Most of the fourth and fifth grade students in Kristin Puu’s class at Panther Lake Elementary enjoy eating salmon.

During an art project at the West Hylebos Wetlands Park on Monday, the students learned how to protect salmon to maintain an abundant supply, as 300 Federal Way elementary students gathered to release salmon and learn about science and the environment. During the art activity, Bert the Salmon interacted with students, helping them select caps from over a dozen tubs that held various colors and sizes.

“How many of you like to eat salmon,” said Skyler McVaugh, a water quality intern for the city’s Surface Water Management Division, as the majority of students raised their hands. “We’re making sure there’ll be plenty of Berts left to eat by protecting what they eat.”

McVaugh instructed students to use caulking guns to place adhesive material onto the back of the caps and place the caps onto a large rainbow mural.

“These caps cannot be recycled and, more often than not, they end up in streams, which they become food for animals,” McVaugh said, noting the city may hang the mural at City Hall. “So we’re trying to keep them out of the streams, out of the landfills by making an exciting, cool art project out of it.”

Throughout May, over 900 Federal Way students from 26 elementary, middle and high schools will flock to the West Hylebos Wetlands Park.

The salmon release celebration is the culmination of the annual Storming the Sound with Salmon program, a partnership between the city of Federal Way and Federal Way Public Schools to promote science and environmental education, particularly storm water education.

Over the school year, students at 26 schools raised the salmon inside tanks in their classrooms, while learning about the impacts of surface water pollution and what they can do to help prevent it.

The program began in 2012, when the school district and city obtained a $73,000 grant from the Department of Ecology. During the first year, 13 schools participated.

“It’s a nice celebration and culmination of the students’ work,” said Megan Walker, the school district’s K-12 science specialist, noting the district is working on integrating the salmon program more into its science curriculum. “I think it’s really valuable for them to actually release the salmon into the streams, see where their salmon are going and understand that piece of the life cycle and see how that all works.”

During the event, students stood on the bridge over the Hylebos Creek as city staff released the salmon fry from plastic cups into the water that will eventually carry them to Puget Sound.

“We’ve been learning how they move upstream to spawn and that it’s a life cycle of where they get eaten or survive,” said Panther Lake student Terra Ghilerick.

She said her favorite part about helping to raise the salmon inside her classroom was seeing the salmon hatch.

“It was amazing,” Terra recalled.

Her classmate Justin Nguyen pointed out the salmon’s odds of completing the life cycle.

“Only like two out of 3-5,000 salmon that are laid survive to actually become spawners and lay more eggs,” he said. “That means that spawners actually lay up to three to five thousand eggs at once, which is probably like — too much to count.”

Justin enjoyed learning about the various stages that salmon go through.

“They’re just an egg, then they still have their yolk sac to feed them, and they go to fry and that’s where they start loosing their yolk sac,” he noted. “When they start becoming adults, they go back to fresh water and lay eggs.”

During the event, members of the Federal Way Historical Society taught students about some of Federal Way’s history, including the restoration of the David T. Denny Cabin. In addition, Mayor Jim Ferrell addressed students during their lunchtime.

Students also got a lesson on sea creatures, including whales, sea anemone, sea urchins, hermit crabs, seals and moon snails from the Highline Marine Science and Technology Center staff.

Eugene Disney, an education coordinator for the center, held up a moon snail as Woodmont K-8 students touched its slimy shell.

He said the moon snail is the largest predatory snail in Puget Sound, using its radula to scrape the top of other shells until the snail bores a hole in the shell and eats its prey. The moon snail is four times bigger than his shell, so when it’s in danger “stuffing himself back into that tiny shell is really hard to do.”

Therefore, he asked students to promise not to poke a moon snail until it wants to go back inside its shell.

Wayne Branson, a volunteer for the Highline Marine Science and Technology Center, also held up a fur seal pelt for students to feel.

Disney said that hunting and collecting pelt from any marine animal is illegal. He asked students to feel the fur and ask themselves if it is worth it to harvest seals, or if they think it’s better to save them.

Woodmont student Monty McBride said after feeling the soft seal fur that he thinks it’s “worth it” to save the seals.

Ryan Burges agreed.

“I understand at the time why they wanted to [harvest the animal] but then I think it would be better to save the animal,” he said after feeling the fur.

Disney said the Highline Marine Science and Technology Center’s main goal is to foster a sense of marine stewardship within coming generations.

“So showing them all these awesome animals that live right in their backyard is super important and if there’s even one kid that says, ‘Man, marine science is so awesome, that’s what I want to do,’ then we’ve done our job,” he said.