Busch Gardens donates tilapia to nonprofit hurt by freezes

Busch Gardens has to pull more than 1,000 blue tilapia out of a lake that needs cleaning.

Meanwhile, less than an hour north of the theme park, a nonprofit group dedicated to alleviating world hunger through sustainable fish farming is struggling to replenish about 2,000 blue tilapia killed by winter freezes.

Their paths converged last week. It seems like destiny.

Sometime in the next couple of weeks - as soon as it warms up enough for the tilapia to survive outside - Busch Gardens will send about 1,000 fish to Morning Star Fishermen in Dade City. The nonprofit, formed in 1993 by Hans Geissler and his wife, Sigrid, brings in people from Central America to teach them sustainable methods of raising tilapia. Not only do people learn how to raise fish, they learn how to set up a system that uses the fish waste to fertilize vegetables and other plants, which filter the water the fish live in.

"We're definitely excited about the partnership," said Phil Hillary, Busch Gardens' assistant curator of zoological operations. "We looked at this as a great opportunity to help him with his facility, and also it helps us out as well."

Busch Gardens is moving some koi from one of two lakes stocked with fish. The koi are a draw - guests like to feed them; but the tilapia provide little benefit other than eating algae off pond walls, and they are getting big and now number between 1,000 and 2,000.

A staff member who lives in Dade City mentioned Morning Star Fishermen; then news reports surfaced about the fish kills at Morning Star, and a meeting with Geissler was arranged last week.

All of the fish in Geissler's outdoor tanks - about half of the 4,000 fish he had on hand - died after the January freeze dropped the water temperature below 40 degrees. The water needs to be at least 50 degrees for the tropical fish to survive, and Morning Star's tanks aren't heated. Until this winter, they haven't needed to be.

"I've never seen anything like this in Florida," Geissler said. "We need warm weather. ... If the water temperature goes down they don't eat a lot."

Geissler was able to save most of the fish stored in his indoor tanks by pumping in well water, which is warmer, and setting up a solar heating system.

He's thinking about installing some type of geothermal heating system to heat the outdoor tanks. For now, though, Geissler wants to wait until the weather gets warmer to move in the fish from Busch Gardens.

The park expects to be sending as many tilapia as it can move - about 1,000, Hillary said. When the time comes, the fish will be loaded into a 300- to 400-gallon tank of water that's rigged with aerators and a protective stress coating to replace the natural one the fish are likely to lose in the move. Then the tank will be loaded onto a flatbed trailer and driven to Dade City.

Bush Gardens staffers learned about large-scale fish moves from their counterparts at Sea World, Hillary said. Such moves aren't common, though: The last time the park had to move fish like this was five years ago - the last time the lake was cleaned. Mostly, it ships more manageable numbers of fish - small enough to fit in boxes.

"This is the biggest shipment I've been involved with," Hillary said.