Mulgrave Salmon Adventure

The morning of our salmon release we wrote goodbye letters to our finned friends. Enjoy a few :)

Dear Salmon Fry,

You were so squishy, now you’re so big and fast. I remember when you shot up in the corner and now you’re just so calm. I wonder who your mom and father are. I hope that nothing will ever hurt you. I hope you get a job and get a wife. You just started the salmon cycle. I’m so proud of you no matter what. I want you to remember me, Joseph. When we release you, you will turn into smolt, then adults, then spawners and your wife will lay lots of eggs. Just like you when you were born.

Love Jed

Dear Salmon,

We got you guys as eggs. You were so small and we watched you grow. You’re now a fry and I’ll miss you so. I hope you enjoy the ocean. You’ll get into the creek and love it at once. The shimmering creek will soon be your home. You’ll travel downstream and you’ll be happy. You’ll spawn and make eggs. I’ll miss you forever. You’ll feel free swimming with the sun glistening down on you. When we release you we’ll cry but we will do it just for you. We will be happy for you swimming away. You guys gave us company and you watched all our movies. I’ll miss you forever. You were all in our hearts and it was a miracle to raise you. You might be far away but you’ll always stay by my side. You’ve always been the best audience in Reader’s Theatre. You never boo when something’s bad and that’s what makes you guys good sports. You guys may die, but that’s part of life. You’re very cute and sweet and you were my best friends. I watched you grow from eggs to alevin to fry. I’ll miss you so much. Goodbye.

Love Khayali

Dear Salmon

I love the way your tails glimmer and splash in our beautiful aqua tank. I really enjoyed watching you guys hatch, with all of your might. I also really, truly enjoyed when you would greet me with a wave of the fin in the morning. Wishing will only go so far but I wish all of you get to Hadden creek without falling out of our cups, and without bears, hawks, and coyotes eating you. When you get to the ocean please become strong like sumo wrestlers, eat a whole lot, then come back, spawn, and make sure the fertilization is good. Here’s a poem I thought up for you…

Dear little fishies from down the stream,

I know that you all are going to make your dream.

From little eggs to big, big fry,

I think it’s fair to say that I will cry.

From eggs to alevin to fry to smolts,

You will grow up to be a Mulgrave Thunderbolt!

Goodbye and good-luck!

Love, Gabi 

A couple weeks ago, students in our Kids Care Club had the opportunity to visit the Seymour Salmon Hatchery for the day. It was an incredible learning experience and we had a wonderful day! Enjoy our animoto:

We're happy to report our salmon dissection yesterday went just swimmingly. Here is a snapshot of our experience.

Bowls - check. Tools - check. Salmon - check. We're o-fish-ially ready to begin!

We dissected the larger of the two fish Mrs. Bowler gave us. Before we began we talked about how the salmon was killed in order to teach us more about science, and to show respect by not saying things like 'ewww' or 'gross'. We also talked about how to use a 'science-touch'. During the dissection we made many inferences about the relation between structure and function.

Thank-you to camera-man Eli for documenting our dissection!

First, we examined the outside of the salmon. We learned about the different fins, including the caudal fin and the dorsal fin (like the keel of a boat). We felt the scales and slime layer, and explored the lateral line (can you believe salmon have their own sonar?!). Here, we're looking at the operculum (the protective gill covering).

Now we've removed the gills. The gills are actually more efficient at taking in oxygen than our lungs. They're red because of the oxygen-rich blood.

To enter the inside of the salmon, we cut from the vent to the throat. The vent is the hole where waste products exit the salmon. It is also where eggs are released (if the salmon is female), or milt (if the salmon is a male).

The egg sac. It is amazing to think that out of the thousands of eggs inside a salmon, only two will make it back to spawn.

The liver is the largest organ in a salmon's body. Its job is to help maintain chemical levels.

Here, we've removed the heart. The heart of a salmon is located right up near its gills instead of in its chest like the heart of a human. Somehow the heart removal led us into a discussion about organ donation. One of the boys in 3C came back the next morning as a newly registered organ donor - wow, what action!

We're trying to scrape out the swim bladder here. Unfortunately, a puncture wound prevented us from testing it out. The swim bladder helps with buoyancy. One night very soon, our own salmon alevin will struggle up to the surface and gasp in air in order to inflate their own swim bladders. After that, they will be able to swim around freely in the tank and will not need to hide under the redd - that's when we'll begin to start feeding them.

We were surprised to see how big a salmon eye is, and even more surprised to learn that a human eye is actually the same size of a golf ball!

After cutting through layers of protective cartilage, we finally managed to find the brain.

Having another look and feel at the organ systems

The other salmon was supposed to be for a KCC dissection; however, unfortunately the timing didn't work out. Mrs. Bowler, if you're reading, I hope you forgive us (!), but we had a draw to see who got to take the salmon for a home dissection - don't worry, none of it was cooked for dinner! Gabi was the salmon winner, and luckily her mom was up to the task. The two of them plus Eli worked their way through the manual with great success! They documented their experience on their iPads and shared pictures and videos with us this morning.

