From the Field Archives - Page 30 of 38 - Skagit Fisheries Enhancement Group

Warning: Salmon Gore!

November 16, 2017/in From the Field /by Lucy

Two Cascade students hold up the chinook that was just dissected in their class.

Science is messy. It’s just a fact. The study of salmon is no exception, especially when it comes to what’s inside. Many people never bother to look past the fillet, but there’s so much more to these fish than that! With the help of longtime volunteer and dissection artist Chris Brown and fellow AmeriCorps member Keelin Maurmann, my mission in October was to bring salmon anatomy into the classroom. Our Junior Stream Stewards spent the month squealing with both delight and disgust as they watched us cut into salmon and reveal the structures within. By the end of the lesson, most students were unfazed by our bloody hands and eager to touch the fish and its organs for themselves.

A Cascade student holds a salmon heart as Chris Brown prepares to continue the dissection.

You might be surprised how much you have in common with a salmon. Stomach, liver, spleen, and brain are all organs that can be found in both salmon and people. Many shared structures have different adaptations however. For example, salmon have no eyelids. When you live in water, there’s no need to blink to keep your eyes moist! Plus, having their eyes on the sides of their head gives them the best chance to spot predators and prey alike. Another similar organ is the heart. While a human heart has four chambers and is located in the chest between the lungs, a salmon heart has only two chambers and is located between the gills. This allows the fish to efficiently pump its blood out of the heart, through the gills, and on to the rest of its body.

A La Conner student holds up the gills for inspection while classmates handle the other organs.

Students love guessing about the function of body parts unique to salmon. Every salmon has a large air filled sac in the middle of their body that is often a surprise to students. Don’t be fooled, it isn’t a lung. This is the swim bladder, which helps fish maintain the correct buoyancy in the water. Another cool structure, and one of my personal favorites, is the gills. Just as we use lungs to take oxygen out of the air, fish use gills to take oxygen out of the water. Up close, the gills look and feel like stacks of dark red feathers. All that surface area makes it easier to take up oxygen. The gills are very delicate and are protected from the outside by the bony plates of the gill cover and from the inside by the gill rakers, which filter particles out of the water before reaching the gills. And for the squeamish, even the outside of the fish has a unique sensory structure known as the lateral line. Often a clearly visible dark horizontal line down the side of a fish’s body, the lateral line is made of specialized scales and pores that feel vibrations in the water. These are just a handful of the salmon’s adaptations to aquatic life.

A group of La Conner students examines the salmon carcass post-dissection.

At the end of the day, the most memorable part of this lesson wasn’t the anatomy itself, but the hands-on opportunity it gave students. Not a single lesson went by without a crowd of eager participants feeling the fish and organs at the end. Some of the students who made the most extreme faces during the dissection became the most excited to touch the fish. After all, how often do you have the chance to hold gills? I’m glad I was able to help students see salmon in a new way, but I mostly loved simply getting my hands dirty with them in the name of science!

Special thanks to Chris Brown for teaching me everything I needed to know to lead salmon dissections. And a huge thanks to our sponsors, Fidalgo Fly Fishers, Tulalip Tribes, Samish Indian Nation, WDFW- ALEA Grant, Island Adventures, DOE Clean Samish Initiative, Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, Skagit County Clean Water Fund , and Mountaineers Foundation for making this and other incredible activities possible through their generous support of Junior Stream Stewards!

By WSC Education Associate Emily Jankowski

Wonderful Watersheds

September 20, 2017/in From the Field /by Lucy

Two students at Conway School inspect their paper watersheds.

September may signal the end of summer, but it also marks the beginning of another school year. For us, it’s once again time for Junior Stream Stewards. Throughout the year, we lead lessons on salmon and their habitat in area middle schools. This month is all about watersheds!

