short stories / By Meghannraye Sutton

The Watery Farewell

(June 12, 2008)  Last Monday morning, a bumbling yellow bus carried Mr. Trone’s fourth-grade students eastbound down Highway 299. The Pine Hill Elementary students were about to say some sad goodbyes down by the rocky banks of the Mad River.

Already waiting at the Mad River Fish Hatchery in Blue Lake, 11 baby steelhead swam round and round inside a 5-gallon white Ace Hardware bucket in the same water they were born in. In a few short hours, those 11 steelhead would swim strong and free against the mighty river current for the first time.

For three months, those 11 steelhead sat under a warming light in a tiny glass fish tank while the fourthgraders watched pink squishy eyed-eggs develop into inch-long baby fishies.

Those 11 steelhead — if they survive the perilous journey up the Mad River — will not return to the same location and as fully grown fish for another three years.

As noble as they were, Mr. Trone’s students were not alone in their steelhead raising-and-freeing crusade. This year, students just like his raised a total of 875 steelhead eggs in classrooms all over Humboldt County. Participating schools everywhere from Cutten to Weott all released their steelhead into Humboldt County streams this April and May. Pine Hill was one of the last.

This wasn’t the first year students got an opportunity to raise steelhead in their classrooms, and the classrooms aren’t just in Humboldt County. Every year, the Department of Fish and Game donates steelhead, trout and salmon eggs to elementary, middle and high schools all over California. It’s called “The Classroom Aquarium Educational Project (CAEP),” an integrated, semester-long educational tool that started in Canada and made its way to California back in 1985. Schools from up in Del Norte County all the way down to Los Angeles County participate every year. The program aims to integrate fishery knowledge into classrooms and educate students about an important and prevalent local issue.

“It’s important for the kids to realize that steelhead and salmon are an important part of our economy,” Chris Ramsey of the Department of Fish and Game said. “And it gives them something to be proud of.”

Earlier this year, Mr. Trone contacted the Mad River Fish Hatchery to arrange for the “Steelhead in the Classroom” program (a category of CAEP) to be implemented in his fourth-grade class. He heard about it from a professor at Humboldt State University and wanted to teach his kids an urgent contemporary topic. “It’s in the papers every day,” he said. “This way the kids can learn what it’s all about.”

1 2 NEXT PAGE >SHARE