In early October, the students in Nicole Perry’s aquaculture class at Ferndale High School hadn’t begun growing fish quite yet, but the aquaculture lab was still a hub of activity. Students were making their own DIY aquarium filters using Powerade bottles, lava rocks, and sponges. This has been a fun and cost-saving class tradition for 10 years.
The filters we make work way better than a lot of filters that you’d buy at the store, and it only costs a couple of dollars to make,” Perry said. “There are some $50 filters that these are better than!”
This may be a long-standing practice for FHS’ aquaculture classes, but the lab students built the filters in is brand-new. Although the aquaculture structure was ready in the Spring of 2023, along with its next-door agriculture science building and horticulture greenhouse, students had to wait about a year for the equipment necessary for raising fish. Now, it’s fully ready and presents a major upgrade from the previous building.
“I love the old lab too, but this one is state-of-the-art,” said Perry.
Many of the new lab’s improvements are behind-the-scenes. For example, the oxygen supply for the many fish tanks are in a separate room in the back of the building. This noisy equipment used to be in the lab next to all the students, which made teaching difficult, Perry said.
“I could never talk and teach in the old lab,” she said. “I had to do all my teaching in the classroom and hope that they retained that information, because we couldn’t even talk with the noise level.”
Other major upgrades include increased power to run more fish tanks and a top-of-the-line filtration system. This new filtration system will allow students to grow more fish in less space, according to Perry.
“The old filtration system was not great, so you had to be really careful about how much the fish were fed,” she said. “In an industry-level facility, you can get fish grown and ready for market in a certain amount of time.”
One major addition to the aquaculture lab this school year is a professional-level egg incubator for hatching fish. Later this fall, Perry hopes to obtain salmon eggs from the Lummi Nation for students to raise.
Hannah Findley, a senior at FHS, has taken multiple aquaculture classes and was even Perry’s teaching assistant a couple of years ago. She appreciates the increased size of the new lab, as well as its improved heating and cooling.
“The old building used to be a greenhouse, so it was really hot in there,” Findley said.
Findley said Perry’s aquaculture classes are “really fascinating.”
“I love that the class is so hands-on, and I love learning about the sea animals,” she said.