Salmon Egg Collection: A Fishy Story

By: Megan & Benjamin

On Thursday, October 11, 2001, ten students, two teachers and one parent went on a field trip up the Glacier Creek Road to the Snake River to catch salmon for the high school fishery. Five students from the Anvil City Science Academy attended the field trip, they include Benjamin, Katie, Elise, Eddie and Megan. The teachers included Mrs. Nancy Bauer-Bahnke and Mr. Todd Hindman. The parent was Mr. John Hager, father of Elise, and there were also five students from Beltz Sr. High School. They were collecting salmon eggs for the high school fishery to try to increase the decreasing salmon population.

The students left the school at about 10:00AM to go on the ten-mile drive to the Snake River. On the drive to the salmon egg collection spot, the three vehicles brought along had to rough an unmaintained road and had to cross a half frozen stream. The first two cars crossed without much difficulty, but Mr. Hager’s, a low riding car, had a little difficulty climbing the other side of the slippery bank. A few students did their best to remove large ice chunks that held the small car from climbing the slippery hill. After a few minutes of backing up and revving up the slick bank side, Mr. Hager successfully drove out of the ice that bound his car. It was later discovered that the license plate in the front of his car was bent in from running into ice, along with several chunks of ice still jammed in small crevasses and spaces.

   
When the students reached the location that they would be catching the fish, they unloaded the gear, put on hip waders, and waded up the river to the spot that they would be catching fish. After a few minutes of searching for salmon, the students and teachers unrolled the large net that they had brought with them. They stretched it across the river and wrapped it in a circle around the leisurely swimming fish. They did this two more times before returning to the vehicles. They caught a whole batch of fish but only kept one female and two males. Mrs. Bauer-Bahnke cut the eggs out of the female and put them into a bucket, and then she squeezed the sperm from the males and mixed it with the eggs. The mixture had to settle for one hour before it could be moved, so Mr. Hindman was the unlucky person to stay behind and wait for an entire hour before returning to town with the eggs.
 

 
Mrs. Bahnke removes the eggs
from a female salmon.
On the trip back to school, Mr. Hager had almost no trouble getting through the stream because the other side was less steep, less slippery, and easier for the small car to climb out. But the bottom of his car rubbed against a dirt mound and tore out the fender from the under side.
 
The fertilized eggs had to sit
undisturbed for 1 hour.
 
The eggs were placed in an incubator at the Nome-Beltz High School.
The students returned to school and finished the day at school, and the salmon eggs where transferred to a large tank in the Nome Beltz Biology Lab where they will hopefully grow and help the salmon population increase when released back into the wild.
   
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