Casa Grande students usually raise steelhead trout native to the local watershed, donated by other hatcheries as a learning experience. But this unprecedented drought year is the first time the school has ever rescued a federally endangered species with nowhere else to go.

“We have this opportunity to save coho salmon, to see that we can do it, if people put their minds to it,” said Cathryn Carlson, 17, president of a nonprofit called United Anglers of Casa Grande, which runs the hatchery. Carlson, who goes by Kate, had just put on boots and waders before hopping into one tank’s chest-deep water to scrub its windows.

In some ways, the timing couldn’t be better for students starved for in-person instruction after being away from the classroom for almost 17 months.

“One of the training we did as educators were how do we deal with students as far as coming off of this distant learning model and being so heavily impacted,” said Dan Hubacker, a science teacher at Casa Grande who runs the hatchery. “These kids are able to bury themselves in something that they can instantly see the reward for and know that it’s right here. It’s tangible.”

Built-in 1993, the classroom and attached hatchery, a slightly larger room with an A-frame roof and blue lights to avoid disturbing the fish, look like a park visitor center, with murals of mountaintop watersheds, and taxidermy grizzly and polar bears flanking the chalkboard. In addition to class, students often come in during free periods and on weekends, since the fish need their sprinkle of fish meal, enhanced with vitamins and minerals, daily. But to get near the tanks, the students first must take a prerequisite class on conservation and biology, and then ace two safety tests.

David Shabo measures young coho salmon being cared for by a group of 

high school students.
Photos by Jessica Christian/The Chronicle

Many already plan to go into the environmental field. Carlson wants to work on the political side of conservation, and student Yessenia Oceguera, 17, hopes to get into the Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology Department at UC Davis after community college.

“Working with animals is something that’s always interested me,” said Oceguera, using a plastic pipe fashioned into a vacuum to suction fish poop from the bottom of a tank.

“I like being a part of something and feeling like I’m helping,” said Delaney Ortiz, 17. “I worry a lot about the climate.”

The fish at Casa Grande are juveniles from several genetically distinct groups of the endangered Central California Coast coho salmon that state and federal wildlife agencies are charged with keeping alive — including from the Navarro and Garcia rivers in Mendocino County, the Russian River in Sonoma County and Scott Creek in Santa Cruz County. Smaller in size than king salmon, coho used to run in the tens of thousands through Bay Area rivers and streams, but the population has dropped to the triple or double digits in many habitats.

The fish at the high school are broodstock, which is artificially spawned at hatcheries to produce babies and keep the genetic line intact. Warm Springs Hatchery at Lake Sonoma typically houses coho broodstock — fish not released into the wild — throughout their three-year life cycle and releases the young salmon they produce into Russian River tributaries like Dry Creek. But as the drought lowered the lake to unprecedented levels this summer, the water got dangerously warm, which can cause disease and lower reproduction rates.

“Water temperatures at the hatchery reached a point in June that we had never seen before,” said Manfred Kittel of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. The department and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers operate the hatchery with input from National Marine Fisheries Service. “We all collectively agreed we were going to take action.”

The group decided that they’d need to move the broodstock when the water reached 63 degrees. But other government-run hatcheries were dealing with the same temperature issues or were too far away. So they visited the Casa Grande. The facility has several raceways, or long rectangular tanks, and a few round ones that collectively hold 32,000 gallons of water. Because it’s indoors, uses groundwater and has a cooling system, it can be kept at the optimal 53 degrees.

Hubacker “oversees the program in a way that does not expose these fish to any undue risk,” said Kittel, who said the coho will likely be returned to Warm Springs later this year. “We were all very impressed with his professionalism and with the quality of the program, including the students.”

Built-in 1993 with $500,000 in grants, donations and fundraisers, the hatchery might be the only one of its kind at a high school. It was spearheaded by a teacher who had started a local chapter of United Anglers at the school in 1983. Those students spent years restoring several miles of river habitat along Adobe Creek in Petaluma, which then attracted native steelhead trout after years of absence.

“These fish are iconic, critically important symbols,” said Grant Davis, general manager of the Sonoma County Water Agency, a supporter of the program that has also joined the Army Corps is spending $50 million over the past decade on native fish habitat conservation programs in Dry Creek. “Not only is their life history so compelling, in some ways you’re talking about our own survival in the way we’re protecting these watersheds.”

The nonprofit group Monterey Bay Salmon and Trout Project will soon deliver another 650 coho salmon from the Santa Cruz area. The fish’s hatchery was badly damaged in last year’s CZU Lightning Complex fires. The remaining fish there need to be moved before winter because if it rains heavily, debris from denuded river banks of Big Creek and other tributaries near Davenport could form a thick muck that would block the hatchery’s water supply, said Ben Harris, the organization’s executive director. The Santa Cruz fish could stay at Casa Grande through May or June.

United Anglers has a $100,000 annual budget to run the hatchery, with $75,000 from Jackson Family Wines and $25,000 from Sonoma County Water. Students also hold bake sales, and the program does not receive school funding, nor has it received federal or state financial support for hosting the endangered coho. Kittel said wildlife agencies are working on a way to compensate the school program.

Hubacker sees a parallel between taking care of the young fish in order to keep the larger population of endangered coho salmon going to that of maintaining the welfare of his students during such a difficult period for humankind.

“If we want to know what the future holds, what about the kids? How are the children?” he said. And, he added, “If we can inspire just a handful of these kids, look at the impact that’s going to have.”