Montana takes stewardship of their fishery resources damned seriously, a reality for which many an angler is, at some point in their angling journey, deeply appreciative.
While the state ended blanket stocking of trout species in rivers, streams and cricks decades ago, a fairly robust stocking program continues for reservoirs, lakes and ponds around the state. Back on the 12th, the outside runs of the Giant Springs Fish Hatchery were potentially contaminated by whirling disease infected water; the Helena Independent Record broke the story yesterday here.
From the article –
Nearly 500,000 trout will be destroyed in a Great Falls-area fish hatchery after a Missouri River dam temporarily lost electricity, causing water to rise and possibly contaminate the facility.
Around 4 a.m. on May 12, the generating unit at Rainbow Dam tripped offline. The temporary loss of power at the dam interrupted NorthWestern Energy’s ability to control and monitor the reservoir’s water elevation. During a period of about 35 minutes, water levels in the reservoir rose about 18 inches.
Staff arriving the next morning at Giant Springs Fish Hatchery, located upstream and adjacent to the dam, discovered the water reached about an inch above boards separating the facility’s outside raceway from the river. The inside raceways and tanks at the hatchery were not “infected” by river water.
The breech means spring-sourced hatchery water may have mixed with untreated river water, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks said in a news release, bringing with it unknown pathogens. FWP uses spring water at all hatcheries to avoid disease.
The Missouri River is known to harbor whirling disease, a potentially lethal parasite to young trout. Although whirling disease is a concern, other unknown pathogens that could be in the river water also made salvaging the trout problematic, the news release says.
In response, FWP has decided to destroy the majority of the potentially infected 450,000 rainbow and 50,000 brook trout. The department estimates the trout are worth about $300,000.
About 20,000 will be put into the river immediately adjacent to the hatchery and 500 will go into the children’s fishing pond near the hatchery, according to FWP.
“This is an extremely tough decision, but we felt the only course of action was to destroy the fish in the outside raceways,” Eileen Ryce, FWP hatchery bureau chief and acting fisheries division administrator, said in a statement. “We take the health of our fisheries very seriously and our tolerance for risk to the public’s resource is very low.”
Montana weathered a devastating hit from the whirling disease outbreak years ago; you don’t have to be an ‘old timer’ to recall the misery and heartache from those days, though it’s amazing to see how many anglers (and others) today have no concept of what happened during the peak of the outbreak (see the comment chain on the article as evidence).
Protecting other fisheries from contamination still involves making a tough call now and again, and we’re damned glad FWP has the cajones to pony up and do it when called for.
