NEW MARLBORO — Brown trout, rainbow trout and Atlantic salmon raised at the Berkshire Fish Hatchery will spawn —lay and fertilize eggs — this fall, for the first time since the hatchery reopened in 2000. Fish raised at the hatchery may also enter local waters again after more than 10 years’ absence.
The hatchery, the only one in Berkshire County, has been rebuilding its stock in the last three years, according to Director Keith Wilda and Associate Director Kevin Ferry, but it has not had a large enough stock — or large enough fish — to stock local ponds and rivers. It has also lacked state approval for doing so.
It houses three kinds of fish, but until this year, those fish never hatched living eggs that were allowed to develop. This fall, the hatchery will raise eggs from its own fish, and Ferry and Wilda hope to bring the hatchery up to full production by the end of the year.
The hatchery reopened three years ago, after five inactive years, and has just produced its first good crop of young fish in 11 years. Over the last three years, the hatchery’s small stock, ranging from fingerlings to 18-inch trout, have helped in educational and scientific experiments, and stocked a few privately owned ponds. By this time next year, when the newly spawned fish have reached 3 inches long, the hatchery will be well-equipped to expand its programs.
Wilda and Ferry hope to have 80,000 baby rainbow trout by the end of the year. Massachusetts releases 600,000 fish into public waters each year, and if it can keep afloat in this tough economy, the Berkshire hatchery will soon be able to contribute to them, Wilda said.
The federal government took over the hatchery in 1918, and ran it until 1995. Then it closed for lack of funding. The Western Massachusetts Center for Sustainable Agriculture reopened it in 2000, and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst now hosts it, through its Agriculture and Landscape Program.
Wilda runs educational programs funded through the state Department of Agricultural Resources. The hatchery itself relies on donations, he said.
Right now, it is spawning season at the hatchery.
“The fish spawn in the fall. We never know exactly when,†said Melissa Hamilton, a member of the foundation staff.
For hatchery workers, spawning time means the time to strip eggs from females and milk sperm from males, she said. Wilda and Ferry combine the eggs and sperm in a bowl.
“It looks just like tapioca pudding,†Hamilton said.
When the eggs are fertilized, they are brought inside to mature. Ferry, Wilda and a host of volunteers have already stripped 40,000 round, jellied, translucent eggs from the hatchery’s rainbow trout. They hope to have 60,000 more, Ferry said, and they expect 80 percent to hatch.
They put the eggs in vertical egg trays and keep them dark, as they would be in a shaded stream bed, until they “eye up†or begin to develop eyes. Then they move the trays to long metal troughs, Ferry said. Hatchery workers release the fish into water once they have developed tails and can swim. At that point, the young fish are about as long as a thumbnail. The new fish will reach 3 inches long and become known as fingerlings, at the end of the year, Ferry said. It takes 30 years for a trout to reach full growth.
Most hatchery-raised trout in the state are caught by fishermen long before that. But the Berkshire hatchery story has been a little different.
“There have been no fish spawned at the hatchery in 11 years,†Ferry said. “We have a couple of plans for the fish. We would love to be stocking Berkshire waters with them. The state just shut down two hatcheries, so that may be a reality. We would also like to supply eggs to the state.â€
Though they have a stock of salmon, the hatchery does not hatch salmon eggs yet. Ferry and Wilda hope to next year. The hatchery needs three years’ certification as a disease-free facility in order to raise the eggs from its own salmon, Wilda said, adding that the hatchery should be able to use eggs in the salmon restoration program in 2004.
Wilda and Ferry still strip the eggs from each female salmon, because the fish cannot reabsorb the hard egg casings and would suffer the next time they tried to produce eggs, Wilda said. Next year, they will be able to let the eggs live.
They can tell if a female is ready to spawn by pressing gently on its abdomen, he said. If the fish releases eggs, it is ready.
The breeding fish live in cement ponds covered by tents to keep out algae and to discourage hungry blue heron. The fish live in water drawn from a natural spring, Hamilton said, and it always stays the same temperature.
