Something’s fishy in Kuujjuaq

KUUJJUAQ — Looking after 35,000 babies is a huge responsibility, but it’s one that Allen Gordon is keen to assume.

Along with Kuujjuaq’s Nayumavik Landholding Corporation, Gordon is involved with a project to seed nearby lakes and rivers with Arctic char. In June these fish will be released into Diana Lake near Kuujjuaq.

It’s all part of a plan to kick-start fish stocks.

Gordon hopes he’ll see the day when these tiny char grow up to populate the rivers and lakes around Kuujjuaq.

“It’s been my dream since childhood,” Gordon said. “I spend a lot of time here.”

“Here” is the nursery set up in the community’s old water-treatment plant. Inside a temperature-controlled room, plastic tanks hold thousands of baby fish in water that’s 3 degrees C.

Despite an elaborate system of alarms, which are designed to sound should the electricity ever cut off, Gordon checks on his fishy charges regularly.

These fish hatched from eggs gathered near Tasiujaq. They were supposed to hatch next month, but due to the environment in their incubator, which was at a slightly higher temperature than found in nature, the eggs hatched prematurely.

For the first seven to eight weeks they survived on their yolk sacks. Now, they are regularly fed on a special diet, and they are thriving.

In June, they’ll be released into nearby lakes. Not many will survive, Gordon said, but hopefully enough of the fish will reach maturity.

“The whole idea is to get a breeding stock,” Gordon said.

If all goes according to plan, the char will then spend five years in the lakes. They will then migrate in search of more food travelling via fishways that were blasted through solid rock to Ungava Bay.

Explosives experts used dynamite to blast a four-foot-deep channel around two previously insurmountable waterfalls where they drain into the bay.

Six years from now Gordon will finally learn the fate of the babies he’s nurturing, if they survive to head off through this channel.

Gordon said there are plans to hatch up to one million tiny fish next year. The entire release process will then be repeated.

To date, the fish hatchery project has cost around $100,000. Most of that money was a one-time expense to equip the hatchery.

Gordon said the same techniques could increase fish stocks elsewhere.

“Other communities are very interested in this,” Gordon said. “Many are growing fast and they may need help to sustain their fish populations.”