For Alexia Zambalas, Sunday mornings are spent wading into a small, cement-circled pond with a net to help volunteers and workers at Carpenter’s Brook Fish Hatchery catch trout.

Zambalas, a freshman environmental science major at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, is one of six ESF students who volunteer at the hatchery every weekend.

The hatchery is one of only four in the state, and volunteers like Zambalas are a major reason that it is still open today. But several years ago, the hatchery was in danger of closing.

‘With the budget cuts of the Onondaga Parks Department, there was a need for volunteers to help out and do some of the functions the staff were no longer able to do,’ said Stephen Wowelko, vice president of the organization Friends of Carpenter’s Brook Fish Hatchery.

The Friends group is an organization of community volunteers that helps the hatchery organize educational public demonstrations. Most of the volunteers in the group are interested in recreational fishing and recognize the hatchery’s importance to their pastime.

Bill Lansley, Onondaga County parks commissioner, said the hatchery is important to the community due to local active participation with fishing. Each year the hatchery produces nearly 80,000 trout for local waterways. Lansley said he thinks local rivers and streams may soon run out if it weren’t for the hatchery.

Although the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation would try to prevent waterways from running out of trout if the hatchery closed, Lansley said it would not release the large fish the hatchery does. Larger fish are much more beneficial for local fisherman and for sustaining healthy trout populations.

ESF students have been volunteering their time at the hatchery for the past three years as part of a program that allows them to receive extra-credit in a general chemistry class, said Kelley Donaghy, associate professor of the chemistry course.

‘An email circulated in the fall of 2009 that the hatchery needed volunteers to help stay afloat, and there would be opportunities to investigate water quality,’ Donaghy said in an email.

She jumped on the opportunity, seeing it as a hands-on project to teach her students about water chemistry and about the responsibilities of running a hatchery, she said.

‘They do everything from helping the eggs hatch to transporting the fish to rivers and streams in our stalking trucks,’ Lansley said.

The hatchery continuously had a healthy number of volunteers since the program began operating, Lansley said.

The students travel to the hatchery several times a week to feed trout, transport them to local waterways and clean the raceways, the 15-foot tubes of moving water where the fish are raised.

Galit Idan, a freshman bioprocess engineering major at ESF, was responsible for cleaning the raceways and putting food for the fish into an automatic feeder.

‘The first thing I did was go into the hatchery and feed the baby fish,’ Idan said. ‘There were so many. It was really interesting to see.’

The ESF student group, ‘The Trout Bums,’ has also provided valuable assistance at the hatchery, especially to the Friends of Carpenter’s Brook Fish Hatchery organization, Lansley said.

‘We could not be happier with our partnership with the ESF right now,’ Lansley said. ‘I am so impressed with their quality of work and their volunteerism. They have really taken on a tremendous amount of responsibility with great skill and enthusiasm.’

Both Idan and Zambalas said they would still volunteer at the hatchery even if they did not get extra credit for it.

‘I really like helping a local business,’ Zambalas said. ‘It’s a good opportunity for students like me who don’t really know what people do around here to meet nice people and discover the community.’

smhazlit@syr.edu 

Published on February 19, 2012 at 12:00 pm