the smaller trout?
A trout that has moved beyond small, dried up fish food and is able to capture live, moving fish in their environment indicates smarter, faster, more agile behaviors. Wouldn't a fish displaying these behaviors have a better chance of fighting off future predators like bigger fish, otters and birds of prey?
An angler in Strawberry Reservoir in Utah found a partially digested fish in the mouth of a cutthroat trout. Brett Prettyman/Trout Unlimited |
Monday, March 4, 2024
March: A time to think about clean water and individual actions
Spring is just around the corner! Which has us thinking about the upcoming trout releases. And as we begin planning for the releases, one building block to the student's Trout in the Classroom experience is understanding the importance of caring for the trout's environment once they are swimming in local streams. Which is what this month's Watershed Pollution Prevention lesson is all about!
During Visit #4: Watershed Pollution Prevention, we will present on topics including water cycle and watershed so students can gain an understanding of how pollutants can enter into a watershed. Then we will look at different types of pollutants and how they can eventually be harmful to trout, the food web, and the natural ecosystem once they make their way into the water.
Students identify pollutant actions, with a particular focus on trash, pesticides, fertilizers and ways natural landscapes can increase or decrease run-off. Once they have a good grasp of harmful pollutants, how they make their way into a watershed, and the damage they can do to aquatic life, it's time for the class to conduct their own watershed pollution survey!
Groups of students use a pollution scavenger hunt worksheet to examine their school campus for signs of pollution hazards and pollution preventers. At the end of the hunt, students score their school and its process of eliminating or adding to watershed pollution. This has led to conversations about problems students noticed in their school, or awareness of positive school behaviors. It's great to see student's brain's working to come up with solutions, or goals to continue to prevent pollutants from entering waterways.
The pollution prevention lesson is happening during a convenient month for continued education on topics related to pollution prevention and watershed awareness. March 18th is Global Recycling Day, which brings awareness to recycling as a way of protecting natural resources. This year's theme is #RecyclingHeroes. Here are some great examples of rising youth stars who's bright ideas and initiatives have made a difference in local and global recycling efforts.
As we visit 20+ schools in the region teaching pollution prevention, we often hear insightful ideas students have about protecting local streams from pollution. Students participating in the Trout in the Classroom program have a great opportunity to be environmental advocates in their community, as they learn trout's habitats needs and understand the importance of clean natural waterways for their trout to continue to live and thrive!
March 22 is World Water Day, which is a great time to ponder inequalities to clean and accessible water worldwide. Here are three activities put together by UN Water for school kids of all ages to learn about water conservation and peace building. Explore these concepts with your class through engaging and fun activities like art and even football!
For a local way of engaging with conservation, students are invited to join Ithaca Fishing and Conservation Day is happening Saturday, March 23 at Boynton Middle School. The event is put on by Trout Unlimited and Discover Cayuga Lake will be there to do science activities with students.
Tuesday, February 6, 2024
What would your trout would be doing in the wild right now?
We've been observing our trout hunting and eating zooplankton in captivity, but what about all the baby trout in the wild? Will they have the upper fin in hunting and competing for food when we release our captive trout? Is a winter stream environment a nurturing habitat for baby trout? Let's find out!
- A wild trout parr will be smaller than a trout parr raised in captivity. This is because growing up in the wild is typically colder than growing up in a tank, the water can even be a temperature that would normally cause water to freeze if the stream is running fast enough! The colder the water a trout grows up in, the slower the trout will grow.
A wild trout parr starts hunting almost right away as soon as it can swim, and sometimes even before it can swim! While our captive trout learn to come up to the surface of the tank and beg for food, a wild trout looks for its food at the BOTTOM of a stream. This is called BENTHIC feeding and means that trout grow up mostly eating stonefly, mayfly, and caddisfly larvae that can be found hiding among the rocks of healthy streams.Stonefly larvae in June 2020. - A wild trout parr will hunt and eat zooplankton, just like we watched with our captive trout in our recent feeding experiments! Wild parrs don't typically eat Daphnia (the zooplankton we fed our trout), but they do eat a different species of zooplankton... known as copepods. In fact, a common copepod that trout like to eat is called a calanoid and might look like a Plankton you've seen before (hint: Spongebob).
Calanoid, a microscopic zooplankton.
Monday, January 22, 2024
Some Cool Facts About Daphnia!
Daphnia are a zooplankton, meaning that they are animals (zoo) that live at the water's surface, drifting with the currents (plankton). But daphnia are not just any zooplankton... they can live in incredible conditions!
Studies show that daphnia can live in slightly salty water like you would find where a stream meets an ocean (estuary) and that they manage small levels of salt just as well as completely freshwater! This is incredible. If a human were stranded on a boat in even mildly salty water, they would not be able to survive drinking it because the salt would just make them thirstier - but daphnia can.
