Hundreds of dead fish have turned up in western P.E.I. rivers in the last week. CBC

A provincially-funded private hatchery may take some of the sting out of the devastating fish kills on P.E.I. this week.

Hundreds of large fish were found dead in three waterways in western parts of the province, toted as the worst fish kill in decades.

It's estimated thousands of fish have likely died, including most of the brood stock, in Mill River, Trout River and the Big Pierre Jacques River.

Daryl Guignon is a fisheries biologist with UPEI. He said, luckily, the province funded a private hatchery to collect brood stock three years ago, to protect against something like this.

"As it happens, we have about 6,000 fish ready to go back into the Trout River this fall. It won't, of course, cover the complete number that were killed, but at least it gives us a good head start, and it's sort of nice that at least there's a program in place."

Guignon said it would still take several years for the rivers to recover and that it's important to know what caused the fish kill.

Water, debris and fish samples have been collected from all three incidents.

It's expected to take several weeks for test results to come back.