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GRDA to host ‘Build A Brush’ Saturday

 Spidery habitats

Cheryl Franklin / Grove Sun

Spidery habitats

Fish habitats built by volunteers at Build a Brush workshops.Kaylea M. Hutson

Anglers and others who have a passion for all things Grand Lake will have a chance to learn how to build an artificial fish habitat on Saturday, during a workshop sponsored by Grand River Dam Authority.

The “Build A Brush” hands-on workshop, set for 9 a.m. Saturday, May 11, Wolf Creek Park, is designed to teach people how to build artificial fish habitats made using cement blocks and plastic pipes.

Members of the GRDA staff will be on hand during the event, to teach those gathered how to make the habitats, known as “spider blocks” because of the way the black plastic pipes resemble spider legs.

Jacklyn Jaggars, assistant director of GRDA ecosystems and lake management, said the spider blocks become fish habitats once immersed in the lake, because moss and algae grow on the pipes. Five or six blocks placed together provide cover for even the smallest fish.

Those in attendance will have the opportunity to take home several blocks, and encouraged to place them in their favorite fishing spots, explained Jaggars.

The workshop is set for 9 a.m., Saturday, May 11, at the Wolf Creek Park. The event is free, but Jaggars said reservations are encouraged to ensure they have enough materials. To register, persons may call 918-256-0723.

This is the first of two “Build a Brush” workshops. The second workshop is set for Saturday, June 1, at Cherokee State Park, below the Pensacola Dam in Langley. More habitat articles at fishiding.com

Non-Profit Group Creating Fish Habiat

Non-Profit Group Creating Fish Habiat for the Cape Fear River

A project to help restore declining fish populations is underway along the Cape Fear River.  We’ll explain how crushed granite will be the basis for a new fish habitat. More habitat articles at fishiding.com

Trade practices around the port city of Wilmington over the past century have caused a significant decline in the number of fish in the Cape Fear River.  But thanks to the efforts of a local non-profit, their populations are staging a comeback.  Cape Fear River Watch Riverkeeper Kemp Burdette says there are several reasons why the fish numbers have dropped, but main reason is the construction of three dams on Cape Fear River in the early 1900’s.  The dams were originally built to facilitate trade and commerce along Cape Fear River between Wilmington to Fayetteville.

“Barges would approach the dam and would move into a lock chamber adjacent to the dam and that lock chamber would be flooded or drained depending on which way they were going and those boats would continue upstream.”

While the dams were beneficial for navigating barges and vessels, they prevented migrating fish species like striped bass, American shad, as well as the endangered Atlantic sturgeon and short nose sturgeon from swimming upstream to spawn during the spring.

“The American shad for instance, we are basically at 10 percent of what historic levels were. Nine out of every ten fish that used to be in the Cape Fear River are not there now. But none of these fish, none of these migratory species are even approaching the population numbers that would be considered healthy.  So, they all need help.”

To help restore the natural migration of fish in the Cape Fear River, the Army Corps of Engineers constructed of a fish ladder at Lock and Dam one in Reigelwood last year. It’s the first one of its kind on the east coast of the United States.  Fish climb the stair-step like structure made from carefully placed rocks by leaping out of the water, level by level, until they’re over the twelve foot high dam.  It’s the first migrating season since the fish ladder has been in place, and Burdette says it’s being used.

“The Division of Marine Fisheries has tagged fish with sonic tags then they’ve gone out and collected this data and these studies show these fish are using these fish passages, striped bass and shad are both using these fish passages, they’re both moving upstream unassisted for basically the first time in one hundred years so it’s really a significant breakthrough for the Cape Fear River and the migratory fish in the Cape Fear River.”

Now two more Cape Fear fish ladders are in the planning phase. Two grant applications were recently submitted to the National and Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to fund the design, construct, and monitor rock ramp fish ladders at the other dams on the Cape Fear River.

While one project focuses on helping migrating fish travel upstream, another project in the works will help restore breeding habitat.  Coastal Scientist Dawn York explains the project.

“Basically, the premise is to design a site where we can place about 1,000 tons of rocks down in an area that will help enhance spawning habitat for American shad.”

York is with Dial Cordy and Associates, an independent environmental consulting firm working with the Cape Fear River Watch as well as state and federal agencies on creating the fish habitat. She says the rocks will be placed at a half-acre area downstream of lock and dam 2.  An exact location for the habitat hasn’t been decided.  Crushed granite, ranging in size from 2 to 10 inches, will be set at the bottom of the Cape Fear River providing a safe place for striped bass, herring, and sturgeon to lay their eggs.  York says a dredging company in Wilmington will help facilitate the construction.

“They’ll travel up river it’ll take about 4-5 days to mobilize to lock and dam 2. They’ll use their excavator and smaller equipment to get the material onto a barge and they can handle about 90 tons per day. So we’re anticipating the construction of the restoration of habitat will take about 4 to 6 weeks.”

York says they want the first and last ton of granite material to be hand tossed into the water by volunteers.