A healthy daphnia (left) with a daphnia producing hemoglobin (right). |
And here is something even more incredible: if the water source is not changed for the daphnia and they start to use up all their oxygen, they create the same chemical that we have in our blood (hemoglobin) to bind oxygen - making their oxygen intake much more efficient (and turning them slightly reddish colored). That's crazy! Think if you were trapped in your classroom without an air supply and everyone breathing up all the oxygen, pretty soon you would feel super lightheaded, but daphnia have a mechanism to be able to survive days longer in an environment without a lot of oxygen.
If you think that is cool, just wait until you get to watch a trout chase a daphnia around a glass in our feeding experiments. We will have videos and more results of our live feedings coming by the end of next week, stay tuned!
You can check out more about daphnia through our worksheet and a slideshow shared by our teacher program on the teachers' tab of this blog.
-Originally posted January 29, 2021 by Marina Howarth
Tuesday, January 16, 2024
First Live Food Experiment!
Monday, January 8, 2024
Monday, December 11, 2023
How to know when your trout are ready to start feeding?
If you are uncertain whether it is time to begin feeding starter food to your trout, watch for these behaviors below to determine if its feeding time:
WHEN TO KNOW TO FEED? When trout have absorbed their yolk sac, they no longer have a source of nutrition and will start to need food. They also are developing their swim bladders, as you may notice the trout have been hanging out at the bottom of the net, not swimming. When their swim bladders are developed, they will become buoyant and will start swimming around. Once these two things have happened (yolk sac gone, swimming behaviors) then your trout will be ready to start feeding.
HOW TO TEST IF YOUR TROUT ARE READY TO FEED: Sprinkle a tiny pinch of starter food in the basket, if they are not reacting, they are not ready. If they get more active but do not eat, they are reacting to smell (getting close.) Can you observe them feeding? Great! When it seems like all or most are feeding successfully, you can keep them in the basket for a few more days or drop the basket from the side of the tank and let them swim out.
HOW MUCH DO I FEED THE TROUT? Feed a few pinches at a time, multiple times a day.
Monday, November 27, 2023
Overview of Trout in the Classroom Program 2023-24
Overview of Trout in the Classroom Program 2023-24
Fall 2023 TIC Teacher Workshop
October/November: Eggs arrive
November-April: Care for your trout, observe and experiment
Trout Stages:
Eggs
Alevin
Fry
Fingerling (when released)
Adults
April/May: Trout release field trip
The 5 presentations include:
- Visit
#1: November: Kick-Off Program (Browns)/ Brooks: Overview of trout life
cycle, understanding the parallel connection between hatchery egg
retrieval and natural spawning process happening outside right now.
- Main
Objective:
Help students feel confident in raising trout by answering questions
about life cycle, caring for trout and what to expect throughout the
year.
- Activity: Could view eggs up-close
under microscope/in petri dish at table if time allows.
- Further
Activity:
- From
Jen Wilke’s class at Caroline Elementary- Use scientific illustration to track the
trout’s growth across the year
- From
Lauren Hamilton’s class at Newfield Middle School- Trout Life Cycle Webquest using Wild Trout Trust website
- From
Lauren Hamilton’s class at Newfield Middle School- Elements of an Aquarium Ecosystem
- Visit
#2: December: Color & Adaptations: Trout are
equipped to survive in the wild through adaptation. Trout can change their
appearance in order to camouflage within their stream habitat. Learn the
different types of camouflage including: Concealing, Disruptive & Countershading.
- Main
Objective:
We can tell a lot about fish by observing their habitat, also we can
learn a lot about habitat by observing fish.
- Activity: Students imagine a place and
a stream and then illustrate a trout using elements of camouflage to blend
in with its habitat. Students share their trout illustrations with class.
The class can try to guess the features of the trout’s habitat based on
the camouflage features illustrated on the trout.
- Further Activity: Trout Survival Game
- Visit
#3: January: Live Food Experiment with Daphnia:
Students use the scientific method to answer the question, “Do you think
your trout will be able to catch and eat live food when they are released
into the stream?” Students will learn about the live food used in the
experiment, daphnia, by first learning about the aquatic food web and the
important role of zooplankton. Then students will test how many daphnia
their trout eat in a given amount of time. They will discuss results of
their experiment, revisit research questions and draw conclusions about whether
their trout will eat live food and survive in streams.
- Main
Objective:
Use the scientific method to draw conclusions about the trout’s ability
to survive when released into a wild stream.
- Activity: Live food experiment.
