Fish Hatchery Tour

   Oh we had a fantastic day at the fish hatchery. 
          Today was egg intake day.
                         Yay!
 
                     So many fish to see. 
              Painted on the ground to follow
      
             and in the holding tanks to watch.

  
The fish have come back up the river to the place where they were born. 
They are excited and we saw many of them jumping out of the water.

  
We watched the works herd the fish into smaller compartments closer
                                         to a lift.
 
Once the salmon were brought up with the lift, they were dumped
into a tray.  The workers sorted the fish looking for female salmon.


      
The next step was to slit the fish and remove all the eggs.  The eggs are
tiny and bright orange.   The eggs came out so quickly and so many that
                       we couldn’t count them.

     
 
A favourite part of the tour is going down below the tanks to get a face to fish
view.  Watching the fish up close really allows us to understand their size, body
parts (fin, eyes, teeth) and colours.

That led to our art project…
   
              Painting a salmon and lifting a print. 
We had only one fish so the children worked in teams of two taking turns
                     painting the fish
 
     then helping each other rub the paper and lifting it off.
        
     They each had a print to take home as a keepsake.

We finished with songs, snack and a story.

I found a book called Ebbie and Flo by Irene Kelly. 
It was great for telling the life of two salmon siblings.
      
Ebbie is a smart little salmon who wants to stay in his nest in the
small stream where he was born. Flo is Ebbie's twin sister. She
wants to explore the whole river, the estuary and the deep blue sea.

 
    
Today was a wonderful experience to learn more about the salmon that we have been pretending to catch in our dramatic play area at school.  I wonder how we can incorporate salmon eggs at school?