Meet the Bloggers

                                                                            Here are the bloggers.

                                                      Our job is to write about the salmon and post it here.

                                        We work in the science lab every Wednesday, and it is always exciting and fun!
                                                   We love to blog and are glad we got picked for the job.
                                        We are:
                                  Anneke (me!)
                                     Gibson            
                                    Adrianne
                                    Marylee
                                   Thomas

Where's My Spawning Spot?

Salmon are laid in a river or a stream. When they hatch, they lay around eating their yolk sacks because they don´t develop their mouths until later. After they eat their yolk sacks, they dart around their hatching spot smelling it so when they're ready to spawn, they can smell their way back. Then they swim into a river or stream that leads to the ocean. When it's time to spawn most of them won't come back because there are lots of predators in the ocean, so they get eaten or caught by fishermen. As they come back, they face lots of challenges too. They have to jump out of the water to get to some places like up a fish ladder.

If they do make it back they will spawn and then die. 

Dissection!

On Thursday, December 1, we dissected a steel- head trout. We saw the liver, (it looked like Jello!) heart, swim bladder, gills, stomach, and eggs (so it was a girl.) 

Two people got to paint the fish and we made a fish print.

Eggs
                                                     Heart
                                     






Liver


                                                                         Gills
                                                                                                                                                         








The Fish Before 🐟🔪

                                              Us ⇉⇉⇉⇉⇉
                               And The Fish⇉⇉⇉⇉





                               
           

Decapitate! Decapitate! Decapitate!

                                             ⇉ Me Going Cooky⇉

                                                With The Fish Head!⇉

                                                                 Feeling The Fish Insides

eating steel head

Last week my classmates and I got to eat the steel-head! Mrs.Miller made us try it. It was smoked and we ate them with crackers.
To me it tasted disgusting, but other people liked it.  
We had to pick the bones out first. Then we tried it.

To me, it tasted like honey. Out of 22 students, 19 people liked it and 1 person didn't like it. Two people didn't try it (one is a vegetarian and the other one just didn't want to try it.)

The salmon that we thought was double head I guess got flushed.

So we won't know if it was a double head or not.

We´re not sure if it is flushed because most

of the salmon are jammed in one of the corners.

Today the salmon caretakers flushed an egg so it

might have been the double headed one. 

The caretakers jobs are to keep all of the salmon that live safe so that they don´t get infections. They also flush the dead fish so the rot from the dead fish don't infect the live ones.

The Life Cycle of Salmon

The Life Cycle of Salmon

1. The female salmon lays her eggs in a nest, called a redd. She uses her tail to dig around the gravel in the stream to protect the eggs from hungry animals. The eggs need to stay cool and clean, and the fresh water washes over them. Salmon eggs are tiny and soft. The eggs are a reddish-orange color. Each egg contains an embryo that has a yolk sack attached.
2. Once the eggs hatch, they are alevins. They hatch in early spring. Their bodies are only about one inch long. They don't have fins and they can't swim at all. They need to watch out for bigger fish and birds, which are both predators. 
3. Fry is the next stage. Fry have fins, teeth and scales. They are twice as big as alevins are, and fry must eat a lot so they can continue to grow. At first, fry eat plankton. Plankton are tiny plants and animals floating around in the water. As fry grow, they start eating larger food like insects and fish eggs.
4. Smolts are the next stage. This is when they are between 1 and 6 inches. Smolts migrate from fresh water to salt water. Smolts migrate during their first few months of their lives.
5. The next stage is fully grown. After spending one to seven years in the ocean they go back to  their river. They must mate before they return to the river. The long journey is called a salmon run.  

Just Keep Swimming

Here is a video that was taken last week about the little baby salmon swimming at the wall.











                                                                         

Freezing water temperatures

Did you know that salmon need a certain water temperature to survive in the water that they live in?
 

If it is below freezing they will die, but if you protect them they will be fine. Once the temperature starts going up, the eggs will start to hatch. If the temperature is higher than 50 degrees, it could kill the salmon. It has to be just the right temperature.
Also, if a mom has 500 babies, you will be lucky if you have two of them survive!

The water temperature is usually very cold when the eggs are laid.
When the temperature rises, they start to hatch and right now, the temperature of the tank is at 46 degrees Fahrenheit so our eggs are hatching.

Field Trip Fun

On our field trip, we were in the observatory learning about salmon and invasive species. We learned that the sea lamprey have a lot of teeth and that they suck blood out of fish!

Here are the sturgeon.

There are different kinds of fish food, depending on how big they are, and how old they are.

These are the salmon eggs 

This is what the salmon look like after they hatched and lost their yolk sacs.

