A forest for the fish

If you look through the ice on a winter day, or peer into the water during a rare summer moment when the wind is calm, you might glimpse the tips of the trees that make up Ocean Lake’s underwater forest.

Below the surface is a Christmas tree forest “planted” by sportsmen and Wyoming Game and Fish in an effort to enhance fish habitat. In more than two decades some 8,000 trees have been left on the ice of Ocean Lake, tied to cement blocks to sink to the bottom providing fish habitat. It is an effort that began in the early 1980s by four friends who loved to ice fish on the lake and noticed the fish population dwindling. It has grown into a Fremont County community event where more than 500 Christmas trees are donated to the project each year.

Kelsey Dayton

The result? Healthier fish populations and happier fishermen.

Howard Johnson of Riverton, always loved ice fishing. It’s a sport that takes little gear as long as one person has an ice auger. No boat is needed to catch as many fish as you would in the summer. And the cold adds a challenge and bonding experience.

“You just have to weather the weather and that’s the fun part of it,” he said.

In the early 1980s he started ice fishing with Bob Wilczewski and Scott Stanley of Riverton, along with Bob Baumann of Shoshoni  at Ocean Lake.

They’d gather with their families and campers, playing cards and games and baking biscuits to go with the fresh fish they’d catch on the ice.

After a few years of bountiful hauls they noticed their catches diminishing. They knew the history of the lake, and it didn’t seem right. Dozens of unique habitat models at fishiding.com

Christmas trees are left on the ice of Ocean Lake. Each year recycled Christmas trees are left on the ice to sink to the bottom of the lake where they provide fish habitat. (Photo courtesy Wyoming Game and Fish).

Until the 1930s, Ocean Lake was basically a pond, about 225 acres in size, known as Dry Lake and surrounded by sagebrush and rocks, said Nick Scribner, a habitat biologist with the Wyoming Game and Fish. The Riverton Reclamation Irrigation project started in 1922.When new irrigation systems were developed in the area, water started draining to the low spot in the area, where the pond sat, covering the weeds and willows with water and making the pond more of a lake. It kept rising until the Bureau of Reclamation built an outlet off the east side to drain to a creek, stabilizing the water level, Johnson said.

Fish stocking began in the 1930s, bringing black crappie, bluegill, burbot and largemouth bass to the lake, Scribner said. Walleye stocking began in 1954 and became an annual practice starting in 1972.

Old-timers told stories of the incredible fishing in the area, especially walleye and perch, Johnson said. As the plants on the bottom began to thin and decompose, the smaller fish had no place to hide, the bigger fish had easy feasts and thrived. Fishermen caught fish “by the washtub full,” Johnson said.

For several years Johnson and his friends found Ocean Lake’s fishing bountiful. Then a few years later the fish stopped biting.

On a particularly slow day, the four men lay on the ice, put their coats over their heads and peered down to the bottom. There was nothing but mud.

“It was just like a carpeted floor down there,” Johnson said.

Ocean Lake sits northwest of Riverton in an open area exposed to Wyoming’s wind.  The gusts create waves, which stir up the silt in the bottom,  Scribner said.

The silt makes it hard for plants to grow and there is little natural vegetation on the bottom of the lake, he said. Small fish have little cover to hide from predators.

With no place to hide, the small fish population was decimated by the larger fish, whose population then suffered because there wasn’t enough food.

Most of Johnson’s fishing group came originally from the Midwest, where using old Christmas trees for fish habitat is common. They decided to see if they could help the fish of Ocean Lake. That winter they wandered alleys and picked up about 50 Christmas trees they hauled to the lake, tying on cement blocks and letting them sink to the bottom. A strong believer in that anyone who fishes should donate at least one day a year to projects to that helps habitat, Johnson and the group continued to collect and “plant” Christmas trees each year.

The effort became an annual event and now, with the help of the Fremont County Solid Waste Disposal District, Wyoming Game and Fish and about 20 volunteers, about 500 trees are planted in Ocean Lake each year. Johnson estimates they’ve planted about 8,000 trees since they started the project. One year, when an area business sold trees where the needles fell off quickly, they received about 1,000 trees — too many for the small number of volunteers, Johnson said.

Volunteers bundle Christmas trees at Ocean Lake. Each year recycled trees are gathered and planted in the lake to help fish habitat. A date for this year’s event hasn’t been yet. (Photo courtesy Wyoming Game and Fish).

The trees are tied together in bunches and attached to concrete blocks and left on the ice. Eventually they drop through the ice, settling on the bottom- about 15 to 25-feet below the surface, where for three or four years they’ll provide fish habitat before decomposing. The trees provide cover for small fish and perch spawn in the branches, Scribner said. Other species, like tadpoles use the habitat as well, he said. The cement blocks are left on the lake bottom, but don’t cause any environmental harm, Scribner said.

The trees come in all shapes and sizes from small “Charlie Brown”-like ones to the full and tall that would dominate a room. All of the trees break down quickly once submerged, Scribner said.

