Most fish stories are about the
big one that got away. Others are about the little ones that are set free with
the hope that they come back as big ones.
That’s pretty much the
situation with shad, the Brandywine Conservancy’s desire to increase the shad
population in the Brandywine and the local school kids who are helping.
Students from three
Unionville-Chadds Ford School District elementary schools—Chadds Ford,
Hillendale and Pocopson—spent a week tending to fish hatcheries and then
releasing thousands of small fry into the Brandywine Creek or one of its
tributaries.
This was the second year Chadds
Ford and Pocopson third-graders took part in the project. The CFES students are
part of Sue Davis’s class.
The conservancy supplied the
eggs to the schools after Tim Lucas, a Conservancy staff member, harvested the
roe from the Potomac River on May 1. Students monitored their in-school
hatcheries, checking temperature, pH, nitrogen, ammonia and chlorine levels.
Students learned to differentiate between the viable and nonviable eggs. On May
6, the recently hatched eggs were released into local waterways. Chadds Ford
students released their fry into Ring Run.
The young fish will grow in
local water and imprint the location in their brains. In the fall they will
make their way down the Brandywine to the Christina River, the Delaware Bay and
then into the Atlantic Ocean. They will spend the winters off the coast of
North and South Carolina and migrate to the coast of Maine in the summer. After
four to six years in the ocean, the fish are expected to be mature enough to
begin a return route to spawn back in the Brandywine.
Shad used to be a staple along
the Brandywine and were an important food source for American Indians and early
settlers, but Lucas said pollution and dams decimated the population.
The dams made it impossible for
the shad to spawn and they are now being examined to determine their usefulness
and to see what options there are for fish passage.
Restoring migratory fish such
as shad would help other species—both birds and mammals—that depend on shad for
food.
In addition to the U-CF schools, Tower Hill School
Wilmington Friends School and St. Ann’s School released fish onto the
Brandywine Watershed, Upland Country Day6 School released into the red Clay
watershed and Avon Grove Charter School, Maclary Elementary School and Holy
Angels School released into the White Clay Creek.
About Rich Schwartzman
Rich Schwartzman has been reporting on events in the greater Chadds Ford area since September 2001 when he became the founding editor of The Chadds Ford Post. In April 2009 he became managing editor of ChaddsFordLive. He is also an award-winning photographer.
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