Students will be given a research question, “Will my trout eat live
food,” and go through the scientific method to conduct hypotheses, test
with an experiment, analyze results and draw conclusions. The experiment
includes feeding daphnia to the trout with a beaker on their desk. Groups
of students will record how many trout are eaten every minute for a 4 or
5-minute span of time.
- Further
Activity:
Students can plot data from their live food experiment, classes could add
all of their data together with a sum of all team results, and analyze/draw
conclusions about research questions from class data. This could also be
compared/shared with other classes/schools.
- Visit
#4: February: Pollution Prevention and Watershed Awareness:
Students identify watershed pollution problems by learning about the water
cycle and how pollutants can move through and impact aquatic plants,
animals and humans in a watershed.
- Main
Objective:
Understand how water moves through a watershed and learn how pollutants
can enter a watershed and harm aquatic life, the environment and humans.
- Activity: Students being school
pollutant detectives, by selecting a pollutant topic of interest and
conducting a survey around their school. Student groups will collect data
about potential pollutant problems in their school, research how the
pollutant can make its way into a watershed and how it can harm aquatic
life, the environment and humans. Students will begin seeing themselves
as a part of the solution as the group brainstorms ways they can educate
classmates through projects that serve to persuade, entertain or inform
their audience.
- Further Activity: Follow through with enacting a solution in their school, based on student group’s pollution solution project
- Visit
# 5: March/April: Stream Ecology: Students brainstorm
about indicators of a healthy stream and learn about insect life cycles
and the stream energy web before conducting a live macroinvertebrate
experiment. In the experiment, students will assess the health of a stream
using a stream sample brought into the class containing live
macroinvertebrate samples. Student groups will collect and identify
insects and then score the stream based on the diversity of
macroinvertebrates found.
- Main
Objective:
Learn about food webs and sensitive creatures. Use stream invertebrates
indicators to determine the health of a stream.
- Activity: Student groups will be given a container with a fresh stream sample. They will collect a diverse sample of macroinvertebrates in an ice cube tray and work together to identify the insects they collected. The class will come together with their data to score the stream's health based on biodiversity and identified insect’s sensitivity to pollution. This will prepare students to use insects as indicators to assess the health of the stream when they release their trout.
- May:
Trout Release Field Trip: Students will take a field trip to a nearby selected
stream to release their trout. They will first participate in activities
to assess the health of the stream before the release, including
collecting a macroinvertebrate sample, taking an intentional and
observational stream hike, and conducting a trash clean-up around the
stream. A journal or illustration activity could also take the place of a
trash clean-up if not applicable.
- Main
Objective:
Students will have made a connection with their trout and learned about
the conditions needed for the trout to survive in a stream. The hope is
students will walk away wanting to continue to care for their trout by
caring for the stream it now lives in and its surrounding environment and
watershed.
- Activity: Stream hike, macroinvertebrate sampling, trash clean-up, journal or illustration activity, group trout release.
Discussion Questions:
- How can we make these core presentations more relevant to your classes?
- How can we maximize the value of each presentation?
- Any questions or ideas about ways to further engage with these presentations? Any obstacles?
- Experienced TIC teachers- What do you wish you knew when you first started the TIC program?
Further Curriculum Dive:
- FLX Trout in the Classroom Blog
- Trout Unlimited Trout in the Classroom National Website: Lessons for STEM Learning, Visual and Language Arts, Field Days and Activities
- TIC Partner Resources
Tuesday, November 21, 2023
How Can Climate Change Effect Our Trout?
With the help of our pals at the US Fish & Wildlife Office in Cortland, NY (Big thanks Justin and Gian!), we delivered BROOK TROUT eggs to nine aquariums at Dryden High School, Dryden Elementary School, Northeast & Caroline Elementary Schools (Ithaca, NY), Lehman Alternative School and Elizabeth Ann Clune Montessori school on Thursday, November 16.
The eggs in your aquariums are (or were) less than 1/4 inch in diameter, but even so, it was easy to make out two black dots in each- the eyes of the tiny fish inside! These eggs were "eyed up", as the shells had already begun to thin and soften in preparation for hatching. The big question on everyone's mind was, "how long will that take?"Ryan shared this table, from the US Fish & Wildlife Service's Fish Hatchery Management Handbook (1982), that provides information for both brook trout and brown trout.
Of course, in the "real world" outside, stream temperatures are much colder, as winter approaches, and are likely to be closer to 35 degrees than 50 degrees. So brook trout eggs in a natural stream might not hatch for another 100 days under "typical" winter conditions. That could be mid-February, which is actually perfect timing.
Our trout are born with a built-in energy supply, called a "yolk sack", that can nourish them for quite some time. This is a perfect adaptation for being born in the middle of winter, when food is scarce. If all goes according to nature's plan, by the time the yolk sack is used up, spring will have arrived and food will be plentiful for our hungry young trout.