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.