This Year’s Trout Crop Swims in Water Instead of Butter Sauce

By Lisa Vernon-Sparks; Journal Staff Writer

Coventry High School science students have released about 50 rainbows they raised from fingerlings. In previous years, the project ultimately provided fare for an end-of-year banquet.

* * *

COVENTRY – Rachael Hazlett hoisted a net filled with healthy, squirming rainbow trout from a truck-mounted tank, walked briskly onto a pier, extended the net over the railing, tilted it and watched the fish plop into their new home, Carbuncle Pond.

Hazlett, a 2007 Coventry High School graduate, over the past seven months helped to raise the trout from fingerlings in her science class. She recalled trying to cater to their every need, making sure the trout were fed, safe and their water temperature comfortable, as if they were her babies. And like any good mother, she found it tough to set them free.

“It was upsetting, once in while, when we would lose a fish. As they grew, we only have so much space to work with. Over the extended weekends sometimes we’d come back and see a couple of fish belly-up,” Hazlett said. “I feel kind of relieved. I guess knowing that they are in a more natural habitat makes me feel better.”

Since November, she and about 60 other members of Peter Stetson’s environmental science class participated in a program to raise trout for eventual stocking. They obtained fingerlings from the state Department of Environmental Management’s Aquatic Resource Education Program.

The students started out with 80 fingerlings, but only 50 survived. This month, Stetson, Hazlett and DEM biologists Christopher Allen and Kenneth Fernstron drove to Carbuncle Pond to release them. Stetson said this is the fifth year his class has raised trout from fingerlings, but the first year the fish have been released.

“Other years we have eaten them. The culinary program at the career and tech school would cook them and we’d have a banquet at the end of the year,” Stetson said.

Many of his students have never eaten something they grew or raised, he said. “A few of the students have had vegetable gardens, but most of them go to Stop n’ Shop or go to Jerry’s and buy their food there. The opportunity to do this is unique.”

The juniors and seniors in his class took turns tending the fingerlings, initially 5 inches long, in jumbo-size tanks. They checked the water quality, provided food and monitored the water temperature, which must not exceed 55 degrees Fahrenheit.

“They could get a job doing this,” Stetson said. “Raising trout as food commodity is all over the country.”

Allen, the DEM biologist, said his department’s aquatic-resource program, to foster appreciation of the environment, reaches at least 15 to 20 schools around the state. But he said he knew of only two high schools – Coventry and Woonsocket – where trout are raised to full size. “Trout is an indicator species and it tells the students how healthy the water systems they are putting them into are,” Allen said. “It’s important to teach another generation about the environment to provide stewardship. It’s an additional avenue to know we have are having an effect on future generations.”

Hazlett plans to study environmental science at the Community College of Rhode Island and, later, at the University of Rhode Island; she says she wants to become a wolf biologist.

She works at a local water-garden store, Koi Villa.

“I now work with koi fish. I’m able to check the water quality and it’s really fun,” Hazlett said. “I think being able to do that with the fish gave me that foot in the door, so I could be more of an asset.”

lsparks@projo.com / (401) 277-7156

* * *

The Providence Journal / Kathy Borchers

Rachael Hazlett, left, and her mother, Kathy, release a frog at Carbuncle Pond after the trout were released. Below, a few of the fish that were brought to their new home.

Rachael Hazlett, who has just graduated from Coventry High, is shown earlier this month scooping student-raised trout from a tank. At left is science teacher Peter Stetson, who has supervised similar projects for several years.

(c) 2007 Providence Journal. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.