By By GREG KATSKI
Community Editor
CHOCOWINITY — After eight long, malodorous months, students in Steve Fuchs’ aquaculture class have harvested the fruits of their fish-raising labor.
Tony Tripp, owner of Washington Crab &Oyster, arrived at Southside High School shortly after noon Wednesday to purchase a bounty of tilapia raised by the third-period aquaculture class. Five students — Jody Harding, Geordie Miller, Trey Elks, Luke Meyers and Blake Jones — helped move the full-size fish from two water tanks into a Washington Crab &Oyster trailer, completing this year’s harvest.
Students began raising the tilapia in September 2009, with students in Fuchs’ fall-semester aquaculture class handing over the fish to his current aquaculture class in January, or about halfway through the growing process. Fuchs bought the tilapia when they were, as he called them, “fingerlings.”
Fuchs said his students’ latest “crop” of fish is by far the best he’s seen since the inception of the aquaculture program in 2006. According to Fuchs, only four of the 500 tilapia raised this school year died, including one that jumped out of a tank while Fuchs was filling the fish tanks on the first day of school. He said, on average, 10 percent of the fish die before they are harvested.
“It takes a lot of responsibility to do that,” Fuchs said in regard to his students’ successful harvest. “The success of the fish is not because of me; it’s because of their hard work.”
During every aquaculture class, it takes about 45 minutes, or half a class period, for the students to clean up and prepare the fish tanks. The students’ daily chores include checking the fish, weighing the fish and cleaning the tanks’ water filters.
Fuchs’ aquaculture classes have come a long way from their humble beginnings in 2006. In a Washington Daily News article about the first harvest, Fuchs said his class lost more than 100 fish. Now, Fuchs, who is retiring from teaching at the end of the year, can go out on a high note.
He also can leave knowing that his current students have taken to the science of aquaculture.
Jody Harding, one of Fuchs’ students, said he wants to study marine biology in college.
“I can see myself doing something like this,” he said.
Harding and classmate Trey Elks said they’ve learned about different fish and what types of water in which they grow best. They agreed that aquaculture is the highlight of their school day, besides lunch.
Still, Harding said he always puts a dab of cologne on himself after aquaculture class to mask the aroma of the fish he works with, as to not scare away any cute girls.