The Water Expedition

It’s time we spoke our minds. We have to save the streams or lose them. I choose the first one. We need to keep our streams healthy and clean. If we succeed, that means the salmon can swim up and spawn. My teacher, Mr. Bob Shepard, went to a place called Adopt-a-Stream, which committed him to caring for the Perrinville Creek.

The first topic that we need to work on is water health. A thing you can do to improve on is not polluting. Did you know that storm drains lead to the nearest water source? So that means that if you put garbage, motor oil or anything else like that in to a storm drain or on the street. it goes in to our precious water. Controlling how much fertilizer you use is a good thing to do too. That fertilizer ends up in one place, our water. You can help out by doing all these things. And I personally hope you’ll help out.

Help a fin or two. Salmon live in the water we drink. So the water needs to be healthy for the salmon to live in. Salmon are a major part of our lives and the lives of many other animals including bears, wolves and eagles. The salmon will die if we keep on polluting. Technically, in my opinion, we’re murdering the salmon.

The Adopt-a-Stream Foundation is a great program that commits people to caring for streams. One thing my class did was to check the temperature to see how cold it was. It has to be certain temperature to be healthy. We also checked the speed of the water by taking a rubber duck and letting it float down the stream. We also saw what kind of macroinvertebrates live there. If there are intolerant macroinvertebrates that means that the stream’s really healthy. If the stream is healthy then the salmon can live. Is there another society like this that helps and cares as much as this one? I’ll never know.

I’ve told you what to do and what the consequences are if you don’t. I hope you’ve learned a lot about water. I’ve told you about water health and Adopt-a-Stream and told you to help a tail or two. So what will it be, kill the stream or save the stream?

Emily Shere

5th grade

Seaview Elementary