Salmon in the Classroom

Since 1981 Stave Valley Salmonid Enhancement Society has operated an educational program with Mission Public Schools.  Using DFO and BCTF produced Salmonid in the Classroom materials, teachers in a variety of elementary grades offer Science and Social Studies units covering everything from salmon life cycle and habitat requirements to the importance of salmon to B.C. economy.  

SVSES assists teachers by providing hands on activities with local salmon enhancement and habitat projects.  One traditional activity is the collection of brood stock on 

the Stave River.  Students join SVSES volunteers on the river to net chum salmon and collect eggs and milt.  Students then go to either the Silvermere Lake Hatchery or the Bob Brook Hatchery to fertilize the eggs and see them placed in incubation trays.

In January SVSES transports 75 - 100 eyed eggs to participating classrooms.  

With assistance from Lorraine Johnson, salmon project coordinator for Mission Public Schools, classrooms have set up an incubation aquarium that will allow the eggs to hatch into alievin and then develop into emerging fry.  The classes usually release the fry into designated streams in early April.  The size of the aquariums makes holding and feeding fry difficult as the fish rapidly out grow their artificial environment.  Adventurous classrooms will start doing partial releases in early April but retain approximately 50% of the population at each release date.  Thus April 1st will see a drop in population from 100 to 50 fry.  

On April the 7th the population would drop from 50 to 25 fry and so on until the by the end of April less than half a dozen fry remain.  While this is a great deal more work and presents an elevated risk of moralities it does allow students to view first hand the rapid development of fry.  Needless to say students become very attached to their classroom guests and are sometimes reluctant to release them into the wild to complete their life cycle.

In the last 28 years SVSES has worked with in excess of 6000 students.  A number of our early students are now parents of today's participants.  It is interesting to speak with these early students  as they all have vivid memories of the day, long ago, when they came down to the Stave River and pulled in the big nets.  " Do you remember our class.  You said we were the best class ever.  We caught so many fish.  We even caught a giant Chinook! Remember that? "  It is interesting that the 30 something parent in front of me has momentarily transformed into the excited small child they were almost two decades before.   Not surprising though as the small child that resides in me is always present no matter how many times I pull in a net or empty a salmon trap.

Whether or not these educational activities have any long term impact on the lives of students is entirely subjective.  We know that a few of our former students have gone into fisheries related fields. 

 Certainly SVSES has received  numerous phone calls from former

 students telling us about potential dangers to local streams.  Certainly George Donatelli, Philip Little and I know that we a frequently stopped by past and present student in stores and at community events to talk fish.