Just a quick update on Troot in the Shed 2014 so far:
Stromness Primary: The alevins were successfuly released in the Mill Burn last week.
Sanday School: The alevins are very healthy and have suffered virtually no loss. The release date in Bea Loch is for 17/03.
Stronsay School: Same situation as on Sanday with a release in the Meikle Water planned for 12/03.
St. Andrews Primary: There isn’t much left of the alevins’ yolk-sacs and they should be swimming freely in the Burn of Quoykea by 13/03…
Papdale Halls of Residence: I’ve just received an update from Mr. Cuddihy and their alevins are doing very well but still have a substantial yolk sac, so the release into the Wideford Burn is probably still a couple of weeks away.
North Walls School: The alevins are healthy and well looked after – Thanks, Olivia, for letting us know!;-)
Dounby Primary: The release in the Burn of Hourston is scheduled for week starting 13/03.
All these dates, subject to the whims of the Orcadian weather of course…
I’ve just received a message from Mr Stout this morning saying that some ova have started hatching over the week-end! The Hoy team are still doing a great job and have kept mortality levels extremely low with only one more dead ovum.
Now that alevins are out and about, extra care will need to be taken: all pumps need to be fitted with a filter of some sort: a small bottle with pin holes no bigger than Ø 3mm or even a piece of nylon tights for pumps where a bottle cannot be fitted.
Looking forward to hearing more news about the Hoy alevins!
Thanks to Mr. Erskine who braved a force 8 gale yesterday morning during his crossing to the island of Hoy, the North Walls school was able to kick off the project.
About 200 eyed ova are now being looked after by Mr Stout’s pupils and should be hatching during the first week of February, if the temperatures hold.
No later than this morning, I received an email from North Walls, including a lovely report from Matilda along with some photos:
Troot in the shed
On Wednesday 22nd of January, Mr Erskine came to North Walls to tell us about troot in the shed.
First of all he split us into groups. Group A was the people that hadn’t done the project before and group B was the people who did it last year.
After that the 2 groups went to different tables to look at the displays. Group B went to the table about sea troot as they hadn’t done it before. Once we had looked at all of the display, group B did a quiz about troot while group B watched some videos.
It took Group B quite a while to finish the quiz so group A learnt how to remove dead eggs from the tank using a turkey baster.
When both the groups had finished their activities, group A went into the library to read about fishing. Once they were out, Mr Erskine showed the older ones some real troot!!! One of them was cut open so we could see what a troot’s guts do. Group A got curious so they came in. But by the time Mr Erskine opened the troot’s stomach most of them felt quite sick!!!
Mr Erskine then gutted the troot and Mr Stout said maybe we could eat one of them!!!!
We had lots of fun learning about the troot and we can’t wait to start the project!!!
Matilda
Dissection of a brown trout
Practising removing a dead ovum with a turkey baster
I’m delighted to publish this report which Cameron Stout, the Class 2 teacher at North Walls emailed me. It was written by his pupils for the April issue of The Blether, “the newsletter of the community of Hoy and Walls” and when reading it, we can tell how much enthusiasm and commitment went into the project:
Brown trout fry, ready to be released by Levi in the Ore Burn
Away back at the beginning of Term 3 (January), Class 2 got some trout eggs from Jim Erskine so that we could take part in the Troot in the Shed project. Everyone was very excited about it since some of us did a similar project a few years ago and we were really looking forward to taking part in it again.
First of all we had to prepare a tank in the shed – the shed is best because it is at a cooler temperature. If the eggs and baby fish (alevins and fry) get too warm it can kill them.
We put the eggs in the tank carefully. We had to watch in case the eggs went white. That meant they had died. We were fortunate though, because not many of them died. Out of our total of 300, only about 40 didn’t survive. We think it’s possibly because they had to make an extra journey across to North Walls on the boat.
We had to check on the eggs frequently, recording the air temperature and water temperature, and whether any had died. If they had, we had to remove them from the tank within 24 hours.
As they grew, we noticed that their yolk sacs started to shrink. The yolk sac contains the food that they use when they are first hatched. At this stage, they are approximately 1.5cm in length.
They were very small and their eyes looked gigantic. They wriggled in the corners of the tank – probably trying to hide among the stones.
There is a microscope in the science room so we used that to examine them closely. It was fascinating to see them so close up.
When they got older, their colour turned darker and we noticed that their yolk sacs had almost disappeared. At that stage they start being called fry and they come up to the surface to look for food.
