Students at South Brunswick High School near Wilmington, NC, refuse to accept the thinking that rearing flounder to increase flounder stocks can’t be done. They have thousands of flounder fry on hand, the result of the first batch of fertilized eggs supplied by the University of North Carolina.

The original plan was to release the ½-inch-size fish into local estuaries in mid July. Aquaculture teacher Barry Bey and project backer Tim Barefoot have changed that date to sometime in September. “We plan to release the fish once they reach hand-size,” Barefoot said from Wilmington. “This will improve survival rates by lowering predation.”

Barefoot, Bey and students involved in the project hope a positive success rate will make North Carolina fisheries managers sit up and take notice. “If high school students can make a difference in preserving our flounder fishery, I can only imagine the positive benefits a state-funded hatchery would have on the fishery,” Barefoot concluded.

FS