We had a great time!

Double Head? Or is it already dead?

We think we found a double head fish but it has not come out of its egg yet. It might be dead but we're not sure because one of its head's just came out today. There is some debate among the bloggers at what its name should be: Double Debbie, Double Dead, Mr. Glockinshpeel and so on...

There are 2 that might be double headed but the one in the picture above might be 2 fish close to each other. We will either see what it turns into or we will not know at all if we have to flush it.

Finding Our Fish

 

We visited Wolf Lake State Fish Hatchery in Mattawan, Michigan on November 3, 2016.
We saw five different types of marine animals: trout, salmon, sea lamprey, sturgeon and steel head. We got to feed the rainbow trout special fish food in the show pond. There were a ton of fish in the pond! At least a hundred, not counting the babies. And two 6-FOOT sturgeon!
We learned that once the fish get bigger, their food gets bigger.
We brought the eggs back with us. We brought back 150 but 6 died about a week later.

Extra info

If there is not enough information in here then you can check out this cool slide we have made. It has a lot of useful information about Chinook salmon. if you are interested click here.

The Release

We are so excited for the salmon release on may 6th 2016 we have been through tough  times keeping these fish alive we have had to let some fish go and some of our specially cared for fish. We have had younger kids and older kids come in and see the fish and learn about the fish. People work hard to keep the salmon alive now we have to see them go .

This is the tank after the release we are so sad to see the tank empty 

this is anna one of our salmon helpers she gets 5 salmon to take home and so does chase a boy who helped separate all of the salmon into containers for the fourth grade to release  bye.

Junior Fry

Junior Fry is the smallest fish in the tank but still is not smaller than the already dead littlest. This salmon is really small making his odds of survival be extremely low. He is half the size of the gigantic Big Boy 1.5 and still has survived his 5 months in the tank. Right now Junior Fry isn't eating as much because he can't get over to the food quick enough. He just needs to survive for 3 more days and he will be the smallest salmon that we release. Junior Fry was first declared the smallest at around 2 weeks before release day.

Final Days

We are now just 2 days from releasing our salmon and when we look back we have done many great and not so great things. We have gotten through the freaky first days of fishy february and ended up with around 7 times more fish than last years group. Our salmon are now 2-3 inches and are around 4 months old. We have 93 salmon left which is way more than expected. A couple of the tools have broken over this year including the top of the tank and some of the test tubes.We have had many big and small salmon, Big Boy 1.5 and Junior Fry Once we release the salmon they will most likely go to Lake Michigan which is around 50 to 75 miles away, though if they go to lake superior which is deeper and bigger is 200 to 300 miles away. 

The biggest salmon in the tank

This is one of the biggest, most aggressive salmon in the tank this year, the salmon with the best chances of survival BIG BOY 1.5!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
       He has attacked different salmon many many times and for a Smolt is huge. He out grows every other salmon in the tank by 1/2 an inch. On his back is a slight mossy color indicating that he is older or more mature then some of the smaller less aggressive salmon. His stripes reflect better as well. He is easily the biggest salmon in the tank.

Tools

There are a lot of important tools that we use in a daily bases like the: 

Strainer: the strainer is used to make sher the  fish do not get out or go into the sink  the strainer looks like this...........

                                           

Predators and Prey

                       Predators and Prey

Known Predators: Striped Bass (Monroe saxatives), American Shad (Alosa Sapidissimo), Sculpins (Cottoidei), Gulls (Laridae), Bears (Ursinae), Killer Whales (Orcinus Orca), Sea lions (Otariidae), Seals (Phocidae), Otters (Lutrinae), Eagles (Accipitridae), Terns (Laridae), Cormorants (Phalacrocoracidae).

Prey:Bloater, Alewife, Round gobby, Rainbow smelt, and Slimy sculpin fish. Some prey of young Chinook salmon are insects, Larvae, and Crustaceans.

Questions and answers

Molly-Why do bigger salmon survive and smaller salmon don't?
                  A: Why because the littler fish cant swim as good as the bigger fish

Paige - What is the smallest type of salmon?
              A: pink salmon  is the smallest type of salmon  they only get up to 30 inches and up to 12 pounds and the average is 3 to 5\

Chris-how long do salmon  usaly live?

         A:salmon live 2 to 7 years
Paige- do salmon have bones
            A: yes salmon do have bones

Feeding time

We feed the salmon 3 times a day. We feed them after specials, after lunch and before 2nd recess. 

When we feed them we give them 2-3 pinches of food. When we drop the food into the tank the salmon go Crazy and dart for the food. 

If you put your hand on top of the tank while we are feeding them they will try to jump up and nip you. ( which means that they are hungry. )

This is the fish food .

