On a sunny morning, nearly two dozen Bellingham Technical College (BTC) students pulled on waders and boots, ready to transfer 582,966 chinook salmon fry from their dark, indoor crates to outdoor pools along Whatcom Creek at the Perry Center.
The students of the Fisheries and Aquaculture Sciences department spent hours carting the fish, batch by batch, to a chute on the edge of each rotund pool where they’ll swim and grow until their release in the spring.
Other students were busy, collecting handfuls of the fry, to weigh them and record their findings. They determine an initial survival rate of 98%, made possible by the carefully constructed environment designed to mimic that of a wild river, where the typical survival rate sits around 15%, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Weeks before, the same students received the fry as small eggs from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. They spent hours sifting through the eggs, looking for dead ones or wriggling alevins (freshly hatched salmon) with turkey basters, plastic spoons and chopsticks. The weeks following were focused on keeping them alive and growing.
“It’s a huge responsibility because we have 600,000 chinook, 600,000 fish that we will hopefully be able to release,” said student Dimitri Katsiouleris, 24, who already holds a bachelor’s degree in aquatic biology and is earning a certificate through BTC.
Like loving parents, many students laughed and marveled at the rapid growth from eggs to fry in a few short weeks. While the overall saltwater survival rate of anadromous fish is small, the hope is that many of these salmon after several years of growth will wind up in the stomachs of Southern Resident Orcas, increasing the endangered whales’ food supply by 4-5%.
The student-raised salmon that survive human fisheries, natural predators and other saltwater perils will return to the hatchery and try to climb the falls along Whatcom Creek, typically a futile effort.
Effort to raise chinook earns award for college
This week, faculty and hatchery manager Brittany Palm and other BTC staff spent several days presenting details of their program as a national finalist for a 2024 Bellwether Award, a prestigious accolade for community colleges.
“It’s essentially a conference where each one of the programs [presents] what their program is doing based on the criteria and other colleges and other schools, so it helps expand some best practices,” BTC President James Lemerond said. “Our best practices are partnerships, especially with our tribal communities and our fishery communities and state agencies to continue to increase those fish that are going in and, as well as, educate our students.”
The Fisheries and Aquaculture Sciences program was chosen as a finalist largely due to its role in Gov. Jay Inslee’s Southern Resident Killer Whale Recovery Task Force. BTC was tapped to help raise more chinook for the orcas to eat with support from federal funding, the Treaty tribes and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.
The jury is still out on the effectiveness of the experimental supplementation program, launched regionally in 2020, as it’s difficult to track where 20 million fish produced at 35 different hatcheries wind up. But program officials are hopeful the fish are beneficial in the effort to recover Southern Residents.
“The theme of that was extinction is not an option for these orcas, so let’s get them fed,” Palm said. “We got approval to then rear and release chinook, and we got approval for 500,000. We did our first release in spring of 2018, and we have now done it every year since then.”
While they ultimately did not win, Palm said she enjoyed meeting with other STEM educators and sharing the work they do.
“It was a proud moment to tell everyone at the competition how passionate and dedicated our students are,” Palm said in an email. “Our hands-on training in the Fisheries and Aquaculture program gets results.”
Program puts hands-on experience first
BTC’s Fisheries and Aquaculture Sciences has operated out of Bellingham’s old wastewater treatment plant since 1978 and the program primarily dealt with chum salmon and trout for years. The addition of chinook, however, has not changed their work, but instituted a greater purpose for students.
The goal for each student, Palm said, is to “get out of the textbook.” They’ve designed an inverted classroom, where students come to class after watching videos and finishing their homework. They come to “class” to physically do the work they just learned about.
“The second day of class, they’re like, ‘Alright, we’re driving down to Samish, and you’re getting in the ponds right away. You’re getting in the ponds and you’re grabbing a fish,'” student Makenna Fowler said. “They just start you with that process.”
Palm said this model differs from any other in the state because the students get the experience as they learn. The students essentially run a hatchery with oversight and support from Palm, fellow instructor Sara Smith and Hatchery Operations Specialist Joel Hoines.
“It’s hands-on. I feel like you’re actually doing something and making a difference that you can see,” Fowler said.
The lifecycle of the salmon aligns nicely with the school year. Students begin in the fall as the salmon spawn and the eggs are transported to the Perry Center to hatch and grow through the winter before their release in the spring.
Throughout it all, other lessons and experiences for the students are woven in.
Tilapia swim in an aquaponics tank, twisting through the roots of basil as their waste fertilizes the herbs. Oysters and manila clams grow large in saline tanks. Half a dozen strains of algae grow and they hope to grow kelp in the future.
The students’ expansive experience with different aquatic species, paired with the program’s community connections, readies them for the workforce post graduation. BTC touts a 90% job placement rate for all program graduates, whether they finish with the two-year associate degree or one-year certificate.
“We’re learning about aquatic invasive species, so we’ve partnered with the Lummi Tribe. We go out and do their green crab surveys with them,” Palm said. “We’ve been learning about genetics, so we talked with Trout Unlimited about their eDNA sampling for bull trout. Then, we had students going out with them and collecting the samples.”
“We’re all about community engagement,” she added.
Hailey Hoffman is a CDN visual journalist; reach her at haileyhoffman@cascadiadaily.com; 360-922-3090 ext. 103.
