Scientists in northern New York are launching a complicated experiment this week, hoping to find out if salmon can be “reprogrammed” to consider Lake Champlain home. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation positioned aquatic cages and then stocked them with Atlantic salmon at the Plattsburgh Boat Basin this week. As WAMC’s North Country Bureau Chief Pat Bradley reports, it’s a complex job to try to reestablish the fish in the lake.
In the parking area of the Boat Basin there are a number of openwork frames sporting mesh walls waiting to be sunk next to docks. Each 6-by-6-by-20 foot frame is hand carried by six to eight people as close to the shore as possible where floats are then attached to the top. Then the real challenge begins. The pens are too large to fit through a gate leading to the docks so they must be carried down the bank to the lake. The first choice closest to the docks is jagged and rocky.
After this first try it’s decided to try a second location where there are fewer rocks and it’s less steep, but it’s uncertain if the water is deep enough to tow the frame through the water to the docks.
The group discovers that if they carry the pen into the water upside down they can float it to the boat, which then tows it into positon at the dock. On Thursday two trucks outfitted with tanks carrying 24-thousand young salmon, or smolt, back up to the end of the parking lot closest to the docks and awaiting pens.
DEC personnel and Trout Unlimited volunteers then begin a “bucket brigade” to get the smolt to their new pens. DEC Region 5 Fisheries Lake Champlain Biologist Nicole Balk tells the volunteers what to do.
“So we’ve got some five gallon buckets over here," Balk explained. "We’re going to bring them over. We’re going to have people…we’re going to unload one truck at a time and when you get your bucket we’ll tell you one, two or three. That’s your net number that you’re going to go to.”
The attempt to imprint these waters on the fish using the pen-rearing technique is an experiment at this location. Lake Champlain Basin Program New York Citizens Advisory Committee Chair Vic Putman says this is part of the fisheries management plan to reintroduce landlocked Atlantic salmon to the lake.
“They were extirpated in the early 1800’s and this is just another phase to improve the fisheries within Lake Champlain," said Putman.
Trout Unlimited member Don Lee echoes the importance of reestablishing the native Atlantic salmon species to the area.
“The salmon was a native fish to Lake Champlain," Lee said. "So we’re trying to put back in the river balance of nature what was here. They were extirpated a long time ago, probably about 150 years ago, with the advent of dams. They built a lot of these little dams. And a lot of these little dams prevented the salmon from getting upstream to their natural habitat.”
In a few weeks the penned salmon smolt will be released into Lake Champlain. At the same time the DEC will release an equal number of non-imprinted salmon at the same location. Nicole Balk says they are testing their hatchery and stocking methods.
“We have to wait a little while, two years about, for the fish to grow in the lake and then when they return we’ll catch them anglers will catch them and we’ll ask people to submit samples, either a fin clip or some scales just for some genetic tissue because these fish have been genetically quote marked at the hatchery," Balk explained. "If the net pens do better maybe we’ll change our stocking practice. If the hatchery fish do better maybe the net pens aren’t the way to go. But we wanted to try something and see if it could help.”
The Department of Environmental Conservation says pen-rearing has been successful in Lake Ontario and Lake Erie with Chinook salmon and steelhead for more than 20 years.
Mountain Lake PBS shared some underwater video of the salmon smolt as the pens were stocked:
