Turner Elementary sixth-graders watch Lynne Richard of the Lake Auburn Watershed Protection Commission scoop brook trout fry into a cup so pupils can release them into a tributary of Lake Auburn on Thursday. Jane Campbell’s students released 300 trout after watching them grow from eggs in their classroom. Watershed commission educators worked with the pupils in lessons at the school. The final lesson involved a field trip to North Auburn to measure water qualities such as oxygen, temperature, acidity and conductivity before releasing the trout. Richard said she has seven classrooms at various schools within the watershed area raising trout in the “FishKids” program. Pupils, from left, are Madoxx Taylor, Ian Tilley, Teagan Wadsworth and Andrew Cremona. 

Ian Tilley, 12, waits to release his cup of trout while Teagan Wadsworth, 12, and his sixth-grade teacher Jane Campbell release their trout in a Lake Auburn tributary in North Auburn. 

Ava DeMerchant, 12, measure the pH level of water running from The Basin and into Lake Auburn. Students used a pH test to measure the acidity level, one of the handful of water quality measurements that students performed to determine if the water was suitable for brook trout.

Turner Elementary sixth graders raised 300 brook trout from eggs in the classroom before releasing the fry into a Lake Auburn tributary on Thursday. 

Lynne Richard of the Lake Auburn Watershed Protection Commission holds up a blue colored ball with an X on it. Students passed along a large number of colored balls to simulate how rain moved through the watershed. The ball with the X represents a nonpoint source of pollution. Students did not know where the “pollution” came from and that is what makes nonpoint sources such a concern, Richard said. 

Turner Elementary sixth graders, teachers and the bus driver cross over the dam at the outlet of The Basin during their field trip on Thursday. 


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