July signals fun and education for kids on the Kenai Peninsula because it means Get Out and Get Dirty summer camp hosted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is here. Part of the camp includes a day with CIAA biologists leading salmon dissections, which we always hope is a highlight of their time at camp.
Year to year dissections vary depending on what species of salmon the Alaska Department of Fish and Game has available. This year I led dissections with pink salmon (Oncorhynchus gorbuscha). It was a beautiful sunny day with a slight breeze to keep the mosquitos away and to help whisk away the smell that comes with salmon dissections—which some kids do not do well with.
Experienced Alaskans
It’s no surprise that these Alaskan kids are already well versed in all things salmon: identification, anatomy, and how to handle them with care. These dissections are certainly not the first time most kids have the opportunity to get familiar with the species.
Salmon are part of their education from a young age, most are experienced anglers helping their parents catch a meal for the family or simply helping to process them once the catch has made it home. And they often want to share their fish tales with everyone.
During the dissections we cover how to handle our catch in order to release them and how that differs when we are harvesting salmon to consume. Then we cover external anatomy which is typically a breeze for the kids. We talk about the fins and their function as well as the scales, slime, and lateral line.
We try to guess what sex the fish is using reasonable deductions about what we know about salmon when they return to freshwater to spawn. It’s always a hoot opening up the fish and figuring out if our predications about sex was right or not.
Excitement typically starts to rise as we are finishing up the external salmon anatomy because that means we are about to open up the fish and really get hands on with the internal anatomy. In general kids are less familiar with the internal anatomy so this section of the dissections is much more of a learning and exploring opportunity.
Getting Dirty and Hands On
But for some this dissection is the first time they are getting a thorough introduction to the internal anatomy of the fish they know so well. Not everyone is as excited to participate but eventually most kids help to ID and remove some organ to identify its purpose and what is behind it. There are typically some kids who are just more comfortable watching rather than actually getting their hands dirty.
We cover how to tell the age of the salmon and why researchers and management biologists would want to know the age of the salmon. We can tell age using any bony structure but scales and otolith are most commonly used in Alaska for aging Pacific salmon. The otolith can tell us even more about the fish, to find out more about otolith and their importance check out this article.
We go over how organs in the salmon function like the organs in our own bodies and the differences too. One of the most interesting facts I like to share with kids is that fish gills are incredibly good at what they do and way more efficient than our lungs at getting oxygen, a vital nutrient, out of our respective environments. But this is one reason that salmon gills should never be touched or handled if the fish is going to be released.
Kids always enjoy looking at the heart. But it’s really, really fun to pull out the digestive tract and see if the salmon has any food in its belly, but usually they are empty since most have been caught while in freshwater returning to spawn.
The most exciting thing for everyone is extracting the eyes and dissecting them to find the lens. Undoubtedly someone asks to take a piece of the fish home but I think parents appreciate not picking up their kid with a salmon eye in their pocket.
Everyone Learns Something
When we operate dissections we ensure the kids know that these fish have donated their life for science and that it is important to be respectful. Once the dissections are done the kids get to enjoy their lunch before the afternoon activities.
It’s not just the kids we are teaching but also the Student Conservation Association summer refuge employees that assist the lead ranger during the summer camp.
