- NARRATOR: It's time to feed the fish.
[splashing]
- WORKER: You don't want to stick your hand in there.
- NARRATOR: These hungry red drum and seatrout
are at Sea Center Texas in Lake Jackson.
Located on 75 acres, the fish hatchery raises
red drum, seatrout, and southern flounder,
stocking between 10 to 16 million fish into
Texas bays each year.
[acoustic music]
- Stock enhancement is not just putting fish out there
for people to catch.
It is the idea of making our naturally occurring population
of game fish more robust.
- NARRATOR: Sea Center Texas also features an aquarium,
nature trail and fishing events.
It's open to the public and it's always free.
- Pond 5 probably has the same issue going on.
- NARRATOR: It's 7 am and hatchery staff are preparing
for a day of raising fish.
Biologist Jeff Bayer starts his day in the baby making room.
- JEFF: We're going to start our day collecting eggs
from a spotted seatrout spawn.
And those floating eggs will come out of the tank
and into an egg collector.
And we see that the eggs have started to float so we know
these are good eggs, these are fertilized eggs.
- NARRATOR: Now it's time for an egg count.
- JEFF: 1,700 trout eggs fit into one milliliter of water.
So today we have 102,000 fertilized eggs
- NARRATOR: Next the eggs go into the incubation tank,
which is aerated with oxygen.
- JEFF: So that's the idea:
these trout are spawning in the passes, it's a little rougher.
We're replicating what happens in the bay.
- NARRATOR: After the eggs hatch, the tiny larvae go
into outside ponds to grow.
- JEFF: One of my responsibilities as a biologist,
we're going to read the ponds.
We take a lot of data here.
I can see what the oxygen has been.
I can see how many fish were stocked.
I can see what size the fish are.
We're trying to produce 400,000 fingerlings in a 1-acre pond.
- NARRATOR: For Jeff, it's personal.
[inspirational music]
- JEFF: I grew up near the Gulf coast.
My dad grew up fishing speckled trout and red drum
so I grew up doing that, too.
And by the early 80s, here I am 10-12 years old,
and even I knew I wasn't catching red drum anymore.
And I became fascinated with aquaculture.
[crickets chirp]
- NARRATOR: While most folks are still sleeping,
Jeff and his crew are collecting seatrout fingerlings
to stock in the bay.
- JEFF: I'm going to try to put between 6 and 10 pounds of fish
in a bucket.
So it's 150 pounds on the trailer.
- NARRATOR: By the time the rest of us are starting our day,
the young seatrout are getting ready for their new home.
[pump engine runs]
And off they go!
- JEFF: I'm going to want to release them where I see some
grass over there or some oyster shell, somewhere these
little guys can hide.
- NARRATOR: As often happens, a curious onlooker stops by.
- And you figure these will be two years these will be legal.
- Well that's great.
That's money well spent.
- JEFF: Thank you!
We appreciate you!
This is why we do it.
- NARRATOR: Meanwhile, thousands of tiny trout now have
a new home in the bay.
- All done.
200,000 West Matagorda trout released alive and healthy.
- NARRATOR: But how many of those trout will make it
to adulthood?
If seatrout have the same results as red drum,
the outlook is promising.
- He was just pop, pop...
- NARRATOR: A study with Texas A&M showed about
10 to 21 percent of red drum caught
were hatchery-raised fish.
- It's really cool when you pull up to a red light
and you got that trailer behind the truck and you hear honk
and you turn over and here's a guy in his Saltwater Life hat
and he's giving you a big one of these.
And it's very rewarding, very rewarding.
- NARRATOR: This project was funded in part by a grant
from the Sport Fish Restoration Program.