While the practice of using Christmas trees isn’t common in Wyoming, similar efforts have been done elsewhere in the state, Scribner said. In Boysen Reservoir cottonwood and pine tree stumps are put in into the lake.

While Game and Fish monitors the area and knows the trees benefit fish habitat,  it’s hard to quantify the impact of the project on fish populations, Scribner said.

Johnson doesn’t need numbers. He knows the fishing is better. They are seeing more age groups of walleye. The locations the trees are dropped are tracked by GPS and those areas have noticeably improved, if a fishermen knows the lake — when and how to fish it.

“It’s all how you do it, where you do it and when you do it,” he said.

And that information, he added like any good fishermen, is a secret.

Get involved:

A date hasn’t yet been set for this year’s tree “planting.”

To volunteer with the project, contact Howard Johnson at (307) 856-1145, or contact Wyoming Game and Fish Lander office at (307) 332-2688.

To donate your Christmas tree, recycle it at no cost at the Lander landfill, Riverton bale facility or the Dubois landfill.

— “Peaks to Plains” is a blog focusing on Wyoming’s outdoors and communities. Kelsey Dayton is a freelance writer based in Lander. She has been a journalist in Wyoming for seven years, reporting for the Jackson Hole News & Guide, Casper Star-Tribune and the Gillette News-Record. Contact Kelsey at kelsey.dayton@gmail.com.

Old Power Poles Repurposed as Artificial Reefs

Old concrete poles donated by Florida Power & Light Company are sunk by McCulley Marine Services to create two artificial reefs off the coast of St. Lucie County, Fla., Friday, Dec. 28, 2012. Photo: PRNewsFoto/FPL

Repurposing a bunch of hefty power line poles yielded a project intended to attract plenty of interest.

Various species of fish likely are interested, as are scuba divers and anglers.

Officials in St. Lucie County, Florida used power poles as the prime source of material for twoartificial reefs about six and 12 miles off of Fort Pierce.

The poles are stacked in two free-form piles about 25 feet tall at depths of about 60 and 100 feet in the ocean and are among the newest additions to a total of about 2,900 artificial reefs in the Florida area.

Florida Power and Light provided 130 poles that were replaced during recent upgrade projects. If not recycled this way, the poles might have otherwise been trashed, a spokesman said.

Some of the other reefs in St. Lucie County are formed with a mix of allowable materials, including bridge and dock pilings, said Jim Oppenborn, St. Lucie County’s Coastal Resource Supervisor.

In addition to the poles supplied by Florida Power and Light, a grant of about $60,000 went into the project for the two reefs. The money, distributed by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, is from a pot of federal tax revenue from specific fishing-related and boating-related purchases.

A tugboat hauls 500 tons of old poles donated by Florida Power & Light Company to create two artificial reefs off the coast of St. Lucie County, Fla., Friday, Dec. 28, 2012. Photo: PRNewsFoto/FPL

Where artificial reefs are placed and the types of materials used are among the various factors regulated by agencies that issue permits. For the power line poles, St. Lucie County received permits from the Florida Department of Environmental Regulation and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Oppenborn said.

VIDEO: Volunteers Remove 29 Tons of Waste from Waterways

Like other artificial reefs and natural reefs, the poles are intended to provide hard-surface habitat that fish and other sea dwellers use for shelter, feeding and spawning.

Even with regulations and restrictions governing manmade structures, opinions on artificial reefs are mixed.

Advocates say the artificial reefs provide beneficial habitat for marine life, enhance recreational opportunities and help reduce impact on natural reefs.

Opponents, such as PETA, don’t share the enthusiasm. Dozens of unique habitat models at fishiding.com

“Artificial reefs are unnecessary encroachments that only benefit fishers, divers, and oil companies—they do nothing to help local ecosystems and the animals who live there,’’ according to a statement from PETA.by Patti Roth

Endangered species status, habitat proposed for fish in Arizona, New Mexico

No one is sure how many Zuni bluehead suckers are left, but biologists say the fish is no longer found in 90 percent of its historic range. Dozens of unique habitat models at fishiding.com

“This fish is in really big trouble,” said Tierra Curry, a biologist for the Center for Biological Diversity, which spent years pushing for the fish’s protection.

The 8-inch-long, algae-eating fish is native to the waters of the Canyon de Chelly, the Little Colorado and Zuni rivers, according to the government. But its numbers were severely diminished decades ago by poisons that were used to kill native fish and introduce trout for sport fishing.

Logging and erosion also damaged habitat for the sucker, said Melissa Mata, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife biologist. She said sediment from erosion filled streambeds, covering the pebbles and stones that are home to the algae the fish feeds on and smothering its eggs.

In addition to ongoing concerns about sedimentation, Mata said drought, wildfires and overgrown vegetation now threaten the remaining isolated populations of the fish.

In a companion proposal to the endangered species listing, the government also identified 293 miles of streams in northeastern Arizona and northwestern New Mexico as critical habitat for the fish.

