Here's a photo Bob Wible sent me on Wednesday of a two-headed embryo in the breeder basket at Charlotte Central. Exciting, huh? (By the way, most likely this embryo will hatch and live for a short time, perhaps even several weeks. I've never known such a genetic mutation to survive to adulthood, however.) Fabulous close-up video footage Danielle Levine, of Schoolhouse Learning Center, sent me this wonderful YouTube video. The images are terrific, but I particularly love the enthusiasm and excitement of Danielle's young students. What a great way to introduce kids to the wonders of nature! Danielle also sent several still images of parts of the alevin anatomy. Here they are. (If you come up with some cool photos and videos, send them along.) Red Fox School Here are some pictures Sarah Dube, at the Red Fox School, sent me. Ludlow journal entry Ludlow Elementary School 4th grade teacher Lisa Marks sent me this photo of one of her student's journal entries. It's great! Prepare for emergencies! As we anticipate what for much of Vermont could be a bigger winter storm than we've seen in a while, it might be a good to review steps that you can take to ensure the emergency doesn't have disastrous consequences for your fish. (Here's Friday's forecast weather map.) So what are the risks to your trout of a big winter storm? A power outage could be a big problem, especially if your appliances are plugged into a GFCI receptacle. (More on that later.) First, an important point: make sure your school maintenance staff know to notify you in the case of a school power outage. Give them your contact information and explain why it's critical that they let you know as soon as they become aware of an emergency. That might include even a very brief power interruption. (See GFCI section below.) If your school were to lose power, your filter, aerator, and, especially, your chiller would stop working. The biggest risk would be if your chiller were off for a long time, causing the temperature of your tank to rise excessively. Trout can handle temperatures into the mid-60s or even a bit higher (but not as high as 70 degrees). And the warmer the water gets, the less oxygen-carrying capacity it has. If your aerator is also not functioning, that's a double-whammy. So, (a) do everything you can to make sure you get notified if your school's power goes out and (b) take steps to address the problem. What does that mean? If the power is going to be out for an extended period of time, you or someone else will need to get to the school to:
GFCI receptacle Many schools are using what are called "ground-fault circuit interrupter" receptacles or outlets. They look like this. This type of receptacle is considered safer than the conventional receptacle, but it has one decided disadvantage: when, after you've had a power outage, the electricity comes back on, the GFCI has to be manually reset. None of your appliances will have power until the receptacle is reset. So, you could have a very brief power interruption late on a Friday afternoon; and if your appliances are plugged into a GFCI, your chiller, filter, and aerator could be off for the entire weekend unless someone goes in to reset the outlet. Here's a video that shows you how to reset a GFCI receptacle. Even if the power remains on, a big snowstorm might mean the cancelation of school for several days. That could be a problem too. In the early stages of the TIC cycle, you could have a mold outbreak, and if that were to go unaddressed for too long, you could lose all your eggs or alevin. Later in the season, an undetected water chemistry crisis could wipe out your fish. So, if at all possible, someone should be checking the tank every two or, at worst, three days. That doesn't have to be you, especially if you live far away. In that case, try to recruit either one of your school maintenance staff/custodians or a colleague who lives near the school. Whoever is going to be doing the checking needs access permission, that is, a key. They also need some training. See Appendix 12, page 54, of the current Manual for some suggestions on emergency preparedness. SUMMARY To be ready for a winter weather emergency:
In a future post, I'll address some of the other things that can go wrong with a TIC set-up. Good luck!
