On November 17th, the 7/8’s from Golden Learning Centre went to the Goldcorp mine of Balmertown to learn about ecosystems. The first thing we did was put on hard hats, safety glasses, safety vests, and made sure we all had close toed shoes/boots. Mr.Gelderland was our kind of “tour guide” you could say! He showed us around the mine and showed us a big wall map of the town and Balmer Lake.He also showed us some pictures of fish and the lake.
Balmer Lake was once a Healthy lake. Then the government let the mine use that lake to put all their tailing in. The lake turned into a brown mess. Then the mine realized how much this was affecting the ecosystem of the lake, putting all their tailings in it, so then they began cleaning. once they believed that the water was fresh enough to have living things in it, they decided to introduce some walleye from another lake into their lake. Before they let the fish free in the lake they performed a little surgery on them putting a tracker with about an 8 cm long antenna into the fish. half of the fish died but some of them survived and more time passed and the more fish began to spawn. Then one day a few people from the mine went to the lake and fished and found a bunch of healthy fish.
On our visit we did many things such as: Visiting the mine, learning, looking at the huge wall map, visiting the lake, skipping rocks, and lots and lots of walking! I really enjoyed learning about Balmer Lake and it’s history. This experience was a really fun and informative way to learn about ecology.
spacelover2003 