The cold wind blustered and Lake Michigan’s waves crashed onto Winnetka’s Tower Road Beach on Friday, but the weather didn’t stop a group of Hubbard Woods School fourth graders from bidding goodbye to the fish they’d raised since last fall.
The young rainbow trout, called fingerlings at this stage in their development, fourth grader Sarah Hayes said, needed a little help getting safely into the lake because of the rough waves. But the bumper crop of 94 – the largest number of fish Hubbard Woods students have ever raised, according to Todd Burleson, Hubbard Woods’ resource center director – eventually reached their new home.
Almost two dozen children – including the students and siblings – aided by parents and other volunteers, transferred the fish they’d fed and observed in the resource center since last November from large buckets into small ones that could be carried to the shoreline.
At that point, Mike Jacobs of the Elliott Donnelly Chapter of Trout Unlimited, the group that developed the “Trout in the Classroom” project in which Hubbard Woods students took part, braved the surf, tossing the buckets of fingerlings far enough out that the waves wouldn’t dash them back up on the beach.
Dave Cozzolino, owner of Wilmette Pet, whose pet shop also partnered with Burleson on the project, helped Jacobs, handing him the plastic containers the students brought down from a staging area further back on the beach.
“What we do is try to preserve trout habitat,” Jacobs said. “Our ultimate goal is to have a healthy wild trout population in Lake Michigan.”
Rainbow trout weren’t originally native to the lake, he said; they were introduced in the late 1960s to control an exploding population of alewife fish, another non-native species. Now, however, they have become part of the lake’s ecosystem, he said.
Trout Unlimited’s program allows students to aid that population with eggs supplied by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, learning about trout, the lake ecology and the science behind both as they raise the fish, Burleson said. Over the past decade, Hubbard Woods students have undertaken the project six times, he said.
“This is the greatest number of fish we’ve ever released – and the biggest fish. I attribute that to the good care of our students, and the amazing volunteers,” as well as Cozzolino and Jacobs’ group, he said.
Students like Sarah and classmate Will Helmstetter were happy to share what they’d learned; Sarah was amazed at how small they were as eggs – about the size of peas, she said – and how large they grew in the five months the students were in charge of them.
“The weirdest thing I saw,” Will said, “was there was a group of them, and only one of them would keep getting bigger and bigger, because it would get all the food. And then when it got bigger, it could chase away the other fish and get more food.”
Parent volunteers Holly Miller and Liz Kunkle, who had helped students feed the fish, measure their growth and check water temperature throughout the project, were also on hand to celebrate its culmination.
“Each kid could see the growth of the fish, since they watched them grow every week,” Miller said. “It’s been pretty cool.”
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