Foster goes deep
to replenish Kokanee Salsmon



John Foster’s dream is to one day have a pond stocked with nothing but Kokanee Salmon.

Dr. Foster, the head of the fisheries and aquaculture department at the State University of New York College of Agriculture and Technology at Cobleskill, wants to see the west-coast fish thrive in the New York.

Foster is working with the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation and a fish hatchery in Glass Lake in Rensselaer County to provide a home for some of the Kokanee Salmon. Sockeye Salmon (also called red salmon or blueback salmon) live in the Pacific Ocean and migrate up river from the seas to breed in freshwater; the same species in landlocked bodies of water is called kokanee.

The state used to have kokanee stocked in various lakes but gave up the project about four years ago.
"Kokanee were stocked in various lakes for at least 20 years including Glass Lake," Foster said. "For whatever reason, the state changed its priorities and they stopped stocking kokanee. They had no place to spawn. The fisheries were going to die out so some local folks contacted the regional fishery office because they didn’t want to see that happen. They were willing to work together to see what would happen if we tried to maintain the population."

Foster said that the DEC had some kokanee stocked in lakes and ponds in the Adirondacks. The fish is not native to New York.
"They can’t reproduce naturally," Foster said. "There isn’t a suitable stream. They usually reproduce in Alaskan or Canadian rivers. We must do it artificially."

At the hatchery

A new project to re-stock Glass Lake with kokanee began a couple of years ago. The regional fishery at Glass Lake, which is headed by a graduate of the Cobleskill program, came to Foster and the state DEC for help. Trout Unlimited, a trout and salmon conservation group, joined in to help maintain the fishery.
"We put trap nets in the lake to remove the adult fish," Foster said. "Students helped catch the fish in the trap nets. We spawned the ones we caught in our aquatic hatchery. We sent the eggs to the DEC pathology lab and they confirmed the eggs were disease free and we moved the fish down to the main cold-water hatchery."

In the spring of 2005, a group from Cobleskill took between 5,000 and 6,000 fry into Glass Lake. They held back 600 fry in the hatchery as brood stock.

The fish at the hatchery are in four-foot deep round tanks. There are about 500 kokanee in one tank.

There are also tanks containing arctic char as well as brown and rainbow trout. A hatchery manager takes care of the fish all year long.
"He is involved in teaching as well as looking after the tanks," Foster said. "We have an assistant hatchery manager and many of the older students come here and work."

Students in the Fishery and Aquatics program are assigned tanks to help work during the school year.

Normally, it takes the fish four years to mature. But, when they are in the hatchery, it takes just two years.
"We feed them and look after them," Foster said. "They don’t have to catch any food. We give them high-protein food and they grow faster.
"It is very labor intensive," Foster added. "Trout Unlimited gave us a small grant for the cost of the feed."

The largest fish in the tank were 12 inches long. Male kokanee will grow to be about 16 inches. Females will be a couple of inches shorter.

Female kokanee produce 800 eggs per pound of fish, Foster said. He said they can get 200,000 eggs from the spawned females in the tank.

The kokanee are manually spawned and are checked on twice a week until the eggs are ready to be moved into an incubator.

"Athletic fish"

When the eggs hatch, the fry, are released into Glass Lake.
"We spend six months looking after the fish," Foster said.

Foster saw that there was a commitment by the state to stock rainbow trout and brook trout but not one for Kokanee Salmon.
"They started doing it for kokanee 15 years ago," Foster said. "I worked with them for a little while."

Foster has been at Cobleskill for 19 years and been in the Fisheries and Wildlife Department for all of them.
"It is a nice project," he said. "Most of it is a focus of production aquaculture. Most of the state aquaculture is from the support of hatcheries and fisheries."

Every fall, Foster and a group of students from Cobleskill check on the stock at Glass Lake.
"Last year, I was surprised," Foster said. "I thought there would be more adult fish. The spawn we caught, there were very few. We didn’t take any eggs. There wasn’t enough to take any eggs.
"It was disappointing," Foster added. "The whole fishery depends on the fish stock. The hatchery depends on the kokanee and maintaining the brood stock. On our side of campus, it has to pay for itself. We each have a separate entity to keep operating. Over in the barn, the cows produce milk. That’s easier to produce than aquaculture"This is much more difficult to run; we are a shoestring operation."

But it is the love of these challenging fish that makes it worthwhile for Foster.
"There are very few places in New York you can go kokanee fishing," he said. "They are very athletic fish when you get them on the line. But they are very tasty. It’s worth trying to maintain the fishery if we possibly can."

But the ideal — which is Foster’s dream — is to find a pond where the kokanee can thrive.
"We need a stable place to put the brood stock," he said. "There needs to be a hatchery where they can be protected. Compared to most hatcheries that are small business, this is more educational. It would be better to have another facility. We’ll see what we can do."