COLUMBIA FALLS – There are about 50,000 more salmon in the Pleasant River this week thanks to the annual stocking effort of the Downeast Salmon Federation.

The federation runs the Pleasant River Fish Hatchery which raises the salmon from fertilized eggs and then stocks the young salmon fry at identified habitat areas along the river. Last week federation staff and volunteers released this year’s batch at different points along the river.

“This is where it all comes together,” said Jacob van de Sande, the federation’s educator and hatchery manager.

On Saturday, the stocking group of about a dozen people included federation members, volunteers and children, who, according to van de Sande, represent the future of the salmon in Maine’s rivers. Involving children, and adults, in the operations of the hatchery is an important part of the federation’s mission to restore the salmon to the Pleasant River and other Down East rivers.

“Education is a priority,” he said. “People are important if we’re going to have fish in the river in the future. These guys are the ones that are going to make a difference.”

The programs at the hatchery and particularly the annual stocking project, he said, are a very tangible way to invest area residents, young and old alike, with a sense of ownership of the river and the salmon.

The federation was founded in 1991, and it set up a hatchery in the basement of a former hydro-electric building, near the power plant’s dam at the mouth of the Pleasant River. Early problems with the brood stock limited the amount of stocking the hatchery was able to do, but since 2001, the hatchery has steadily increased the number of young salmon put into the Pleasant River and its tributaries.

The private, nonprofit federation works with the federal hatcheries at Craig Brook in Orland and Green Lake in Ellsworth. The Craig Brook hatchery keeps a brood stock of salmon taken from the Pleasant River. Each year the hatchery spawns those salmon and fertilizes the eggs, some of which are sent to the Pleasant River hatchery to be raised.

Spawning generally takes place in November and the eggs hatch in April. The hatchery rears the hatchlings for about a month. The temperature of the water, which comes directly from the Pleasant River, determines exactly when the fish should be released.

The young salmon will live in the river for about two years and then migrate to the ocean where they travel to the southwestern coast of Greenland. They feed and grow in those waters for another two years and then return to their native waters.

The federation’s program has begun to show some results. This year, five salmon returned to spawn in the Eastern Little River, a tributary of the Pleasant River, where the federation had stocked about 8,000 salmon fry five years ago. That’s a better return rate than the overall state stocking program, van de Sande said, and though five fish hardly signal a recovery, it is a positive sign.

“Their return has made me very optimistic that this type of program has potential for restoration,” he said. “The only reason those fish are there is because we stocked them there. There were no salmon in that river.”

Although the hatchery has been focused solely on raising young salmon for restocking, this year it will begin research at the facility. The federation has joined with the University of Maine in Orono, the University of Maine at Machias, the U.S. Geological Survey and the Maine Department of Environmental Protection to research the impact of acid rain on the growth of salmon.

According to van de Sande, the river has a low pH, largely because of the effects of acid rain. The project will raise two groups of this year’s hatchlings, half of them in untreated water from the Pleasant River, the other half in water buffered with calcium carbonate or ground limestone.

The project will study whether raising the pH of the water will improve the growth of the salmon and whether it will help to prevent some disease.

The hatchery has been reconfigured to hold the new tanks, pumps and filters needed for the project, but that will not affect the annual rearing program. In fact, van de Sande said, with some modifications, the hatchery could double the amount of salmon fry it raises to about 100,000.

rhewitt@bangordailynews.net

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