Source: The Globe and Mail- October 19, 2012
Every morning when he arrives at school, Cody Sponagle, a whippet-thin 17-year-old, feeds the fish in Classroom S1 in Bendale Business and Technical Institute, in central Scarborough.
But this is no ordinary student chore.
Mr. Sponagle and a handful of his classmates in Bendale’s “green industries” program are responsible for raising 300 tilapia in a pair of thousand-gallon tanks that represent the largest school-based “aquaponic” fish farming operation in Canada, and possibly North America. “It’s a pioneering program,” said Leif Loponen, Mr. Sponagle’s teacher.
“We’ve been learning how to grow the fish, feed them properly, and learning how the filters work,” explained the soft-spoken Grade 12 student, who helped set up the $5,000 second-hand equipment last year…
