SUQUAMISH — A trip to the Cowling Creek Hatchery Thursday afternoon was somewhat of a somber goodbye for Suquamish Elementary students, but it was surely a refreshing hello to freedom for the chum salmon fry which were released into the North End waterway.

Inline with a more than 20-year tradition at the school, Suquamish Tribal Fisheries Biologist Paul Dorn said, third grade classes combined their efforts to raise 200 salmon eggs from embryo to fry. The students received the chum eggs early in January and March 8, they released the fry for what will be the beginning of a tremendous journey.

“We felt really responsible for the salmon,” said third grader Quinn Dassel. “We had to test the pH levels in the water and take care of them.”

“Some kids even gave them names,” added classmate Ryan Nash.

“The most intriguing part was when we saw them after they’d hatched,” student Ellie Gallagher said.

In nature, salmon eggs are typically buried in a ground nest where, in darkness, they undergo the process of maturing. At Suquamish Elementary, this particular batch of salmon was raised in an artificial environment — an aquarium at the head of the school’s library.

And for the first time in her three years of involvement with the project, Suquamish Elementary School teacher Stephanie Taft said every one of the 200 eggs survived.

“We had a really vibrant group of salmon,” she said. “It’s neat for the kids to see the fish from the egg to full grown and then get to release them.”

“You guys did a good job, because those look like really happy fish,” Dorn said Thursday. “The fish we are releasing today will be back three, four or five years from now.”

After answering a myriad of questions like, “How do fish jump,” and, “Do salmon have eyelids,” Dorn described a typical salmon’s journey after a student asked about the native habitat of the fish.

He answered that salmon can only survive in saltwater. Each one will make its way to the Pacific Ocean and return to the Kitsap Peninsula in their lifetime.

“They will swim north up the Puget Sound and head west,” Dorn said. “Most of them will go off of Vancouver Island and into the Gulf of Alaska. By the end of their lifespan they will have traveled anywhere from 12,000 to 14,000, even up to 20,000 miles and they’ll find their way all the way back to Cowling Creek.”