Almost at the end of the project we took a walk to the Ore Burn to release them. Everyone had a shot of scooping out a net with between 5 and 20 in it, and transferring them to a bag of burn water that we had at the ready. The reason we do that is so that there is not too big a change of temperature, and so that they do not fall in from too high a height.
We took great care handling the troot as they were very small.
Now that they are in the burn, the survivors will probably stay under the brig until they’re a bit bigger and then they will head to the sea.
We learnt about life cycles and we can now compare the trout life cycle to the human life cycle and other parts of nature.
We would like to say thank you to Mr Erskine and the Orkney Trout Fishing Association for preparing the whole project and involving us in it. We hope to do it again.
Craig scooping the alevins before release in the Ore Burn
This is a little email I received from some of the North Walls pupils along with some photos they took:
Hello,
Recently our teacher took some alevins out of the tank to examine them under the microscope and take pictures of them. But before we took the shots we gave them clove oil to stop them swimming about whilst we were taking the pictures.
Sorry we haven’t written to you for a while because we’ve been a busy class. We’ll send Mr. Pietri more pictures. All the swimmers are fine. Thank you we will try to keep you updated.
Adele, Andrew and Mia
These are the beautiful photos I received yesterday from North Walls. Adele, Andrew, Ben, Cameron and Molly to name but a few, explained how they used the data from their mini-hatchery to produce graphs during maths classes and how they managed to take those great shots by using a microscope linked to a laptop. Details of alevins are very difficult to capture but the North Walls pupils, thanks to a very clever use of ICT have managed to produce these during a science class.
Apart from studying the alevins closely, they’ve also done a very good job at looking after their ova as they only lost about 10 since the project started.
Congratulations to them and their current teacher Ms Allen!
Thursday 17th January saw the first trout eggs delivered to North Walls Community School. Jim Erskine, who has trained generations of Orcadian trout anglers, gladly took on the challenge of transporting the fragile cargo from the Kirbister hatchery to the Hoy school and explained all the mysteries of the trout life cycle to a captive audience. The journey can be a perilous one as the ova can be very vulnerable at certain stages. Once at the school, Jim was welcomed by a very enthusiastic group of pupils and staff who had prepared themselves for the demanding task of hatching eggs into little alevins and then releasing them in the local burn. If all goes well, the next two months should see the eggs, first showing eyes and then hatching into translucent orange alevins which will be losing their yolk sacs after a few weeks, ready to be released by mid-March.
To tie in with the trout hatching project, the North Walls secondary pupils looked at how to cook fish in Home Economics with Mrs. Groat. They chose dishes and made Fish Pie and Kedgeree. They used salmon and haddock to make their dishes.
Just click on the following links for the recipes:
The North Walls pupils about to release their trout (24/03/11)
It is on Thursday 24th March that the “peedie troot” raised at the North Walls school had to be set free into the Ore Burn. The pupils from Class 1, Class 2 and S1 walked to the burn and got each a chance to release some of the 150 odd alevins. Andrew Learmonth from Radio Orkney joined the trip and a slot on the “Troot in the Shed” project will be on air on Monday 28th March at 7:30am. Thanks again to the headteacher and teachers who helped on the trip.
There was a slight delay in releasing our alevins, as we were advised by Scottish Natural Heritage to apply for a permission to Marine Scotland (Scottish Government) under the Aquaculture & Fisheries (Scotland) Act 2007. The application form for “Single Introductions” (accessible on http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/marine/Licensing/fishintros) was actually relatively straightforward to fill in; it asked for details regarding the purpose of the release, grid references of the origin of the brood stock, details about the water where the introduction is going to take place, species of fish, number, age, etc… It was dowloaded, filled in and emailed to Marine Scotland last night and we received the consents to stock unfed fry in Meikle Water and the Ore Burn by mail today before noon! A very speedy service! So, if all is well, the Stronsay fry should be released on Wednesday 23rd March and the North Walls fry on Thursday 24th.
In the meantime, we were getting worried about our alevins’ yolk-sacs which have been shrinking considerably over the last couple of weeks (especially the Stronsay ones, which hatched earlier). Fortunately, we checked them today and by the size of their yolk-sacs, it’s safe to say that our alevins have still a few days left in the tank! (excuse the pun…) The photograph above was taken today and will give you a good idea of the stage of development our “peedie troot” are at.
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