ROME, N.Y. -- The recent discovery of tiny, invasive zebra mussels earlier this month at the state’s Rome Fish Hatchery in Oneida County has created a giant headache for the state Department of Environmental Conservation with the opening day of the state’s trout fishing season a month away.

The revelation will result in reduced or possibly no stocking of trout this spring in an undisclosed number of Upstate New York waterways in parts of the Adirondacks and Central New York. In some cases, different trout species from other fish hatcheries will be stocked in place of ones that are regularly stocked in waters.

And ultimately, the entire hatchery will have be “decontaminated, redesigned and reconstructed,” DEC said.

DEC operates 12 fish hatcheries in New York and stocks more than 2.3 million catchable-size brook, brown and rainbow trout in more than 309 lakes and ponds and roughly 2,900 miles of streams across the state.

DEC operates 12 fish hatcheries in New York and stocks more than 2.3 million catchable-size brook, brown and rainbow trout in over 309 lakes and ponds and roughly 2,900 miles of streams across the state.

The Rome hatchery, four miles of the city of Rome, is one of DEC’s largest, annually raising nearly 160,000 pounds of brook, rainbow and brown trout. Hatchery staff “play a major role in providing fish for airplane and helicopter stocking of remote waters,” DEC notes on its website.

The Rome Fish Disease Center, also known as the Rome Lab, is also located on the hatchery grounds. Staff at the lab maintain a brood stock of disease-resistant strains of brook and brown trout, along with a laboratory where research activities and disease diagnosis of fish can be conducted.

Zebra mussels, an invasive species, are filter-feeding freshwater bivalve mollusks. Zebra mussels are small, ¼” to 1 ½” long, and D-shaped with light and dark brown stripes.

Zebra mussels are an invasive, fingernail- sized, mollusk native to fresh waters in Euroasia. They negatively impact ecosystems – filtering out algae that native species need for food. They also attach to, as well as incapacitate native mussels and can clog up water intake pipes.

They were discovered in Delta Lake in late January, which supplies much of the water to the Rome hatchery located a short distance downstream from the lake’s dam. The hatchery also relies on groundwater from a spring to raise its trout.

Upon finding them in the lake, DEC immediately launched an investigation and discovered zebra mussel larvae Feb. 4 in hatchery ponds filled with water from the lake that contained brook and brown trout. There were none found in ponds fed by spring water.

Many of the ponds at the hatchery get their water from Delta Lake; some from spring water.

The juvenile zebra mussels found at the hatchery are not readily visible to the naked eye. They can could be easily be dislodged and loaded into stocking trucks on fish or on nets, and then transported and deposited into waterways where they are not currently present, DEC said.

Is there some kind of chemical treatment that can be used to kill all the zebra mussels in the hatcheries waters before the fish are stocked? DEC officials said some treatments are available, but not 100 percent reliable and they said they’re taking every precaution to prevent the spread of zebra mussels in the state’s waters.

Considering all the effort and money spent on raising the trout for this spring at the hatchery, DEC officials can’t just kill them or not stock them. DEC officials this week said they would only stock trout raised at the hatchery for the coming season and next year in waterways that currently have zebra mussels in them.

As for this year: “Without the trout from Rome, there are not enough brown trout and brook trout available at other hatcheries to stock ‘zebra mussel negative’ waters at 100 percent of the number planned (from the Rome Hatchery) for these species. Some waters will receive fewer fish while others may see an increase in stocking. Unfortunately, the situation creates an actual shortfall in the number of fish available for zebra mussel negative waters,” DEC said in a written statement.

“As such, some waters that usually receive fish may not be stocked,” DEC said.

And in some cases, Rome’s contaminated brown trout and brook trout will be stocked in some waterways with zebra mussels in place of rainbow trout from other hatcheries. This will free up rainbow trout for stocking from other hatcheries to reduce the stocking shortfall in waters that don’t have zebra mussels, DEC said.

However, in those waterways scheduled to be stocked without zebra mussels “fewer trout will be stocked and some smaller stockings will be cut due to the shortage of trout from the ‘clean’ hatcheries, DEC said.

The 2020 spring trout stocking list, published annually on the DEC website, will reflect all these changes.

As the future of the hatchery after 2021, DEC said it “must be decontaminated, redesigned and reconstructed to achieve the maximum production possible using only spring water.”

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Have a question or suggested story concerning the Upstate NY outdoors scene? Outdoors writer David Figura can be reached by email at dfigura@NYup.com, on Facebook or by calling 315-470-6066.

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