From parr to smolts: Essex Aggie students raising endangered salmon

Yesterday morning, dozens of students studying environmental science formed a fire line and passed nets full of young and flapping endangered Atlantic salmon down a flight of steps.

From there, the salmon were transferred into four large blue tanks in the school's renovated fish barn.

The salmon had arrived on the back of a flatbed truck straight from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Nashua National Fish Hatchery, which supports Atlantic salmon restoration on the Merrimack and other rivers.

"We've never given salmon parr (a parr is a young salmon before it enters salt water) to any school before. So this is the first time, at least in my 10-year career, that we have ever done this," said Doug Smithwood, a fishery biologist with the Nashua hatchery.

The fish were scooped from a tank on the truck by Charris Spadafora, a junior from Amesbury.

The students were able to take in the salmon because of a $12,000 upgrade to the aquaculture system in the fish barn, a small, green building down a hill toward the back of Smith Hall. The upgrades included new tanks and a complex filter and water regulation system to keep the water clean, oxygenated and cool.

"I'm so excited. I love the salmon, they are so amazing," said Alicia Tarr, a junior from Beverly who helped pass the nets in the fire line. "It feels really good to be helping an endangered species as best we can."

For 10 years, students at Essex Aggie have raised salmon fry, fish that have just hatched, said Charles Saulnier, the environmental science department head.

The fish came to the school just a few months old and 4 to 6 inches in length in their parr stage of life.

In a year, they will be released as smolts, young salmon that are ready to leave fresh water and live in the ocean, at the base of the Essex Dam in Lawrence. The students hope the fish will head downstream in the Merrimack River, migrate out into the Atlantic and return to spawn.

"I am really excited about this," said Keith Anderson, a junior from Lawrence whose school bus passes by the dam every day. "I always wanted to be part of something, and this feels like something to be a part of."

What makes these salmon unique is they came from a run of 75 wild salmon caught last spring at the fish lift at the Essex Dam.

The problem in restoring salmon to the Merrimack River is seven dams preventing salmon from heading upriver to spawn. The salmon raised at Essex Aggie will be tagged and released just below the dam. If just one or two fish come back, "that's a huge success rate," Smithwood said.

Smithwood said another reason to give Essex Aggie the salmon was to excite students about careers in environmental sciences.

"There's a whole bunch of purposes in doing programs like this beyond the ecological ones," Smithwood said.

"They do all the water chemistry and all the data analysis," said Ann Witzig, who teaches marine biology. "They have to do quite a bit of data analysis. ... We do a lot of integration of math, chemistry and physics."

Students said they liked having a hand in helping re-establish the salmon while getting hands-on experience.

"Potentially, if one day this program, and other schools ... start doing this, we could get an endangered species off the list," said Natasha Kamon, a junior from the Bradford section of Haverhill. "Saving a species, yeah!"

Photos

Douglas Smithwood, a biologist with U.S. Fish and Wildlife, speaks with Essex Aggie student Alicia Tarr, 17, of Beverly. Students will raise 203 Atlantic salmon that will later be released into the Merrimack River. Staff photo