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They've started hatching! Bob Wible sent me this cute "first baby of the year" birth announcement: Please help me welcome our first hatched of the season. Delivered into the loving arms of the Bakersfield School on January 10 at 3:37pm. The newly hatched and family receives a year’s supply of food and a free ride to a local stream when he or she is of an appropriate age. Alevin and family are doing fine. Here's a photo Bob sent me. Can you spot the baby? If you had difficulty finding the alevin in the photo above, here's an enlargement of it. But also look down and to the right of the alevin. I think that might be the start of some mold, or it could be the old egg shell. In either case, try to get it out of there. Are "preemies" normal? It depends on what you mean by "normal." In any group of 100 eggs some will hatch early, some will hatch late, and many will hatch at about the time you'd expect them to. It's just like human gestation. On average, women tend to deliver 280 days, or 40 weeks, after conception, but few deliver exactly at that time. The vast majority, however, will deliver in the four weeks that bracket the due date (from two weeks before the due date to two weeks after the due date). But some babies come much earlier than their due date, and a few are more than two weeks late. Here's a chart of human gestation. Perhaps your students can produce a similar column chart of brook trout hatching dates. Look out for mold! A number of schools have reported finding mold on or near their eggs. Here's a photo Sarah Stebbins, of Cold Hollow Career Center, sent to a few of us. Often this is the result of decaying egg shells. Regardless of the cause, it's very important to remove discarded egg shells and anything that looks like mold. Use your turkey baster to do this. Magnified image of embryo Danielle Levine, of Schoolhouse Learning Center, sent me several images of one of their embryos that she took using their "Dino-lite" microscope. Pretty cool! Temperature and swim-up As we've said often, temperature is the principal determinant of how quickly your fish develop. We've also said that in the past we've lost most of our fish during the swim-up stage, presumably because teachers didn't notice that their fish were swimming up and, therefore, needed to be fed (a tiny bit of food). The challenges of noticing the swim-up stage can be greatly complicated by school vacations. So, if at all possible, you want to make sure that your fish don't swim up while you're away from your classroom. We do this by working with the spreadsheet provided on the Managing Swim-up and DI page of this Web site. Using the details that pertained to SWVTTU schools, namely, that when eggs were delivered on 1/8/19, their Cumulative DI was 45.025, I've provided below three scenarios of how you might manage swim-up by regulating temperature. (The details will be slightly different if you got your eggs on a different date. You can use the "NEW 2019 Temp and DI record and swim-up calculator" to perform your own calculations.) SCENARIO #1, Hot and Fast
SCENARIO #3, Vacation ends 3/4
IMPORTANT! In deciding how to manage temperature and the swim-up stage, it's critical that you plan to keep the fry in the breeder basket for 10 days to two weeks after they are all feeding. If you release the fry too early, some are not likely to feed effectively in the "big waters" of the 55-gallon tank. These fry, which get skinnier and skinnier and are called "pinheads," eventually die. An early snow day! Since it looks like quite a few Vermont schools are having a first snow day today and considering that some teachers may have a little extra time to spend on the Internet, I decided to publish the second blog post of the week. Yesterday, eight volunteers delivered 3,000 eggs to 25 Southwestern Vermont TU and five Connecticut River Valley TU schools. Here are some photos from our "egg marathon." (I'm pretty sure additional deliveries were taking place in other regions of the state.) Advice for new trout moms and dads Our little eggs--they are small, aren't they!--are at the most delicate stage of their existence, and they need TLC. Here's some advice for their care during this tender period of development:
Egg delivery in Ludlow Lisa Marks, 4th grade teacher at Ludlow Elementary School, sent these photos of when VTTIC volunteer Kathy Ehlers brought the eggs to LES. Some unplanned "sleepovers" At least two of our new TIC schools weren't quite ready to receive their eggs yesterday. Their tanks were still way to warm. So the volunteer deliverers improvised. They recruited two other area schools to offer to "babysit" their eggs for a few days. I've begun to speak of this as the first sleepover for these little babies. I hope they had a wonderful time! Data, data, data! Experienced TIC teachers probably get sick of me saying this, but it's important that you keep good data records, using two spreadsheets that I've linked to below. Why is this important? Well, for one, regularly using the "NEW 2019 Temp and DI record and swim-up calculator" spreadsheet will almost ensure that you don't miss the swim-up stage, the time frame when, as I said, most schools lose most of their fish. (Once all your fish are "swimming up," you can stop entering data into this file.) The other reason why it's important that teachers keep good records (and share them with our TIC support team near the end of the project) is that we are trying to learn and improve our program every year. There's surprisingly little scientific literature about what we're doing, that is, trying to raise sensitive brook trout in a classroom tank. So I think of our whole statewide TIC team of teachers as a "learning community." Together, by pooling our data and experiences, we can learn more about how to do TIC right every successive year. The spreadsheet you should enter data into now and up to the day you release your fish is this file: "Template for TIC data entry 2019." Many teachers set up a schedule whereby all students, working in small teams, will do water testing for a couple of weeks. But often these teachers also assign the job of recording the data (in the spreadsheet mentioned above) to a couple of the class's more responsible students. What's critical is that the students overseeing the whole water testing process and performing data entry make sure (a) that water testing gets done when it's supposed to and (b) that it's done and recorded accurately. National TIC/SIC Quilt Project! Annually for the past several years, Trout Unlimited's national coordinator of TIC/SIC--these days Tara Granke--has organized a Quilt Project. Many of our Vermont schools have participated and have reported that it was a fun and rewarding learning experience for teachers and students alike. Here are some photos of the wonderful and unique quilts produced by TIC students, mostly in Vermont schools. (As we learned at our TIC workshop this fall, last year Wallingford Elementary School decided to turn their collection of quilt squares into a beautiful book rather than a quilt.) The idea behind the Quilt Project is the following:
Consider signing up! Here are the details from Tara: Dear Educators, Coordinators, and Salmonid enthusiasts: It's that moment you've all been waiting for: it's time to sign up for the S/TIC Quilt Square Exchange Project. This year's theme is Stream Stewards!! Enhance STEAM learning by joining the 2019 Trout Quilt Project. Participating classes create 25 fabric art squares based on your classroom's learning in the S/TIC program. Finished squares and class letters are sent to classrooms across the country! It is a unique opportunity to share your experiences with other classrooms and you get the surprise of receiving quilt squares in the mail. The result—after sewn together—will be a beautiful, colorful quilt! Trout Unlimited staff contact is Tara Granke, [email protected]. To join or for more information visit: https://goo.gl/forms/ik8MKqaGIZBVDyGI3 Eggs and the government shutdown Addison County schools got their eggs yesterday. Bennington, Rutland, and Windham County schools (and perhaps others) should get their eggs tomorrow. That is, depending on the weather, which I think will be okay. Wednesday, however, doesn't look as good! This year for the first time, we're getting our eggs from the federal Eisenhower hatchery in Pittsford, Vermont. We had a scare when we learned that U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which oversees hatcheries, was included in the partial government shutdown. Some of you may have seen the Rutland Herald article that described how the shutdown has affected the hatchery and its operations. Fortunately, hatchery supervisor Henry Bouchard (below) and two of his staff will continue working part-time--but unpaid--to keep their 350,000 fish alive and healthy. So, in spite of the shutdown, I expect to pick up 3,000 brook trout eggs at 8:30 tomorrow morning. Thank you, Henry! What about water temperature? On Monday, the water at the hatchery was 41 degrees. Last week I recommended that you set your chiller to 43 degrees. That should be just fine for now, but more on this topic below. Your eggs will arrive in a covered container. We recommend (VTTIC Manual, Chapter 4, section D.) that you "float" the container, still securely covered, in your tank water for 20 to 30 minutes before pouring the eggs into your breeder basket. This will allow the water in the egg container to come up or down to the temperature of your tank's water. By the way, TAKE PICTURES when your eggs arrive and as you and your students work with them. How many eggs did you get? In virtually every case, schools should expect to get approximately 100 eggs. Hatchery staff typically use the Von Bayer method, which involves lining eggs up side-by-side in a foot-long V-trough. This approach, however, assumes that all the eggs are of exactly the same diameter. Undoubtedly they're not. So you might have gotten 100 eggs or 122 or 81. You won't know until you count them--or have your students do so. Some teachers challenge their students, perhaps by working in teams, to come up with an effective method for performing an accurate count. One method some teachers use is to photograph the eggs once they're spread out in a single layer on the bottom of the breeder basket. Then they either project the photo on the classroom's screen or print a few copies of the image and give them to the student teams. Let us know what your students decide to do. If you teach older students and if some of them are very technologically minded, you might share this article with them and challenge them to replicate the methodology in this article. Water temperature and trout development The rate at which your eggs will hatch and, in general, the rate at which your trout will develop is directly related to water temperature. In the early stages of development, we use Development Index (DI) to quantify and keep track of development. Here's a table that provides the DI constant that is added to Cumulative DI for every day that the water is at a certain temperature. In this table, which is also on page 81 of the Manual, you can see that, e.g., at a temperature of 43.5 F, you will be adding a DI value of 0.720 to whatever the Cumulative Development Index had been on the previous day. By contrast, if your tank temperature was 52.1 F, you'd be adding a DI constant of 1.411 to the cumulative DI.
