They may not have been visible to a casual observer but to 50 Berwyn Heights Elementary School students who released their ‘babies’ into a tributary of the Anacostia River on Friday, the American shad were like pets.
‘‘It’s too bad we had to release them,” said fourth-grader Ijeoma Uwahemo, adding that she would miss the fraction-of-an-inch-long fry, or baby fish, she and the rest of her class had cared for over the past week.
The fish-raising effort was part of an ongoing program aimed at restoring to the Anacostia populations of the overfished shad, a plankton-eating species indigenous to the Eastern seaboard.
In addition to the fourth-grade class, two sixth-grade classes also kept shad eggs — and then fry, when the eggs hatched April 30 — in their classrooms for a week. The students learned to feed the fish and twice a day check the concentration of ammonia in their tank water.
‘‘The students saw every step of the life cycle,” said Margaret Strohecker, the school’s science coordinator. ‘‘They really feel like these are their babies.”
Coordinated by the Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin, Living Classrooms of the National Capital Region and the Anacostia Watershed Society, the educational initiative last year released more than 20,000 fry into the Anacostia and Potomac rivers, according to livingclassroomsdc.org.
‘‘They come back to the stream where they were born to spawn,” said Lee Cain, an environmental educator for the Anacostia Watershed Society. Cain gave the students a short talk about the shad and later helped the students release the fish.
‘‘They’re a pretty important food source for bald eagles, osprey [and] dolphins,” he said.
While Berwyn Heights Elementary School received about 1,000 eggs, only 500 survived to hatch and make it to the Anacostia. Every day last week, the students had to remove the dead eggs from the live ones in their classrooms.
‘‘It was important that the dead eggs get removed ... because the dead eggs begin to decompose and give off nitrogen and ammonia gasses that compromise the living eggs,” fourth-grade teacher Ellen Bastio said.
Because they are a food source for other fish, it is unlikely that all 500 of the released fry will see adulthood, said Whitney Byrd, director of Environmental Education Programs for the Anacostia Watershed Society.
‘‘If we see them here again one day we will be happy,” sixth-grader Erick Osorio said.
Even though 100 students were involved in caring for the fish, for logistical reasons only half that number could come to the river for the actual release. Several students made posters bidding their adopted offspring farewell. Others waved and said goodbye to the fish — some of which they had named — as they were placed in the water.
‘‘I named two fishes,” fourth-grader Christopher Rivera said as he watched Cain slowly empty buckets containing the fish into the river. ‘‘One Michael Jackson and the other one Michael.”
E-mail Anath Hartmann at ahartmann@gazette.net.
