Students from Meadowdale High School’s Eco Club joined community volunteers with the Edmonds Stream Team and Sound Salmon Solutions in releasing several thousand baby coho salmon into Lunds Gulch Creek Sunday.

Some of the baby salmon were placed in clear plastic cups so that park visitors of all ages could assist in the release and see each of the 5-month-old coho salmon as they carefully placed them in the creek. These juvenile coho salmon will live and grow in Lunds Gulch Creek until early spring next year, when they’ll leave the creek and begin their life at sea. After almost two years at sea, the survivors will return to Lunds Gulch Creek as adults from October to December 2027 to spawn future generations in the creek.

The Edmonds Stream Team’s project to improve salmon populations in Puget Sound creeks is part of a community cooperative program with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) to supplement — and in some cases reintroduce — coho salmon into urban creeks where salmon populations have been adversely affected by urban development. Each year, coho salmon eggs from WDFW’s Issaquah Hatchery are provided to Sound Salmon Solutions’ Willow Creek Salmon Hatchery in Edmonds where they are hatched and then fed for several months to improve early life survival. The coho babies, called fry, are then released in local streams to grow and imprint to the creek for subsequent return as adult spawners.