The critical habitat designation requires an additional level of review – by the Fish and Wildlife Service – for any activity that would require a federal permit, from building a bridge or a road to proposals for major development projects.

Active restoration of the fish’s habitat will depend on available funding, Mata said.

Curry believes the endangered species designation will help the fish’s population stabilize and grow, noting that 14 other endangered fish – including the Gila Trout, native to Arizona – have made significant comebacks since being listed as endangered.

Restoring the Zuni bluehead sucker population will help maintain an important food source for larger fish and mammals, as well as helping to keep waterways cleaner, Curry said.

The fish spent decades as a candidate for endangered species status. But in 2004, it and 757 other species were included in a lawsuit by conservationists aimed at getting the Fish and Wildlife Service to act. In a 2011 settlement of that case, the agency agreed to consider all the species in the suit and determine by 2018 whether they should be listed as endangered species.

Sometimes the effects of an animal extinction aren’t noticed for 10 to 15 years but eventually they surface, said Wally Murphy, a field office supervisor in New Mexico for Fish and Wildlife.

When a species becomes extinct “it generally has cascading effects that, in some cases, are irreparable,” he said.

The notices on the Zuni bluehead sucker was published Friday in the Federal Register, starting a 60-day public comment period on the proposal. Currently, Fish and Wildlife staff said they do not know of any opposition.By MARY SHINN
Cronkite News

Snowflakes painted a picturesque winter scene Thursday morning throughout Demopolis.

However, the cold weather didn’t stop eager Demopolis High students, along with the Army Corps of Engineers, from working to create fish habitats along the river.

“The snow is not going to stop us,” Anne Cross, ranger said. “We are excited to come together as a community to create fish habitat.”

The students and USACE workers bundled old Christmas trees that will soon be sunk in different areas along the river. The trees make great habitats for fish like crappie.

Pieces of iron will be tied to the trees that will sink them about 10 feet or so, according to Brandon Smith from USACE.

Various participants helped to band trees together to create fish habitats. Shown in the picture are Jason Cassity, Austin Thornbough, Brandon Smith, Marshall Thomas, Joy Snellgrove, Dakota Cunningham, Blake Bowden, Ben Sherrod and Anne Cross (kneeling).

Demopolis High school FFA club and agriculture department worked on the project.

Students in the high school FFA club and agriculture department worked on the project.

Teacher Joy Snellgrove said experience teaches students several valuable skills by granting them this hands-on experience.

“It teaches them more about conservation efforts,” she said. “Also they learn job skills and get to see other job opportunities out there.”

Students thought the project was very fun, despite Thursday’s cold weather.

“It’s fun to do something like this and help,” Dakota Cunningham, a junior said.

Cunningham said students have been learning more about reusing items in class and this project gave them a chance to get help in the community.

Later this month, there will be three boats that will go out on the river to drop the trees. The trees were all donated from people throughout Demopolis. Dozens of unique habitat models at fishiding.com

Also partnering with DHS and the USACE for the project is Alabama Power, the city of Demopolis, Tractor Supply, the U.S. Coast Guard and volunteers of Foscue Park.By Brittney Knox

Fish habitat improvement funds released

David Beasley, head Fisheries Biologist for Solitude Lake Management talks about the need for fish habitat for a balanced aquatic environment. Fishiding.com and Solitude Lake Management have been working closely together to help clients up and down the East coast improve water quality and fish habitat. Beasley has been a strong leader in helping lake and pond owners understand the multiple benefits of adding and improving fish habitat in their waters. Dozens of unique habitat models at fishiding.com

Together, working with numerous Federal and State agencies , private lake owners, lake management associations and DNR Biologists, habitat restoration and improvement is near the top of everyone’s list.

Artificial fish habitat made from PVC, never decay and only improve with time. Un-like wood, plants and natural products that decay over time and remove dissolved oxygen from the water, bio film and periphyton growth adhere to PVC, creating nature’s finest available food for fry development. This magical film excels in nutrient uptake, converting over abundant phosphorus, nitrogen and other nutrients from the water brought in from run-off  fertilizer, and plant decay. This inert substrate allows algae growth all year long, providing this important “mother’s milk” of small fish development.

Check out all the products available on-line at fishiding.com or Solitude Lake Management and see why the Industry Leader’s are leading with fishiding artificial Fish habitat Products.

SOLitude Lake Management celebrates 2012 outreach and volunteer efforts

Source: SubmittedSOLitude Lake Management staff gathers with a check representing the $16,500 donation in cash and goods donated through The SOLution program in 2012.  From top to bottom (l-r) are Brad Harris, Trina Duncan, Matthew Phillips, David Beasley, Ellen Stace, Shannon Junior, David Riedl, Gavin Ferris, Lisa Richards, Greg Blackham, Kim Niesel, Brent Weber, Kevin Tucker, Kyle Finerfrock, Cyd Kroskey, Jessica Mueller, Dave Ellison, Tracy King, Dustin Kennedy and John Phelps.