#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. This week, a helicopter with a valuable cargo of nelma fry flew to lake Melkoe twice. The Norilsk fish hatchery has raised and released into the natural habitat about ten thousand fish of the salmon family.
Nelma juveniles were reared at the fish hatchery in Norilsk for almost a year. To be released into the lakes, the fish had to grow to at least ten grams in weight and about ten centimeters in size. The previous batch of young nelma was released into the Yenisey in a much smaller size and weight.
This time, the method of delivering the fry to the water was also different. It was possible to bring juveniles to the Yenisey in a special container on a truck and release them through a corrugated pipe to the river depth, but with sending to Melkoye, the transport issue had to be solved in a completely different, albeit similar, way.
The fish from the baths at the plant was reloaded into special plastic bags, oxygen was added to it from a cylinder with compressed air and bags were hermetically packed.
After that, the polyethylene bag was placed in a plastic barrel or placed in a container with heat-insulating material. In some cases, plastic bottles with ice or cold water were added to such containers to avoid overheating during delivery to the place – July in Norilsk is now hot by local standards.
The plant employees simply bought plastic boxes with insulating material from a hardware store. To do this, fish farmers carried out special calculations and correlated the size of the container with the number of fry, water and air in the bag.
The fish farmers on the lake coordinated the place of juveniles’ release into the water with the pilots of Norilsk Avia, asking them to land a helicopter closer to the water, so that the shore had a small but sufficient shallow for fry. The helicopter pilots coped with this task brilliantly, landing the vehicle on the spit of a small island with the door leaves to the water.
Fish farmers released the fry from bags, barrels and boxes, stepping into the water in fishing boots. The place turned out to be successful also because such a ‘rich breakfast’ could not be seen by seagulls and the loss of fry at this stage was practically excluded.
This season, this is the last batch of fry grown and released into the wild by the Norilsk fish hatchery. By all indications, the environmental programs implementation by the Norilsk industrial enterprises will load fish farmers for a long time and thoroughly.
For example, the current batch of nelma fry release was controlled by Nornickel Technical Services LLC representatives, several previous ones by Norilsktransgaz, NTEC and other local companies. Enterprises that entered the territory relatively recently are keenly interested in and are already participating in the program for replenishing the Taimyr aquatic biological resources.
Earlier we wrote that the Norilsk-Taimyr Energy Company plans to annually release three million fry into the Yenisey.
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Text: Denis Kozhevnikov, Photo: author