New England Salmon Hatcheries and Salmon Fisheries in the Late 19th Century — John Shaqi
New England Salmon Hatcheries and Salmon Fisheries in the Late 19th CenturyVarious
History
New England Salmon Hatcheries and Salmon Fisheries in the Late 19th Century
Various
Fish hatcheries -- New England; Fisheries -- New England; Salmon -- New England
The volume of water fed to each trough has varied from time to time,
but is ordinarily about 5 gallons per minute, which renews the water
every four minutes. The ordinary arrangement is to use the water but
once in the troughs, letting it waste into some small ponds in which
yearling and older fish are kept; but there is one system of 52 troughs
arranged in four series, which use in succession the same water. From
these we have learned that young salmon thrive quite as well in the
fourth series as in the first. Indeed, by an actual test, with fish of
like origin and character in each series, the fish reared in the fourth
series were found to grow faster, to an important degree, than those in
the first. This phenomenon probably resulted from a somewhat higher
temperature which the water acquired in passing through the several
series. A like observation has been made on a few salmon maintained for
a few weeks, in the warmer water of a neighboring brook.
As already stated, the activity of the station has been mainly occupied
with Atlantic salmon, but there have been reared each year a few
landlocked salmon and brook trout, and occasional lots of other
salmonoids, such as Loch Leven, Von Behr, Swiss-lake, rainbow, and
Scotch sea trout. All these have received the same treatment. With the
exception of the rainbow trout, they are all autumn-spawning fishes,
and their eggs hatch early in the spring.
The embryos of salmon begin to burst the shell in the month of March,
and the 1st of April may be stated as the mean date of hatching. If the
open-air troughs are in order--and we aim to have them so--the eggs are
counted out into lots of 2,000 or 4,000 each and placed before hatching
in their summer quarters. The water is at that time very cold, the
development of the alevins is slow, and it is not until the latter part
of May that the yolk sack is fully absorbed. June 1 is, therefore, the
date when feeding is ordinarily begun. The growth of the fish is at
first slow, the water being still cool, but is accelerated as the
summer passes away. In October and November, beginning commonly about
the middle of October, most of the fish are counted out and liberated,
but a small number, rarely more than 15,000, being carried through the
winter at the station. The reserved fish are sometimes left until
midwinter in their summer quarters, and with a careful covering of the
conduits and banking of the troughs themselves each with coarse hay and
evergreen boughs it is possible to keep them there the year round; but
for ordinary winter storage there is provided a system of sunken tanks
covered by a rough shed with a constant water supply. These tanks are
molasses hogsheads, securely hooped with iron, sunk nearly their entire
depth into the ground, each with an independent water supply and waste,
the perforation for the latter being near the surface. They have a
capacity of from 100 gallons of water upward, and will carry safely
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