I have already visited a few schools and one thing is clear: watersheds are a big topic. Like many students at the beginning of our lesson, you may have trouble defining the term, or not know in which watershed you live. Watersheds are large drainage basins, where all the precipitation eventually comes together into a common body of water. Here at SFEG in Mount Vernon, we are in the Skagit River watershed. It’s important to remember that storm drains lead directly into nearby bodies of water as well! Everything we spill has the potential to be carried into the river and pollute it. This connectedness of the watershed as a whole means everyone has a part to play in its stewardship. Our students began learning about the salmon in the Skagit and how they can help preserve their habitat. Picking up trash, planting native plants, and sharing what you know with others are all great ways anyone can be a stream steward.

The aftermath of the rains on one watershed model.

Students concluded the lesson by creating their own unique watershed models. Science and creativity came together during this activity, which students tackled with glee. Papers crumpled enthusiastically all around the room as mountains and valleys took shape. Marker outlines of ridges and valleys predicted where water would flow and then other drawings began to populate these small worlds. Buildings of all kinds were scattered around the small landscapes, representing houses, chain restaurants, schools, amusement parks, and more. In one class, several unicorns could even be seen grazing on the paper hillsides! With everything sketched into place, all our watersheds were missing was the water. Thunderstorms poured out of spray bottles, soaking models and desks alike. Colors ran downhill and collected in little puddles, occasionally washing out or flooding a building. It was a fun way to demonstrate everything we had learned about watersheds. I love seeing everything the students come up with for their watersheds, and I am looking forward to doing it again in the next classroom.

By WSC Education Associate Emily Jankowski

Salmon restoration and the recovery of the Southern Residents

June 29, 2017/in From the Field /by Lucy

Killer whales (Orcinus orca) are the largest members of the oceanic dolphin family and can be found in waters across the globe. They are incredibly social animals, travelling, hunting and playing in groups known as pods. Often times these pods are family-based, where the mother leads her offspring and their young, sharing hunting techniques and specific vocalizations.

When it comes to feeding, killer whales as a species are generalists, eating anything from fish to pinnipeds (seals) to other cetaceans (whales). Depending on the geographical location of certain populations of these whales we tend to see specialization in their diets. Known as “ecotypes,” some killer whale populations specialize in marine mammals, some on sharks, and most commonly in our area, salmon.

Killer whales are an iconic species in Washington State. Three pods known as the Southern Residents frequent the Puget Sound and people from around the world travel to the area to catch a glimpse of these whales from land and at sea. These Southern Resident whales however are listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. They face many threats daily from polluted waters, boating traffic and a diminishing food supply. The majority of the Southern Residents’ diet consists of salmon, with Chinook salmon being the primary choice due to them being large fish with a high lipid (fat) content and can be found in Puget Sound year-round. These salmon however are also listed under the Endangered Species Act, making their availability a limiting factor in the recovery of the Southern Resident killer whales.

Young orca feeding on salmon
( (c) NOAA, Lynne Barre)

Southern Resident killer whales travel between British Columbia and California each year, spending the summer months feeding on salmon in Puget Sound. Chinook salmon make up about 70% of the Southern Residents’ salmonid diet and of that 70%, approximately 3-7% originates from the Skagit River.

The Skagit River is the largest river system that flows into the Puget Sound, stretching 150 miles and draining 1.7 million acres in British Columbia and Washington State. The Skagit is the only large river system in Washington that contains healthy populations of all five native salmon species and two species of trout. Restoring habitat and flow conditions within the Skagit watershed is important for increasing wild fish stocks critical to the recovery of Puget Sound’s endangered whale population.

Skagit Fisheries Enhancement Group works to improve and restore habitat to support salmon populations. By helping to restore salmon populations, we also help restore killer whale populations. Help us help them by getting involved!

By WSC Education Associate KayLani Siplin

Sources:

Click to access preyselectionFord.pdf

Click to access preystudy2010.pdf

Click to access Biol.%20Lett.-2010-Ford-139-42.pdf