Before the release, the students had a picnic on the shores of Lake Huron, eating hotdogs grilled by quarry workers who helped put this trip together, along with many environmental education groups and elementary staff.

Scott Grulke, the manager of the Rogers City Carmeuse quarry, said that one of his supervisors is the husband of Sarah Cook, a teacher at Rogers City Elementary, and helped set this up.

Carmeuse’s property has direct access to the mouth of Swan River entering Lake Huron, which was decided to be a good location to release Chinook salmon.

“This is a part of the (Department of Natural Resource’s) Salmon in the Classroom program and we’re going to put the salmon in the mouth of Swan River,” Cook said. “We used to be the salmon capital of the world, but we did a watershed litter cleanup last year and showed them all the garbage that goes into the water. So they were able to see the salmon this year, seeing how they grow and how they eat anything. If we’re throwing out microplastic into the water, the fish are going to eat it and we’ll eat the fish, so it’s really important.”

News Photo by Mike Gonzalez Students from Rogers City look at Brandon Schroeder, Michigan State University Alpena County Extension Sea Grant educator, as he holds down the Chinook salmon to examine its length near the mouth of Swan Lake on Monday.

Once the picnic ended, the students filled the buses and drove down to the mouth of Swan River. There, students either went out to explore the shoreline of Lake Huron or participated in gathering the weight and length of all 23 Chinook salmon they raised.

Environmental education leaders like Brandon Schroeder, Michigan State University Alpena County Extension Sea Grant educator, and Meag Schwartz, network coordinator of the regional organization Great Lakes Stewardship Initiative, helped the chaotic research as fish slipped out of students grasp and flopped on the table. At the same time, pairs of hands kept lunging for the small creature until the adults caught and held the fish down for measurements.

Some students helped bring small containers of fish and water back from a larger tank as others wrote down the shared data.

“I’ve been enjoying walking into the classroom because I sit right next to the fish tank,” Ben Somers, a fourth-grade student at Rogers City Elementary, said. “It’s actually kind of fun knowing that you get to watch all these fish grow up and do all these activities and jobs real salmon fisheries have to do.”

After the students gathered the data, everyone watched their teacher dump the Chinook salmon into Swan River, where they all said goodbye.

News Photo by Mike Gonzalez Students from Rogers City look at the 23 Chinook salmon they raised for six months before they’re examined and released into Lake Huron on Monday.

As the last part of their field trip, students went to different stations around the lakeside to pick up litter, learned how to cast fishing rods, and walked along the shore.

“There’s a lot of kids that have never grown up to cast fishing poles, so we’re going to teach them how to do that,” Cook said. “I want to get into nature because they’re learning more now than they were in the classroom.”

News Photo by Mike Gonzalez Sarah Cook, a teacher at Rogers City Elementary, pours the water with the Chinook salmon into the mouth of Swan River on Monday.

News Photo by Mike Gonzalez Students continued searching for shells and rocks on the shore of Lake Huron within the Carmeuse calcite operations quarry premise on Monday.