All Saints students take part in annual salmon release

BANGOR, Maine (WABI) - Students from All Saints Catholic School in Bangor made their way to the Kenduskeag Stream Friday for their annual salmon release.

For the last few months, they’ve been watching over alevin, which as part of their life cycle are now called fry and will eventually grow into Atlantic salmon.

“Every day on Fridays in our science class we do like a fishy Friday, and we get to do something with the salmon. We usually graph the temperatures, and we get to draw what they’ve developed like. We’ve kind of just been really hands on with them which can make it more fun,” said All Saints student Stella Lawrence.

“Getting to see how they develop and grow and seeing like the different stages of their life cycle. It’s just been really fun and getting to know that we can save them and help them actually get to a further stage in life is really important,” said All Saints student Quinn Bennett.

The project serves a greater purpose than just being another lesson in the classroom.

“These species are endangered, and so, when we raise them to being a fry, it gives them a better chance of making it to the stream and to the ocean coming back,” said Lawrence.

“This is our heritage. This is Maine. This river here has had salmon come back for forever, and in the 1800s, there were thousands of salmon in this river and now they’re down to 1%. So, teaching that to the students has been really neat because they see they can make a difference. That they can be part of restoring the population and being part of our Maine outdoors,” said All Saints teacher Vanessa Rehmeyer.

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