Petaluma High School Students Are Salmon Savers
Bay Area high school rescues 4,000 endangered salmon from the drought – they'll grow up on campus. https://t.co/fts8SpTFMz pic.twitter.com/oqYUV4fbTR
— San Francisco Chronicle (@sfchronicle) September 26, 2021
Thanks Casa Grande!
Bay Area high school rescues 4,000 endangered salmon from the drought – they'll grow up on campus https://t.co/2p3aFnfMY0 via @sfchronicle— Golden State Salmon Association (@ggsalmon) September 27, 2021
Great work done by these Bay Area high school kids. Here’s more from the San Francisco Chronicle:
They weren’t dealing with classroom pets. Instead, the 17-year-olds were taking care of some the state’s last remaining coho salmon at a fish hatchery right on the school’s campus. Last month, wildlife officials moved around 4,000 endangered coho to the school’s cool, indoor tanks after conditions at a hatchery in nearby Lake Sonoma became unhealthy because of the drought. The high school will receive an additional 650 endangered coho trucked in from Santa Cruz in the coming weeks.
Casa Grande students usually raise steelhead trout native to the local watershed, donated by other hatcheries as a learning experience. But this unprecedented drought year is the first time the school has ever rescued a federally endangered species with nowhere else to go.
“We have this opportunity to save coho salmon, to see that we can do it, if people put their minds to it,” said Cathryn Carlson, 17, president of a nonprofit called United Anglers of Casa Grande, which runs the hatchery. Carlson, who goes by Kate, had just put on boots and waders before hopping into one tank’s chest-deep water to scrub its windows.
