Caring about salmon and healthy streams | Letter

On March 30, I joined fellow seventh-graders from Mr. Schmied and Mr. Nowak’s science classes at Skyview Junior High as we traveled to North Creek to release coho salmon fry into the creek. The students and volunteers spread out in groups around the creek and tested the water quality of North Creek Streams. We tested if the water had a safe level of oxygen (ppm), pH, nitrates (ppm), phosphates (ppm), turbidity (TTU) and temperature (Celsius) for coho salmon to live in. People should care about salmon and healthy streams now and in the future because salmon are so much more than food for humans. They have provided food for other living creatures as well including mammals, other marine life and scavengers.

June 30, 2011 2:43 pm

On March 30, I joined fellow seventh-graders from Mr. Schmied and Mr. Nowak’s science classes at Skyview Junior High as we traveled to North Creek to release coho salmon fry into the creek. The students and volunteers spread out in groups around the creek and tested the water quality of North Creek Streams. We tested if the water had a safe level of oxygen (ppm), pH, nitrates (ppm), phosphates (ppm), turbidity (TTU) and temperature (Celsius) for coho salmon to live in. People should care about salmon and healthy streams now and in the future because salmon are so much more than food for humans. They have provided food for other living creatures as well including mammals, other marine life and scavengers.

The most important data that we found to affect the salmon if they live in the streams for the whole year is that there are many non-point and point sources of pollution from the streams. For example, some non-point sources of pollution are cars, houses and fertilizers. A point source is a sewage pipe, which can sometimes leak into the streams.

Some direct suggestions/recommendations that I have for how to better improve the North Creek Salmon stream habitat involve cheap ways to help the environment. For example, construction workers and builders can rethink their plots and move the build sites away from creeks and streams. Power and natural-gas companies can move the pipes away from streams where they might burst and pollute the water. These are just a few of many ideas that can generally make the abiotic (non-living) factors better for salmon and other water creatures.

Tori Puoci