Fleming College
IN-24: Innovation A

Fleming College is involved in two unique species restoration programs of cold water salmonid species indigenous to Ontario. In both instances, we are raising the species in onsite hatcheries, conducting research and teaching students as part of our Fish and Wildlife and Aquaculture programs. Species restoration is a growing field in aquaculture and we work closely with our conservation agencies. The first is the Atlantic Salmon Restoration Program where Fleming College is a partner with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources in a reintroduction of an extirpated species (from the turn of the 19th century) to the Lake Ontario through developing this strain of species from DNA research. Fleming has been a key partner in this program for several years and has raised the fish from the egg stage through to the fry and fingerling stage for stocking into the headwaters of Lake Ontario (e.g. Cobourg creek). The spawning returns have proved this program to be successful for reintroduction of the species, and local community and school children are often invited to participate in the stocking activity to raise community awareness around stewardship and the importance of biodiversity (letter attached). The second program involves raising Muskelunge in a hatchery environment, taken from Georgian bay at the egg stage by the OMNRF and raised using pellet feed stock (as opposed to live minnow feed) in a hatchery environment for reintroduction. This is one of a kind in the world in terms of advances in technology to successfully raise this species in a hatchery environment. Fleming also recently received a national conservation award for their work and groundbreaking research in this field in our onsite research hatchery facility. Lastly, attached is information about Fleming's successful award of Federal research money for a food additive to increase growth in rainbow trout (raised in our onsite hatchery) to support sustainable and optimized fish protein production by way of healthy, tested and performance driven fish fees. Both initiatives are described in the letter attached.