Courtesy of Deb Stenberg:

Last week, 13 Federal Way schools received deliveries of recently hatched salmon fry as part of the Storming the Sound with Salmon project.

The collaboration between Federal Way Public Schools and the City of Federal Way is providing students with hands-on learning opportunities in science, technology, ecology, engineering and mathematics. Students will raise the salmon until they are ready to be released into Hylebos Creek later this spring.

The participating schools are: Brigadoon Elementary, Camelot Elementary, Lakota Middle School, Lakeland Elementary, Mirror Lake Elementary, Panther Lake Elementary, Saghalie Middle School, Sequoyah Middle School, Sherwood Forest Elementary, Star Lake Elementary, Twin Lakes Elementary, Wildwood Elementary and Woodmont K-8 School.

The effort is supported by a $73,000 Department of Ecology Municipal Stormwater Grant of Regional or Statewide Significance.

The tiny fish are called avelin at this stage. They are very young fry and still have their egg attached. In the wild, they hide in the gravel at the bottom of a stream until the egg is gone and they are large enough to start scavenging for food. In these pictures, they primarily show up as orange blobs among the gravel: