Nearly 600,000 trout farmed by the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission died at a McDowell County hatchery during rainfall caused by Hurricane Helene, the state agency reported.
Landslides and flooding around the Armstrong State Fish Hatchery north of Marion compromised water quality in the raceways or tanks and the hatchery building. “Extensive repairs” will be needed to fix the facility, but Wildlife Resources Commission officials are still assessing the damage.
“We lost the branch. The facility will need to be rebuilt, but we not only lost this year’s fish, but next year’s as well,” said Corey Oakley, deputy chief of the Wildlife Resources Commission’s Fisheries Management Program.
The Armstrong Hatchery is responsible for stocking trout in public waters throughout an 11-county region of Western North Carolina.
Normally, Armstrong collects 20% to 30% of the trout North Carolina stocks in a given year, Oakley said. It is likely, he added, that the damage to Armstrong will lead to fewer trout stockings, but the exact impact is not yet clear.
There are 36 canals at the hatchery, which generally draw cold, clear water from the Armstrong Creek watershed. The Wildlife Resources Commission raises brown trout, brook trout and rainbow trout.
During Helene, Armstrong Creek flooded significantly, destroying all pipes that drew water from the creek to the raceways. The pipes that make up that system have been washed away, damaged or disconnected by the rushing water, Oakley said.
Most of the damage was inflicted over a period of about an hour during the storm, Oakley said. In addition to the pipes, the flooding destroyed more than a mile of roads running through the facility along the creek.
“Where we ended up in the race tracks was either no running water because the raceways were high and dry because the pipes were broken and the water couldn’t get into the system, or we had race tracks with muddy water coming into the system. ,” said Oakley.
Both situations were deadly for trout, which depend on clean, oxygen-rich water.
The vast majority of fish farmed at Armstrong died in the raceways, either from lack of water or from muddy water entering the system, Oakley said. Their carcasses will eventually be dug out and buried somewhere in the facility.
It takes fish about two years to grow enough so that they can be moved from the tanks to the wild. When Helene struck, Armstrong had trout as small as a few inches and as large as 12 inches. Some of those fish would have been stocked this fall, Oakley said, while others would have been stocked in the spring and more next fall.
“We’ve actually lost an entire production system. We didn’t just lose,” Oakley said.
However, Oakley noted some optimism about Western North Carolina’s wild trout population.
Helene’s floods washed out creeks and rivers throughout Western North Carolina, creating rocky habitats with very little silt where trout thrived. There’s a good chance, Oakley said, that these habitats will lead to larger breeding grounds in the near future.
“In a year to two years we will probably have a very large trout brood in our mountain area,” Oakley said.
Western North Carolina’s trout fishery has an economic impact of $1.38 billion, according to a report the Wildlife Resources Commission published last year. The report estimates that approximately 370,000 people fished for trout in North Carolina in 2022, with the average angler making nine fishing trips.
As part of efforts to make up for some of the lost fish, the Wildlife Resources Commission is postponing a planned renovation of the Setzer State Fish Hatchery in Transylvania County that was supposed to begin in 2025. That project will be postponed until the summer of 2025. Armstrong Hatchery is fully operational again, Wildlife Resources Commission spokeswoman Fairley Mahlum wrote in a news release.
Oakley estimated that repairs to Armstrong’s pipes, roads and water oxygenation system could take between 12 and 18 months, depending on whether workers are available.
Once the facility is rebuilt, the trout will be placed back in the tanks and given time to acclimatize to the water there. The more familiar the fish are with the conditions, Oakley says, the less stressed they will be and the more eggs they will spawn.
“It’s a years-long process,” Oakley said, “not a months-long process.”
This story was produced with funding from the Hartfield Foundation and Green South Foundation, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners, as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The N&O has full editorial control over the work. If you would like to help support local journalism, please consider signing up for a digital subscription. You can do that here.
