One of our staffers read about an interesting salmon egghatching project in the latest Laurelhurst Elementary School Bear Essentials Weekly Bulletin and checked in with the 5th Grade teacher, Grace Dublin, running this project to find out more.
For the past two winters Laurelhurst students have watched salmon eggs hatch in a fish tank as part of Seattle Public Schools Salmon in the Classroom program.
This program, started in 1991, "was created as an educational project to encourage respect for water resources and promote responsible behavior towards the environment according to the Seattle Public Utilities Salmon Program website.
The program entails students raising salmon in their classrooms, learning about water quality and habitat issues, as well as discovering how the salmon live with other species and the conditions needed within a given watershed by going on field trips and having hands-on experience.
One of Grace Dublin's students from Room 12 wrote this great summary of the project and looks like we'll have the pleasure of receiving regular updates about this interesting salmon project throughout the whole hatching cycle.
Thanks Room 12!
From: The Students of Room 12
Did you know that the first stage of the salmon life cycle is called incubation? That is just what you will see when you look in the salmon tank in the main hallway of Laurelhurst Elementary.
Our school has participated in the “Salmon in the Classroom” program for many years.
The eggs come from the Issaquah Salmon Hatchery and it is a big responsibility to take care of them until they hatch and grow big enough to be released into a stream.
This exciting program allows kids to see the development of the salmon life cycle.
During the incubation stage the eggs are a beautiful pink color. You can see a black eye in each egg and when they get ready to hatch they will begin to wiggle. In the wild only about 20 out of 100 eggs survive to become fry.
Stay tuned for our weekly salmon update. 
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