“Fishues” in Agriscience and Environmental Technologies

Fish are a big issue at our school. We get them, care for them, watch them grow and sometimes die. Regrettably, for most of this year we have been watching our fish die. At the beginning of the school year Environmental Technology and Agriscience received fish from a cranberry farmer by the name of Brad Morse. The fish that we received are large mouthed bass. At the beginning of the year Mrs. Abdella’s Agriscience class got 242 fish but for some reason they started to die. The same thing started to happen with Mrs. Witzig’s fish. Mrs. Witzig started with 900 fish and is now down to approximately 750 while Mrs. Abdella is left with 150.

This loss of fish started to concern their caretakers. They first thought that it was because of an oil spill from the new underwater lights but they were moved to where the water was cleaner and fish continued to die. When they realized that the fish were still dying they believed it was either from chlorine in the water or the water temperature. The teens administered tests to find that it wasn’t the chlorine and the temperature is always at 18-20 degrees. We still aren’t sure as to what is killing the fish but have many ideas as to what could be causing it. We will return all the fish that have survived to Brad Morse when the temperature outside is 50 degrees at night time. For now we continue to search for the answers of why or fish are still dying.