Most students at FWPA are familiar with the idea of having a salmon tank in their schools. This is because every school in the Federal Way School District has one. This program is known as Storming the Sound with Salmon.
FWPA recently received salmon eggs to hatch in the tank. Students will see them go through multiple stages until they are released into the wild around April. Mr. Genzlinger is supervising this process.
Schools within the Federal Way School District have salmon tanks for various reasons. Releasing the salmon out in the wild after they develop has been a part of the fourth grade curriculum for a very long time. Mr. Genzlinger says that there have been issues in other schools where students have directly caused the salmon to die. An example Mr. Genzlinger gives is, “There have been issues in other schools, where one student being a knucklehead goes and does something reckless that causes the entire tank to be compromised, and all the fish have died,” Due to these problems, every school has a salmon tank so there are enough salmon left alive to be released by fourth graders.
The salmon hatched around mid-December and will be released in late April by Hylebos Creek. Once they hatch and their feeding sack is used up, they are fed ground up dog food, which contains the necessary nutrients and proteins. In the past, Mr. Anderson has supervised this process, as he used to be one of the science teachers. The salmon are released once they grow to about 2 inches in length. “And at that stage, they get collected and they get released at West Hylebos Park, by elementary students; it’s a lot of fun to watch,” Mr. Anderson says.
The tank simply provides salmon a place to live and develop until they are healthy and strong enough to survive in the wild. Mr. Anderson believes that anything they can do to contribute to the salmon’s survival will be beneficial. “We raised about a hundred and fifty salmon eggs, and in the wild a female would have about three thousand eggs,” Mr. Anderson explains. In the wild, only two out of three thousand salmon surviving is the typical success rate; the growth of salmon in tanks can heavily affect their survival rate for the better.
In conclusion, the ‘Storming the Sound with Salmon’ program contributes to both education and nature. By having schools hatch and raise salmon within a tank, students can learn about ecosystems and species conservation. Due to the fact that most salmon are threatened of being endangered in the United States, this process helps conserve the species, while serving as an educational resource.
