Fishy education

Biologists from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game were at Spring Creek last week to start classrooms in the Valley with the STREAM program.

As part of the program, students got to go to Spring Creek, a tributary of Wasilla Creek, and participate in an "egg take" in which spawning silver salmon were harvested and their eggs were fertilized. The students take those eggs back to their classrooms and raise them until next spring, when they are in the fry stage, when they will release them in Matanuska Lake.

"This is the biggest we've had so far in the years we've been doing it," said Craig Baer of the Alaska Department of Fish and game. "We've got every elementary school from the Valley except Willow and Iditarod this year."

In all, there are 22 Valley schools participating, covering 36 classrooms and more than 1,200 students.

Baer and his "partner in crime," Fritz Kraus, detail the anatomy of a salmon, as well as the life cycle, biology and habitat requirements for the survival of incubated salmon eggs. But clearly, the highlight for the students is harvesting the eggs and fertilizing them with the milt from a male salmon.

Victoria Colee, a fifth-grader at Larson Elementary School, was in charge of rubbing the male salmon's underbelly, which squirted the milt into the container of eggs.

"I've touched fish before," Colee said. "They're very slimy."

As part of the program, participating classrooms will have three more opportunities for hands-on education.

Students will participate in an ice fishing outing on Finger Lake later this year. Baer and Kraus will also be traveling from school to school conducting a fly-tying clinic as well. In the spring, the classrooms will all go to Matanuska Lake in the Kepler-Bradley system for the Coho Carnival, where they will learn more about salmon and ultimately release their fry.

ADF&G does similar program in Anchorage at Campbell Creek, in Fairbanks at the Tanana River Wayside, on the Kenai Peninsula at the Bear Creek weir in Seward and at the Buskin River in Kodiak. Statewide, there are 97 schools participating in the program.

At this year's egg takes, a new Fish and Game education trailer was on site, giving students and teachers another hands-on learning opportunity.