“I put on waders and climb in. It’s like being surrounded by sharks. They froth around you. Of course, it’s perfectly safe. They don’t have teeth that could harm you,†she said.
Wilda and Ferry hope to be able to stock local rivers and ponds eventually, she said, but have not yet had fish large enough. They also need state permission, and the Housatonic is contaminated. But some local people have bought fish for their own ponds.
The hatchery works with private, state and federal hatcheries, schools and educational programs, and with 83 farms across the state that want to add aquaclture to their crops, Wilda said.
Wilda spends four days out of his six-day week working with different farmers who hope to sell fish to sporting clubs, he said. He spends the seventh day with his wife and 1-year-old daughter, who has just said her first word: fish.
The state has two other centers like the Berkshire hatchery, in southeast and northeast Massachusetts, but they work mainly with marine culture and shellfish, Ferry said. The Berkshire hatchery works strictly with freshwater fish. Scott Soares, aquaculture coordinator for the Department of Agricultural Resources, coordinates the three hatcheries.
The Berkshire hatchery has run educational programs with Flying Cloud summer arts and sciences camp, Mount Everett High School and others over the last three years and will put a Mount Everett intern and UMASS intern to work this fall. The hatchery also works with 4-H groups, Gould Farm residents, 15 to 20 students from Kolburne School for troubled teens and a growing corps of local volunteers, especially from the Isaac Walton League.
Besides the families of fish, the hatchery has a nature trail open to the public and has hosted family events, including fishing derbies and a lobster fest this summer and an Earth Day celebration last spring that drew 250 people. Hatchery staff brought kids to a nearby pond to them how to keep water clean. Displays from that event still decorate the office’s tanks of baby snapping turtles, a painted turtle and 13-year-old African frog named Kermit. The office also has a tank showing representative life in Lake Garfield; and a Monterey Lake tank that demonstrates aquaponics, the process of fertilizing land with water inhabited by fish. The fishes’ discharge provides nitrogen and other nutrients to feed the plants.
Bioshelters in Amherst grow a million pounds of tilapia each year and 1,500 ccases of basil each week with the system, using no other fertilizers but fish water, Wilda said.
At the Berkshire hatchery, fingerling brown trout help to grow lettuce. The hatchery is also running a “feed study,†feeding carnivorous fish on vegetarian fish meal, Ferry said. So far, fish fed on vegetable feed have grown at the same rate as fish eating traditional feeds, he said. Vegetable meal has several advantages, he said: It is cheaper and has less impact on the environment, and the fishes’ excrement breaks down more readily.
Hatcheries in New York State and on Cape Cod are running the similar experiments on different kinds of fish, including largemouth bass and tilapia.
Tilapia are a South African fish, said to be the first fish ever farm-raised, by the Egyptians. They are also called St. Peter’s Fish, and some people believe Jesus may have eaten them.
Ferry lives in an 1850s farm house at the hatchery. When he is not looking after the fish, he also works part time at the Cabbage Hill Farm Foundation, with aquaculture and heritage breed animals.
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Former Harry's Supermarket Under Construction for Restaurant
Late last month, the Conservation Commission greenlit some tree pruning on the property. New windows and a new door can be seen in the front of the building.
"It's a substantial renovation that's currently underway here," Brent White of White Engineering said, speaking on behalf of the applicant and owner, Huajie Zhu.
A fire gutted the longtime Wahconah Street supermarket in 2023, and the following year, Zhu purchased the property for $460,000 two years ago to build a restaurant with hibachi in the existing footprint of the more than 100-year-old building.
White explained that the project has been ongoing for over a year, and the Community Development Board granted the property a waiver to reduce the minimum required number of parking spaces so that additional spaces aren't needed.
He noted that, looking at the site plan, there is very little room to do so. A mirror will be installed near the sharp turn on Bel Air Avenue to alleviate traffic concerns.
Pruning will be done on trees in the southeast corner of the existing paved parking lot, as a number of branches are hanging over. The new owners also intend to patch, sealcoat, and re-stripe the parking lot.
A fire tore through the building less than an hour after the supermarket closed for the day three years ago. An automatic sprinkler system is required for the new use.
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