The Brook Trout

The Wild Museum was my favorite part of the field trip this past weekend, I loved the hands-on learning environment that it presented and how connected I felt to even the tiniest mosses that were being displayed. One of the best parts of a museum such as that is the unique ability to help us view ecosystems that are normally hidden from sight like organisms too small to notice or ones that live underneath the water. I spent about 45 minutes at the tank that held the Adirondack Brook Trout (I don't remember their official name) and I felt like I had been submerged into their ecosystem. I rarely think about fish and when I do it is generally in reference to a meal I might be eating, but this exhibit made me think more about how fragile their environment is and how careful we must be when swimming, boating, and interacting with their home.

Just in case you like many of the visitors to the Wild Museum wandered past these trout without stopping to read their informational bulletin or contemplate how the world revolves around their habitat and seemingly does not notice them. I would like to give you a short list of how to identify the Adirondack Brook Trout in case you are to ever meet one in the wild.

How to Identify an Adirondack Brook Trout:

• They are spotted! The average Adirondack Brook Trout has yellow and red spots that are surrounded by a blue hallow on most of their body
• Their fins have a white racing stripe on the tips!
• From the top-down they have worm shaped lines patterning their scales

One of the most important and difficult aspects of a sustainable public and private park is thinking about the ecosystems that go unnoticed, similar to the trout, we need to see these ecosystems and then think about how our actions are affecting them as well.