Salmon Release

 

Last week we bid farewell to the chinook salmon we have been raising in our classrooms since late October. We had hoped to have our students participate in releasing all of our fish in Chehalem Creek where we conducted our outdoor school project. It was very muddy there from the previous week’s rains, so we changed our game plan a bit. Mrs. Willcuts and Mr. Evers released one-third of the fish in Chehalem Creek, and we had our students release the remaining two-thirds in the Willamette River at Roger’s Landing. As Ewing Young Park develops, we hope to have greater access to the creek during the winter months for projects, and perhaps our students can be a part of that process.

Jet Boat Trip

The weather was perfect for being on the water today on our jet boat trip. Our students studied geography and bridge engineering this year, so along with our earlier bridge tour trip, this was a great reinforcement of what they learned. We also did many 360’s and took some healthy amounts of white water over the bow!

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Chinook Salmon Release

It was a little sad to seem them go, and they were a real good group of fish, but it was time to move on with their lives. Yesterday we released our 1,000 chinook salmon fry that we raised in our classrooms since October 23rd. The we]ather was great, for December, and certainly better than the below freezing temps we had last week. The water temperature was 37 degrees so it was chillier than the 52 degree water our chinook fry were used to, but they seemed to adjust fine. Below is a short video of our release day beginning with our students scooping them out of the incubator. Our next planned hatch will be rainbow trout in the winter of 2015!

One Week Until Release!

Next Monday we will release our chinook salmon fry in an ODFW approved site on the Willamette River. The egg sacs of the salmon fry are gradually getting smaller and our fish are swimming more freely around the incubators. Stay tuned for pics of the release.