Tilapia are a prickly problem for Groton magnet school students

Groton - For these high school freshmen, one of their earliest and most important lessons didn't involve "Romeo and Juliet" or the history of world civilizations, but how to handle a live tilapia without getting pricked by its spiny dorsal fin.

Not that the 108 students at the Marine Sciences Magnet High School of Southeastern Connecticut aren't learning about those other topics. It's just that acquiring tilapia-handling skills has a more immediate practical benefit - avoidance of pain and injury.

"I've gotten stuck a couple of times, but then I got the hang of it," said Anthony Jordan of Waterford, 14, after spending part of his morning Tuesday measuring tilapia in the school's aquaculture lab. "You carefully come on top of them with your hand and bring them out.

"This is an awesome experience," he said of his first year thus far at the school. "I've always wanted to work with fish, and now I've got the chance."

Jordan and his classmates, part of the inaugural freshman class at the new school, spend part of every other school day in the aquaculture lab engaged in various tasks related to raising tilapia and rainbow trout, from feeding to water testing to periodically weighing and measuring them, then graphing their progress.

One of the lessons involved real-life troubleshooting about the cause of death of about half of the original stock of trout that arrived at the school just before the December holiday break. Ultimately, the students determined that one of the trout became trapped in the filter of the tank and died. Then, as it decayed, it released ammonia into the water and poisoned the other fish.

About 400 tilapia and about 150 trout are growing in the lab's 700-gallon tanks, said Eric Litvinoff, teacher in the aquaculture lab. Water temperature in the tilapia tanks is about 85 degrees, to simulate their native African pond environment, while the temperature of the trout tank is about 55 degrees, like a stream in the Pacific Northwest.

At the end of the school year, the tilapia will be ready for sale to local fish markets and restaurants, Litvinoff said. The trout will take another year to mature.

"Tilapia grow very fast, so kids can really see the growth," he said. "They're very robust, so they can withstand a little more."

Later this year, he added, students will learn from a chef how to prepare and filet live fish for market. In business classes at the school, students will develop marketing plans to sell the fish to restaurants and fish markets.

Nicholas Spera, principal of the school, said the aquaculture lab is integral to the school's curriculum, and one of its more interesting features. As freshmen, students raise the two freshwater species as an introduction to aquaculture. By the time they're seniors, they'll be engaged in more complex aquaculture projects, including lessons with oysters and other shellfish in marine environments. This spring, students will seed eight oyster beds off Pine Island that have been donated to the school.

Spera said the school, which has a capacity of about 250 students, received 486 applications for the 76 slots open in the freshman and sophomore classes for next year. The applications came from throughout New London County and beyond, including Westbrook and Clinton, he said.

Angelina Presti of Preston said she's glad she's enrolled in the school.

"I've always been interested in science," said Presti, whose job during that day's lab was to record the length and weight of each fish as other students placed each one on a scale, then along a ruler, calling out the numbers. Later, the numbers would be entered into a spreadsheet and graphed.

"Oh, we've got some floppers," said Litvinoff, as one of the sleek striped fish flipped onto the concrete floor from a net a student was using to transfer it from the tank to the measuring table. Another student quickly scooped up the escapee.

"These guys are lively," Litvinoff said.

j.benson@theday.com