N.B.: This table was developed for Atlantic salmon and isn't completely accurate for brook trout, which develop more quickly than do Atlantic salmon. So, where the chart suggests that 90% of your eggs will be hatched when the Cumulative DI hits 58%, they will almost certainly all be hatched before your Cumulative DI gets to that point. Similarly, our experience has taught us that brook trout will hatch well before Cumulative DI hits 100. DI, "swim-up," and school vacations So, why do we care about DI? Most schools lose most of their fish during the swim-up stage, either because the teachers didn't know what the swim-up stage looked like or because the swim-up stage occurred while the teacher was away from the classroom. For that reason, I've created several Web pages, available through this site, to help teachers understand, plan for, and schedule swim-up. You'll find access to them here. This is important stuff. Please take time to review these pages. Most teachers will want to have their alevin swim-up after the winter break. Those teachers can keep their tanks at 43 degrees F for a while. But those who want to use what we call the "Hot and Fast" approach to get their fish feeding before winter break will want to raise the tank temperature to 55 degrees F as quickly as they can while not raising it more than three degrees in any one day. Pre-cycling excitement! We learn more about the pre-cycling process almost every day. Last week I wrote about Steve Flint, of Mary Hogan School, whose nitrite hit 10.0. Levels of either ammonia or nitrite at or above 5.0 are highly toxic, including for the good bacteria contained in Nite-Out II. So Robb Cramer's advice to Steve was:
Rapidly dropping pH and cloudy water Charlie Cummings, of Fisher Elementary School, recently reported two developments: (1) his pH plummeted from 7.6 to 6.0 in a single day and (2) his water became extremely cloudy. Robb's responses were to do a 50% water change to raise the pH and that the cloudy water was a good sign. It likely indicates a "bacterial bloom" and should clear up in a couple of days. Here's a ThatPetPlace article on the subject. (Below is a short slideshow of Melinda Carpenter's students at Bellows Free Academy doing a water change. What kids doesn't love playing with water?) Your bacteria need to eat too! As our instructions say (pages 19 & 20 of the Manual), once your tank has cycled, you need to make sure that you "feed" the bacteria. That includes during the upcoming December-January break. Since most teachers are likely to find it difficult to get into school frequently to feed their bacteria, API makes a product to do that job for you. Here's a link to the Amazon page where you can buy this product, which is meant to feed your fish for up to 14 days. Three weeks to egg delivery! The Vermont Trout in the Classroom program plans to conduct egg deliveries during the week of January 7, 2019. These are coordinated in each region by the chapter liaison. If you haven't heard from your coordinator yet, feel free to reach out to that individual. You can find the list of Chapter Liaisons on the Contact Us Web page of this site. Here's what the egg delivery map looks like for the Southwestern Vermont Trout Unlimited chapter: I hope you're doing well. Please send your photos, videos, ideas, suggestions, and questions.
First I had to learn what a "phenomenon" was! On December 7, Mary Fiedler, 5th & 6th grade science teacher at Cambridge Elementary School, asked this question: I was wondering if anyone has any catchy phenomena to begin the TIC unit? Last year's teacher used "what caused the fish kill" and had a lovely few pics of dead fish, but I used that question for my watershed unit earlier this year. Does anyone have any suggestions? A few of you responded with good ideas for kicking off the TIC project, which we'll get to in a bit, but first, "What is a phenomenon in the NGSS context?" It wasn't all that easy for me, an outsider to the world of the NGSS, to answer that question, but here's a definition that I found: Phenomena are observable events in nature (or our lives) that connect to multiple NGSS disciplinary core ideas, such as Finnish Snow Trees or the behavior of bees. Throughout a unit, students work towards explaining the science concepts behind the phenomenon in their own words. I didn't find that very helpful but also came across this, which illuminated the topic better: Phenomena are commonly thought to be the "ewwwww, weird, oh man!!" kinds of traditional science demos which (while still really fun for teachers & students) are not always academically productive. Phenomena should drive units and keep students working to "figure out" rather than "learning about." I found the statements above at this Web site that has many examples and is searchable. The Web site also allows you to submit your own phenomena to the shared database. So, I'm hoping that some of you can provide examples of phenomena you use or plan to use with your TIC students. Pre-cycling! I'm getting lots of reports of schools that are either in or through the pre-cycling process. As I mentioned in my e-mail a few days ago, a fair number of teachers missed the message that, if BOTH your ammonia and nitrite hadn't hit 1.0 ppm or more, you needed to add more ammonium chloride. I also got an e-mail from Steve Flint, of Mary Hogan School, saying that his ammonia went up and down, as it should do during the nitrogen cycle, but that his nitrite was 10.0. Whoa! I relayed that to Robb Cramer, and he recommended a 50% water change. Steve was also wondering whether that very high measurement might be an artifact of the test strip water testing system he is using. Let's remember what's supposed to happen in the nitrogen cycle.
