On February 5th, 2019, we received Chum Salmon eggs from Fisheries and Oceans Canada. Galiano Community School students, teachers and Galiano Conservancy educators were excited to introduce the salmon eggs to their temporary home: a small freshwater aquarium set up at the Galiano School.
In the end of February, all of the salmon eggs hatched, and the newborn alevins are now feeding on their yolk sacs, and rapidly developing into fry salmon. Once they reach the fry stage, the young salmon will be fed by the school kids and released after a 10-day feeding period. The salmon release will take place at Greig Creek, near Laughlin Lake on Galiano Island.
We were also grateful to receive two frozen adult salmon for educational use from Fisheries and Oceans. One salmon was used by school staff for a Gyotaku art project (Japanese art of printing fish) with the school kids. The second salmon was used for an interactive dissection with students on February 20th. The dissection day was an amazing event with around 25 enraptured school kids attending. With the help of teachers, we projected the dissection of the Chum Salmon on the projection screen and every student was able to see the fish up close, understand its anatomy and was also allowed to touch it, if they wanted to.