The most exciting part - they were able to blow up the swim bladder!

Here is a video of them examining the brain:

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SALMON_clip.MOV (3.68 MB)

What a fascinating experience for our class! 3C, feel free to leave comments about anything interesting you've learned, or about any questions you still have.

Last Thursday students in our Kids Care Club learned about salmon habitats and the importance of keeping streams clear for salmon migration. After reading through an information booklet from Salmonids in the Classroom, we split into groups, grabbed our iPads and headed up on the hill to direct and film some public service announcements. With Mr. J's permission a couple may be headed to a big screen near you! 

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salmon_azad.MOV (2.41 MB)

p.s. Exciting (!) news - based on our ATU calculations, our salmon might be hatching by the end of the week! 

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TD_Thank_you!.MOV (2.4 MB)

This morning we were very excited to find out our salmon grant was accepted! The TD Friends of the Environment is generously giving us $1000.00 to purchase a cooling unit for our salmon tank (this year we're borrowing one from Pauline Johnson). Thank you very much from 3C, KCC, Mulgrave School, and our 54 happy salmon!

Each day we have to record our Salmon's ATUs. Each member in KCC is assigned a special day to do data collection on our Salmon clipboard. In 3C, we are using our iPad spreadsheet to record our data. 

ATU stands for accumulated thermal unit. Thermal means heat. Each day we look at the temperature on the refrigerator unit. Usually it's 6 or 7. It's cold because it needs to feel like a river. The colder the tank is, the slower they grow. We set our tank at 6 because it means that they will grow slowly enough so that we can release them after spring break. We add the temperature to yesterday's ATU to find out today's ATU. Today, our ATU was 317. The salmon eggs will hatch when they get to be around 450 ATUs. When we check the ATUs it's exciting because we also get to peek at the eggs. Otherwise they stay covered because they can't take a lot of light.

Here's what one of our Numbers ATU spreadsheets looks like so far:

Written by: All of 3C

Today we were about to write a math test, and then boom. Ms. Yakachuck came in with a much better offer. We were invited to 6F's classroom to see a guest named Dwayne Walkus. He is a friend of Mr. RJs and his ancestors were Aboriginal chiefs. Mr. Walkus works at a fishing lodge called Good Hope Cannery up in beautiful Rivers Inset. In the summer he works and takes guests fishing. We learned that you can catch two or three different type of fish including salmon and halibut. Also, if someone is eager to get a fish they can do a fish dance. Mr. RJ prayed to the fish god and we liked his moves. Sometimes you get less fish than other days. The fishing guides try and convince clients to throw back big fish and release them so that the big fish stay healthy and have more big babies. Babies of big fish usually grow up to be big too. This is like what we learned about this morning when Jillian brought her family genogram in and we talked about things passed down to children. We thought Mr. Walkus would tell us a lot of information and he sure did. We think his job is extraordinary and a lot of us are dreaming about a fishing guide life! 

p.s. 3C - when I was pasting the post you wrote I saw an email about the Grade Sixes. You can check out the blog post the Sixes wrote about Mr. Walkus' visit. Read the comments they left -they're very interesting: http://exhibition2012.edublogs.org/2012/02/02/the-fishermans-perspective/

Here are two videos from the Good Hope Cannery: you might recognize someone in the first!

Many 3C students are taking a picture of the eggs each day to observe the development of the salmon. On Gabi's iPad we each chose a salmon egg to be our own. Hopefully they don't move around too much!

3C and KCC are raising salmon together as part of the Salmonids in the Classroom Program. We will be blogging about our adventure from eyed eggs to fry.

Here is the first salmon installment written by Jaden and Eli:

 Mrs. Bowler came into our class today. She brought the salmon eggs in and she taught us the difference between a dead salmon egg and a real salmon egg. We need to know the difference if we’re going to raise them. Mrs. Bowler told us that if it’s whiter than red or orange its dead. The eggs felt smooth and squishy. We didn’t squeeze them! She asked us if she put the eggs in, if they would float. She told us to make a hypothesis about if the eggs would float or bounce or not. They didn’t float – they bounced a little and then sank. We were extremely excited when she came!

 When we were done, we got to fill in our ATU charts. We saw the temperature today was seven. We subtracted the ATU from 450, and we divided 192 by 7 to find out about when the eggs are going to hatch. It is about 27 more days and they could hatch on Tuesday February 21^st.

We all called an egg our name. My (Eli’s) egg is named Mantis. Mine (Jaden’s) is Dexter. We recorded whose egg was whose on an iPad picture of the eggs. It was stupendous to see the salmon finally come in our classroom!!

Here's a video of Mrs. Bowler releasing the salmon into our tank:

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sss.MOV (3.58 MB)