PRIEST RAPIDS DAM - Pasco High School students got a hands-on science lesson courtesy of the Grant County Public Utility District (PUD) and the state Department of Fish and Wildlife (DFW) on Tuesday.

Science students at the high school visited the Priest Rapids Hatchery, which is owned by Grant County PUD and operated by the DFW.

The trip was the brainchild of Steve Bennett, a science teacher at the high school.

The state emphasizes student-run investigations in their science curriculum, including controlled laboratory investigations and uncontrolled field studies, he said.

The students are investigating the health of salmon in the Columbia River. The Hanford Reach section of the river near the hatchery has the healthiest salmon runs in the river while the area between McNary Dam and John Day Dam is the most dangerous part of the river for salmon, said Bennett. It sounded like something interesting for the students to investigate, he said.

"We coordinated with the guys at Grant County to go up and do a tour of the hatchery, so that the kids could get an appreciation of everything that goes into raising salmon and what kind of habitat do salmon need to survive," he said.

He thought it would be the perfect opportunity for students to collect data and draw their own conclusions.

Once students arrived at the hatchery, they received a crash course in salmon courtesy of Mike Nicholls, civil engineer for Grant PUD, and Jeff Benjamin, hatchery specialist for the DFW.

Students entered the hatchery's incubation building where Nicholls showed the students egg trays capable of holding 8,000 salmon eggs, he said. The facility can hold about 12.5 million eggs, he said.

The hatchery releases approximately 6.7 million smolts into the Columbia River annually, he said. They also distribute millions of eggs to other hatcheries throughout the state, he added.

Benjamin showed students a male adult Chinook salmon specimen.

"A lot of these kids have never even seen a salmon before," he said.

The tour of the hatchery helps teach kids the process of raising salmon and the qualities of the river that affect salmon, he said.

With a dad who fishes and a grandpa who writes for fishing magazines, Brian Ketterling, a sophomore at Pasco High School, has already seen salmon up close. But it was the first time he had seen a salmon hatchery operation in person. He hadn't realized how many salmon are hatched there, he said.

On the way home, the students test different sites along the Columbia River, said Bennett. He hopes they will be able to see the relationship between water quality at the different sites and see how they affect salmon survival.

"That's the big thing," he said. "They're actually doing this on their own ... The basic idea is rather than just talk about field studies, they have a really great opportunity to do one that's right next door."