The students in the Enrichment Seminar Youth Fisheries Sciences are raising trout. The trout were delivered as eggs and are now growing towards being fingerlings. When the trout reach the stage of fingerling they will then be released into a local waterway. We are hopeful that we will be able to release them into Lake Elkhorn. It would be wonderful for students from Lake Elkhorn Middle to be able to release trout into Lake Elkhorn. This is part of the Mid-Atlantic Trout in the Classroom program.
For more information about the program, please see below.
The Mid-Atlantic Trout in the Classroom (MATIC) program is a voluntary effort started and originally supported by the Potomac-Patuxent Chapter of Trout Unlimited (PPTU). It is part of a loose and growing national network of over 4,500 TIC programs in more than 20 states. About 40% of these TIC programs are associated with Trout Unlimited (TU). TIC began around 40 years ago in California. It expanded to other states and was introduced into New York City in 1995, where it later caught the attention of Potomac-Patuxent Trout Unlimited here in Maryland.
The MATIC program started in 2003 with 3 elementary schools in Montgomery County and has expanded to a combination of 95 elementary, middle and high schools, two colleges and 4 outdoor education centers in 10 Maryland Counties, Baltimore and the District of Columbia. Partly due to MATIC’s statewide expansion, the Mid-Atlantic Council of Trout Unlimited, made up of TU chapters throughout Maryland and The District of Columbia took on stewardship of the program in 2012. This growth in MATIC has been accompanied by the development of principles, policies and practices which help to provide uniform guidance to this expanding program.
MATIC’s long range vision includes helping to implement the state’s education requirement for environmental literacy. Through the MATIC, teachers will promote a durable conservation ethic among their students on whom the future of our water and other natural resources depends.
THE MATIC MISSION is to introduce students to cold water conservation as the first step in becoming future protectors of and advocates for clean and healthy streams, lakes and rivers.
MATIC is essentially a cold water conservation program taught to students in a classroom. The students are provided with fertilized rainbow trout eggs which they raise in a 55-gallon tank, in water kept at optimum conditions for the eggs to hatch and grow rapidly to fingerling size. The MATIC program concludes with a release of these fish into an approved designated stream. Here, the connection is made between the tank water which has been carefully controlled with respect to temperature, chemical balance and cleanliness and the stream receiving the trout. The students see that they have created in the classroom a microcosm of what prevails in nature.
II. PRINCIPLES
The MATIC program is teacher driven. Teachers, rather than school administrators, initiate applications to join the MATIC family.
Teachers are responsible for implementing MATIC’s mission of introducing students to cold water conservation.
Schools own the equipment required to successfully raise the trout.
Schools provide financial and administrative support to the program.
Under teacher supervision, students are responsible for carrying out all MATIC trout raising activities.
The release event as a yearly field trip during school hours is an integral part of the MATIC program.
MATIC management will facilitate the MATIC program with technical, training, advisory and other types of support.
Volunteers have an essential role in helping implement MATIC. Because of its mission, MATIC needs to partner with like-minded organizations that promote conservation in order to implement and enrich its program to the students.