More ways to kick off TIC Last week, my wife and I visited our granddaughter's 3rd grade class to teach a Four Winds lesson on erosion. We began by asking the kids what they remembered of Tropical Storm Irene, which had a terribly destructive impact on most of Vermont in August 2011. Fortunately almost all of these eight and nine year olds had vivid memories of the floods and raging rivers that Irene brought to their neighborhoods. That turned out to be a great way to initiate a conversation about erosion. I suspect it might not be a bad way to start talking about trout habitat. Videos A quick Internet or YouTube search will turn up numerous dramatic videos illustrating Irene's destructive force. Here's one, shot in Taftsville, that includes oil and propane tanks racing down the Ottaquechee River. How's that going to affect the habitat? This longer video by Seven Days covers many areas of the state. (There is a bleep-able word at 1:02".) What happens to the trout when this is going on? For readers In addition to riveting videos like these, for older kids that are some great text-and-photos resources available about the impact of Irene. Here's a great story from Trout Unlimited's Trout magazine about the consequences of the flood and the conditions that made it worse. This is a Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department report on the impact of Irene on Vermont rivers and their inhabitants. As you can see, it's more technical and text-heavy but has good data and great charts. Let us know your ideas about how to introduce students to the TIC project! Giving Tuesday This past week, after the back-to-back shopping orgies of Black Friday (which now seems to start Wednesday evening!), Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday, we celebrated Giving Tuesday, a day when we're encouraged to be philanthropic. Here are four stories about individuals who were giving in ways that benefitted trout or the people who love them. First, an "origin story." In 1988, Maryellen Soarino, who grew up in my hometown, the bucolic Jersey City, NJ--just kidding!--was a 30-year-old 4th grade teacher in northern New Jersey. Her curriculum called for studying the state of New Jersey, and through that process, her students discovered that New Jersey had a state flower, a state bird, and lots of other state things, but no state fish. They decided to fix that problem; and, while there were many ups and downs in the campaign process, four years later, New Jersey had a state fish, the brook trout. Yeah, 4th graders! Yeah, Maryellen! But Maryellen didn't stop there. Not long after, in 1991, Maryellen introduced her students to what we now know as the Trout in the Classroom program. She called it Project HATCH at the time. What did they raise? Brook trout, of course! While TIC traces its roots to Canadian school salmon programs that started in the 1970s (which then spread southward into California in the 1980s), there were no trout in classrooms anywhere else in the country until Maryellen got her inspired idea. After she demonstrated how well it could work, TIC spread rapidly, first to NYC and then to what ultimately became 33 states across the country. It even made it to Vermont! Thank you, Maryellen! We wouldn't be here without your brilliant and generous work as a teacher. P.S.: She's still at it! Next, a story about environmental activists giving a river back to their region The Clyde River, in the Northeast Kingdom, used to have legendary runs of landlocked Atlantic salmon that came by the thousands out of the depths of Lake Memphremagog every fall and swam up the lake's tributaries, especially the Clyde, to spawn. The reputation of the fishery brought anglers by the trainload from as far away as New York, Boston, and Montreal. When the salmon were running, all Newport, Vermont's, hotels were sold out! That began to change, however, as more and more hydroelectric dams were built on the river, the "dagger in the heart" was the dam that went up in 1957. As a result, for many decades, salmon fishing was just a fond memory of local old-timers. Above is a glimpse of what downtown Newport looked like in the heyday of the salmon runs. But what about that picture of Ian Sweet that I included in last week's blog? Wasn't he holding a huge landlocked salmon? Well, things are a lot better now, and the salmon are back. This story, of another form of generosity, was told in the Summer 1995 issue of Trout Unlimited's Trout magazine. Here's the cover: What happened is that a May 1, 1994, spring "freshet" on the Clyde blew out a portion of an important dam on the river. In that same timeframe, the company that owned the dam was in the process of seeking to get it relicensed, something that has to be done every 50 year through a process, overseen by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, known as FERC. That's when environmental activism kicked in. Several groups, including the Northeast Kingdom chapter of Trout Unlimited (now defunct), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Vermont Natural Resources Council joined by impassioned local citizens organized to fight the dam's relicensing. Especially in an age of concern about climate change, hydroelectric power has many benefits, but in this case the economic benefits of the dam were modest, and the environmental and economic benefits of reestablishing this historic fishery were judged to be far greater. I've scanned the 23-year-old article by John Dillon and put it in a folder on our Google Docs site. Here's a link to that folder: Streamside "philanthropy" So, here's an interesting coda to my story about Ian