There is a beautiful rite in the Buddhist tradition, to release birds, animals and fish once a year, which symbolizes the cleansing of the karma and soul. On the fish farms around Kharkiv, baby fish are released in open water on a regular basis.
On November 14, nearly 4.5 tons of 18-month-old silver carps were released into the Chervonooskil artificial reservoir. Of course, it has nothing to do with spiritual practices, being a routine stage in fish breeding. However, the process (known as “fish stocking”) gives the participants and observers a lot of positive emotions. Ecologists and fish breeders argue that it is also good for the environment and purifies water bodies. By the end of November, fish breeders are planning to release up to 30 tons of young fish from hatcheries into rivers, lakes, and ponds. Only in a couple of years 100-gram silver carps, which grow very rapidly, will weigh dozens of kilos.
“What is the difference between a professional fish breeder and an amateur fisherman?” muses Serhii Cheremysyn, head of a fish farm. “If you take something from Nature, you must give something back. That is what fish breeders do, they are very careful with nature. Meanwhile, amateurs often behave like poaching predators. They destroy fish populations and entire ecological systems.”
People who chose the profession of fish breeder (or pisciculturist, in more academic terms) are known by their emotional, careful treatment of Nature. Oleksandr Kostrubov, the farm’s senior breeder, told us that the silver carp was introduced to this part of the country back in the 1930, when it was brought from China and acclimatized. The only problem is that the capricious carps would never breed in Ukraine, so insemination and incubation is done artificially. Here there are no waterfalls and rapids like those in the Amur River, where the silver carp is indigenous. The fish need them for spawning. However, the expert does not rule out a possibility of building a sort of “fish aqua park,” so silver carps find themselves almost at home.
