Thirty-nine degrees, Toby Van Ry tells a student asking how cold the water is. Van Ry, the San Luis Valley’s project manager for Trout Unlimited, stands in the flowing Rio Grande in his waders, holding up a single bug larva before a couple of younger elementary students, telling them how fish survive on bugs.
It’s a sunny day in the Valley and the water is chilly, perfect conditions for releasing a few hundred fish.
Six classrooms operating eight tanks got to release their hard work downstream on Thursday at the Del Norte town park.
After weeks of raising trout from eggs in classroom tanks, the fish, though just fingerling sized, are big enough to be released into the Rio Grande.
As part of a nationwide education program, the Trout (or Salmon) in the Classroom is a Trout Unlimited-sponsored initiative aimed at showing the applications of many different disciplines. Including ethics, mathematics, ecology and biology, physics and chemistry, the program of raising fish from eggs can cover just about everything.
More than 5,000 classrooms participate annually. This is the third year for Valley schools. The San Luis Valley chapter of Trout Unlimited, in partnership with other local organizations, has been able to sponsor the event.
In attendance this year were classrooms from Antonito, Centauri, Del Norte, Monte Vista, Sangre de Cristo and Trinity Lutheran. More than 300 students, teachers, parents and members of the community attended Thursday’s release of more than 800 fish. Representatives from the Rio Grande National Forest, Division of Water Resources, the Rio Grande Headwaters Restoration Project and Adams State University also were in attendance.
“I think we all did a great job, overall, for the whole program,” said Kevin Milder, SLV Trout Unlimited’s youth education coordinator.
He said the eggs hatched and fish released on Thursday represented a 43 percent survival rate. The eggs raised in the classrooms teach students about the conditions fish need not only to survive, but thrive. Monitoring is done in the classroom tanks and documented as the fish grow.
The “Top Survival Rate” trophy went to the students of Monte Vista, with a 78 percent survival rate. This is the third year they’ve taken home the trophy.
“I even tried to hamstring them a little bit by giving them 300 eggs,” he said.
Monte Vista built a lot of momentum, Milder said, inspiring more classrooms to get involved. Del Norte and Antontio have been doing the program a little longer than the other schools, but two years ago Trout Unlimited, with the help of the Bureau of Land Management, was able to “throw in” six more tanks, he said. “We picked up a big jump there.”
“Each year they keep getting better, we keep moving up the block. We’re getting better and better.”
Milder said they are hoping to add a tank at Adams State University that will be the “community tank.” Those fish won’t be released at the same time as the other classrooms due to extra regulations and extra hold days, but it would give the classrooms an opportunity to move fish around in case of die-offs or low survival rates.
One bright red Harbor Freight bucket after another, the groups of small trout were poured into the flowing Rio. Some kids got their feet wet so they could help Van Ry release their fish.
“Everybody’s here getting along, having a good time…. It’s becoming quite the thing,” Milder said.
