Crestwood STEM students raise and release salmon

In early January, Crestwood Elementary STEM Specialist Julie Collins made a very important delivery to her classroom: 200 coho salmon eggs.

Picked up from the Issaquah Hatchery, the eggs are part of the School Cooperative Program run by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW). The program provides the eggs to classrooms, where students can watch them grow from alevin to fry and early parr stage before being released into a local watershed.

For the past couple of months, Crestwood students have been doing just that, watching the young salmon in a 55-gallon tank and water chiller funded by the Crestwood PTA. Having the salmon in the classroom is an interactive and immersive way for students to learn about biology and science through the salmon life cycle, practice critical thinking skills through scientific observation and recordkeeping, develop an appreciation for local ecosystems and the role salmon play, and more. 

The project builds on the school’s years-long participation in Survive the Sound, a game where students can track their favorite fish as it migrates through Puget Sound and the many challenges they face on their journey to the ocean. 

“Last year I decided that the next logical step in our learning about salmon would be to raise salmon ourselves,” Julie said. “Seeing them grow from eggs into little fish has been really amazing!”

Over the weekend, Julie, some of her students and their families celebrated the culmination of their learning by releasing the young salmon into Lake Washington, where they will stay for another year before migrating out to the ocean next spring.

Other elementary schools in the district are now looking to get their own tanks and salmon eggs, connecting classroom science to the real world in a meaningful, memorable way.