Big Boy

Big Boy

           Big boy is HUGE! At the fry stage most salmon are close to 1 and a half inches in length but apparently this big fish hates to blend into the crowd. 
         He's around 2 inches in length and compared to some other fish he's twice the size! He has also tried to devour 2 of his fellow siblings.         
What makes him so big is his dorsal fin. His dorsal fin is 1 centimeter in length and his pelvic and anal fin are both half a centimeter in length. 
        All you have to do to find Big Boy in the tank is to find a huge salmon that has huge fins. ( And every so often is feasting on other fry). Chances of his survival are higher compared to some others because normally the more fit fish survive to the point of release.
But out of total disbelief he died on February 24, 2016.

Freaky Fishy days of February

In February we had some scary times were the nitrite level was very high.
 It got up to 15.0 which is higher than it's been all year. We have lost 60 total Chinook Salmon in these freaky times of February.
 We did not know that the tank was suppose to be filled up to the top causing uneeded nitrite to fill up in the unused space.
For a little while, the nitrite level went down to safe standards but on February 24 2016 it went back up.
We thought that once we filled the tank back up the scary times would diminish. We were wrong!

       The nitrite level climbed the scale once again. It isn't as bad as it was at the start of freaky fishy days of February but 10.0 is still of the charts. 
       The nitrite is suppposed to be below 1.0 but obviously mister nitrite is not cooperating.
For now we'll just hope for the best and try to flow through.

Life cycle

Stage 1: Eggs

Stage 1 of the Chinook Salmon is eggs. The eggs are orange with a black dot in the middle like your eye. When they are laid they spawned in a redd. They usually hatch in the spring. The eggs get fertilized by the male salmon. 

Stage 2: Alevin  

  This next stage is the Alevin. The Alevin salmon are 1 inch long in length. During the next month the Alevin  will remain hidden int he gravel nest and feed from the yolk sack until it is completely absorbed.

Stage 3: Fry

Next up is the Fry. At this stage salmon leave there nests and begin to feed themselves anything they can find but bugs are there favorite. It's about time they begin there journey downstream. The fry must hide under rocks, and among vegetation to avoid predators.

Stage 4: Parr
The Parr is the stage after the Fry. The Parr is now about 1 year old and continues living and eating while starting to migrate up and downstream. They need to eat a lot now because in 3-4 years they will start to depart out to sea in schools and will need a lot of food to survive the trip.

Stage 5: Smolt
Finally the time has come to depart out to sea. The trip is dangerous and will require almost no delays because they only have so much energy in there body. By now they have gotten there spots and now range in length from 65-120 mm.

Stage 6: Adult 
Now mature adults. These Chinook salmon have finished there 1 in a lifetime journey and now are living around 200 miles out in the ocean. While out here they are close to the top of the food chain. Only dessert to killer whales and sharks. They feast on smaller fish amphipods and crustaceans.

Stage 7: Spawning Adult
The spawning adult is the final stage of the life cycle. It is the stage where the salmon return to the same place they were born and lay 700 hundred orangish eggs that have a black eye right in the center. Once the female salmon is done laying her eggs she dies.

Swimming With Salmon

The salmon swimming motion is a lot like a sharks. It uses its tail or the caudal fin to propel itself through the water and uses its pectoral fin to steer. 
The Chinook Salmons top underwater speed is 3.58 m/s but can jump out of the water with a speed of 6.26 m/s.

As a fry, salmon have two different fins where the Anal fin is located but as it goes through the next 2 stages those two fins begin to mash together creating 1 whole fin.
 The Chinook Salmon can change direction really, really fast, which comes in handy when a lot of different animals want them on there dinner plate.
The Salmons color changes a lot as it grows up as well. First of all the start out by looking slightly transparent. But as they grow up they gain some stripes but those stripes eventually fade into dots.
making the one of a kind chinook salmon.

Littlest

Littlest is our one and only deformed Chinook Salmon. We think he was born different from all the other fish in the tank. 

He has a deformed face which makes him look like a duck. He has survived 2 months.

He also still has his egg sack unlike all of the other fish. Littlest looks like he is transparent and he doesn't have his stripes yet.

This is littlest, our deformed fish.
He still has his egg sack.

Fishy fun facts

Fun Facts:
   
 *The female salmon lays her eggs in the exact spawning ground that she was laid in.
     
    *Salmon DO NOT eat while migrating up stream.
     
    *Another name for Chinook salmon is the king salmon.
    
    * A female Chinook salmon can lay up to 7000 eggs.

    *Salmon don't have ears. They hear or feel vibrations along the lateral line of there bodies.