Sweet's recent fishing accomplishments on the Clyde. Ironically, one of our TIC/SIC teachers may have had an important role in helping Ian tie into that fish. When Ian arrived at the Clyde that morning, he realized that he had left his flies at home. Fortunately, he ran into Chris Murphy, TIC teacher at North Country Union High School, who gave him several of his flies. Great going, Chris. I hope the fishing gods reward you for your generosity someday with an equally impressive salmon! TIC philanthropy And I would be remiss if, in this blog post in which I celebrate Giving Tuesday, I didn't also acknowledge the many individuals and groups that have supported TIC in Vermont. Over the past four years, numerous Vermont schools have gotten equipment and supplies, and financial contributions to our annual workshop, through donations and awards from the following foundations, organizations, and philanthropists:
Saving the brook trout Steve Flint, of Mary Hogan School, told me about a great WCAX story that I had missed. It aired on Tuesday, November 27, and was called "Saving the brook trout." It's about the habitat improvement work that's taking place on brook trout streams in the Northeast Kingdom. It also explains why it's necessary to do this sort of work. (What's your guess? Why would streams in a remote, heavily forested part of the state far from development and industry need improvement?) Here's a link to the video. This video is somewhat similar to a story that aired on the PBS Outdoor Journal program a couple of years ago. You can find that story and a dozen others on the Other Trout Videos page of this Web site. So you don't have to hunt for that page, here's a link. Finally, as they say in the closing moments of the cooking competition shows I like to watch, "Put it on the plate!" This blog hasn't really addressed the process of doing the TIC program. But we're at a critical point for that. By now, you should have received all your equipment and set it up. I hope that includes getting your bottle of Tim's ammonium chloride (see the 11/14/18 blog). Because we're just a few days away from December 3rd, when you'll want to start the pre-cycling process. This is described on pages 19 & 20 of the current VTTIC Manual. We believe pre-cycling will greatly reduce water chemistry problems. If you want to review how to do this, in addition to reading those two pages of the Manual, you can also watch Robb Cramer's presentation at the recent TIC workshop (below). Thanksgiving is behind us! The usual advice is to get Trout in the Classroom tanks set up by Thanksgiving. Did you make that target this year? If not, you've got just a few days to pull your tank together. Getting your tank set up before the end of November is more important this year than ever because we want you to pre-cycle your tank starting on Monday, December 3rd. If you're a first-time TIC teacher, remember to put foam under your tank before you fill it with water. Other tips on where to locate your tank include the following:
We have a video below in which Bob Wible demonstrates how to set up a tank, but there are also numerous videos on YouTube which show how to do that. I've put links to several videos created by Maryland science teacher Shawn Ackley on a page you can find on our VTTIC Web site. Here's a link to it. Workshop videos! For the first time, segments of this year's TIC workshop were recorded. Ian Sweet, an accomplished television broadcaster and member of the Mad Dog Chapter of Trout Unlimited, brought his digital video-recording equipment and microphones to our 11/10/18 workshop. As a result, we can now share with you five videos Ian produces based on that day's presentations. Ian's not only a great videographer, he's a great fisherman. Here's a massive landlocked Atlantic salmon he caught this fall on the Clyde River in northern Vermont. Notice that fish's hooked jaw? It's a spawning season male. The hooked jaw is called a kype. Ironically, one of our TIC/SIC teachers may have had an important role in helping Ian tie into that fish. When Ian arrived at the Clyde that morning, he realized that he had left his flies at home. Fortunately, he ran into Chris Murphy, of North Country Union High School, who gave him several of his flies. Great going, Chris. I hope the fishing gods reward you for your generosity someday with an equally impressive salmon! Here are the five videos Ian produced. 1. Joe Mark on the six months of TIC 2. Jeremy Whalen on spawning and the creation of triploid eggs 3. Joe Mark and Bob Wible on tank set-up 4. Robb Cramer on water chemistry and the pre-cycling process 5. Joe Mark on "March Madness" and managing the swim-up stage Thanks so much, Ian, for recording and editing these videos. If I had thought about the fact that you were making our performances immortal, I might have tried to be more eloquent. Nevertheless, I hope these recordings will benefit those who couldn't make the workshop as well as those who were able to attend but found the content coming a little too quickly to absorb it all. TIC's long summer snooze ends |
Joe Mark is Lead Facilitator of Vermont's Trout in the Classroom program.In June 2012, I retired after 40 years in higher education, having spent the last 32 years of my career as dean at Castleton. One of the first things I volunteered to do in retirement was to work with a parent-friend to help the Dorset School, where his kids and my Vermont grandkids attend, start a TIC program. Gradually that commitment grew into my current role, which is both demanding and highly rewarding. Archives
December 2019
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