“The rest of it would then be handled by the barge and mechanical means, basically an arm that will come down and grab large handfuls of material and place it into the river.  It’s going to be sort of spaced out over a half acre, so it’s sort of a flat area.

Construction should take place between December of this year and February 2014. The project can’t begin sooner because of a moratorium banning the placement of material in the water due to fish migration.  Cape Fear River Watch Riverkeeper Kemp Burdette says the next several months will be spent finding the best location for the new fish habitat.

“It’s not nearly as simple as taking rock out there and dumping it off.  What we’re really going to do is side scan assessments of the riverbed and what we’re trying to do there is understand what the riverbed looks like and what the substrate looks like and identify the best places to put the granite.”

Even with the project wrapping up in early 2014, Burdette says their work repopulating the waters of Cape Fear River with migrating fish species is far from over.

“The project at lock and dam number one was a huge first step, but it’s not the last step.  We still have two more dams we need to have fish passage around because we really need these fish to get up into the fall line, that’s the area where they want to spawn, that’s the area where spawning would be most successful and so that’s where we need to go.”

Even though the construction isn’t underway, the project is already receiving national attention.  The National Fish Habitat Partnership has listed the Cape Fear River as one of the “10 Waters to Watch,” for its locally driven conservation areas and ongoing efforts.

Fishing is permitted at all three lock and dam sites, however, there is a moratorium on keeping striped bass.  It is illegal to keep sturgeon because they are an endangered species.  A dock was recently installed at lock and dam number one downstream from the dam structure and Burdette says it’s a popular fishing site for shad.   If you’d like to see a picture of the fish ladder in place at lock and dam one in Reigelwood, go to publicradioeast.org.

For more on Cape Fear River Watches fishery restoration efforts, click here: http://www.capefearriverwatch.org/advocacy/fish-restorationBy JARED BRUMBAUGH

Fisheries habitat plan aims at ensuring great fishing for the long term

NEWS RELEASE — St. Paul, MN – Dirk Peterson won’t tell anglers where to catch a big fish, but he can tell them what’s needed to make sure there are big fish to catch when they get there.

More and more these days, he’s boiling it down to three words: good fish habitat. More habitat articles at fishiding.com

Peterson is in charge of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources’ (DNR) fisheries section, which has just launched a new fisheries habitat plan. It outlines a strategic road map for making sure the state’s 10,000 lakes and hundreds of rivers and streams continue to provide the healthy aquatic habitat underpinning great fishing.

Pete Jacobson, a DNR fisheries research supervisor and one of the plan’s authors, makes it sound pretty simple. “The reason we have good fishing in Minnesota is because we have many lakes and streams with good water quality and habitat,” he said. “Healthy fish habitat is critical.”

But assuring the future of healthy aquatic habitat is anything but simple, because clean water depends on all that happens across a watershed, the hundreds or thousands of acres that drain into any particular lake or stream.

“When you lift a fish out of the water, that fish is a reflection of all that happens on the land,” Peterson said. “If we want to maintain great fishing, we need to focus more effort at the landscape and watershed scale.”

Peterson compares fisheries management to a three-legged stool: one leg is stocking fish, one leg is regulations that help control harvest, and one leg is habitat. Historically, the first two legs have been a little longer and more robust than the last one. The new plan aims to rectify that imbalance by directing staff and other resources to habitat protection and restoration.

While past fisheries habitat projects focused more on near-shore efforts such as protecting aquatic vegetation and stream channel improvements, the new approach seeks to move away from the water’s edge to encompass entire watersheds.

Because the DNR has little authority over land use – a chief determinant of water quality – working at the watershed level will rely more extensively on collaboration and coordination with other DNR divisions, local government, landowners, and other state and federal agencies.

Now there’s collaboration with DNR’s Forestry Division and local soil and water conservation districts to protect the watersheds of lakes with healthy populations of tullibee, a coldwater species sensitive to water quality, which provides important forage for game fish.

In the metro region, watershed scale collaborations with local government and other agencies have helped protect several trout streams, including Dakota County’s Vermillion River, a trophy brown trout stream just a half hour from downtown St. Paul.

While DNR fisheries has undertaken a few larger scale habitat projects before, they tended to be few and far between because there was little funding for big-picture, long-term approaches. The passage in 2008 of a state constitutional amendment dedicating a portion of a sales tax hike to the outdoors and to clean water has changed that. Much of the new habitat plan, available on the DNR website athttp://www.files.dnr.state.mn.us/fish_wildlife/fisheries/habitat/2013_fishhabitatplan.pdf, is aimed at better coordination and focus of funding sources to achieve the most bang for the buck.

An increase in fishing license fees – approved by the Minnesota Legislature last year – also is helping to put more focus on fisheries habitat work.

“We’ve always talked about habitat, but there rarely was adequate funding to really attack it at the appropriate scale,” said Jacobson, the fisheries researcher. “The constitutional amendment changes that, and we need to take advantage of it. The amendment is a mandate from the people for us to take fish habitat conservation seriously. This plan helps us do that.”By Site Editor

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