In October 1989 the Keweenaw Bay Tribal Hatchery was established with a goal to replace as many Lake Trout as what was being harvested by tribal fishing activity. Concerned with population restoration efforts in the western Upper Peninsula, the KBIC began a Stocking Program in 1997. Years of successful stocking and the introduction of the Lake Superior basin strain, jumbo river brook trout, lead to many expansions in hatchery facilities. In 2009 the KBIC Natural Resources Department initiated a walleye rearing and management program. Current production goals are to release 50,000 lake trout yearlings, 40,000 brook trout yearlings, and 50,000 walleye fry annually.

The KBIC dedicates tribal dollars to support the departments rearing and stocking programs. The tribe is committed to Great Lakes restoration efforts and the protection of all Treaty resources. BIA Fish Hatchery maintenance funds supplement facility maintenance to help support hatching, rearing, and stocking programs. BIA Fish, Wildlife and Parks money helps support the hatchery and our goals of restoring our native species in the Great Lakes.

Imagine you are floating along in an aquafer some 160 feet below the ground. One of our four wells pulls you up and into the Hatchery water supply, your first stop is the Head Tank. This is the staging ground, here you can shed off some Radon, a naturally-occurring element in area groundwater, and prepare to enter the system. Below you a pipe opens and gravity pulls you and the water along into the Recirculation System. Zooming through the pipes you are headed straight for the Drum Filter, our first step in cleaning the water before entering the tanks. The Drum Filter removes large organic solids that may have passed through the filters or accumulated in the piping. After flipping around the drum filter for a few minutes you are pushed through and dumped into the Reservoir. You don’t get to enjoy the calmness of the Reservoir for long soon a pump turns on and pulls you up into the Bio-Filter. The water enters the bottom and is pushed up through Koch rings to remove ammonia from the water, a process known as nitrification. As you reach the top of the Bio-Filter you enter another pipe that ships you off to the Gas Management Tower (GMT). In the GMT you are dropped down into a large filter that removes carbon dioxide and helps oxygenate the water. As you make it through you then go back into the Recirculation System to be poured into the Tanks. So far you have been pulled from 160 feet below surface, dropped into the hatchery, spun around in a large Drum Filter, cleansed by Koch rings, and dropped into a slip and slide right into a fish tank. Now you might be eaten, or you might pass through the gill of one of the thousands of fish surrounding you. Maybe you get lucky and end up in the discharge, you’ll end up back in the river here between the buildings, then who knows, maybe back down to the aquifer to do it all again.

If you have been to the hatchery in the past 25 years, you may not have seen all those moving parts. In the early years concerns over sustainable water use arose. To address these issues the hatchery implemented a recirculation system to continuously recycle water and allow over 90% of the system to remain ‘closed’. Safely and effectively recycling water requires the system to limit the build-up of organic material, drum filters, bio filters, and gas management towers all play their role to remove organic material from the recirculating system. In more recent years we have expanded to include several incubation rooms and now a Walleye Incubation Facility to add to our already established Walleye Ponds and Trout Rearing Facilities.

The Walleye Incubation Facility is another step towards a self-sustaining fishery for our community. To honor our goal of replacing all fish harvested we continue to support those species targeted by our members. The facility itself will house up to five million eggs, these eggs will be sourced from wild gametes collected by the Field Fisheries crew.

If this introduction to our facilities and forward looking goals promote interest in touring the facilities and experiencing the art of aquaculture give us a call at (906) 524-5757 ext.4241.