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Editor's note: This is the second part of a multi-piece series following Dave Knudsen's class at Kaleidoscope School of Arts Science in Kenai as they study different aspects of the salmon life cycle through the school year.

It's a teacher's dream come true, a classroom full of eager students ready to roll up their sleeves and dive into their work.

If the students in Dave Knudsen's fourth-grade class at Kaleidoscope School of Arts and Science had any trouble grasping the subject matter on Wednesday morning it definitely wasn't because of a lack of enthusiasm.

More likely it was because of the slimy nature of their task.

The class was dissecting salmon as part of the Department of Fish and Game's Salmonid's in the Classroom Project.

The words "cool," "awesome" and a not too occasional "gross" were thrown around like dodge balls at recess time.

Working in small groups, the kids spent the morning picking apart ocean-caught pink salmon donated by Snug Harbor Seafoods, as well as a few northern pike from Stormy Lake in Nikiski.

The program starts with egg-takes in October, where students fertilize coho eggs that they bring back and raise through the school year. In May they'll release their finned classmates in a local lake.

Along the way, the students learn about the lifecycle of salmon through hands-on activities like the dissection.

Even with the windows open, the distinct smell of salmon hung heavily in the room.

While such work might seem detestable to some, most of the students feared not, and were poking and prodding their specimens in giddy anticipation of cutting them open.

Patti Berkhahn, the Kenai Peninsula aquatic education fisheries biologist, led the students through the dissection.

"The teachers love it, it's hands-on and gets kids right in there," she said. "One girl was saying at the beginning she thought she would get sick from the smell, but by end she was in up to her elbows."

Student Haley Miller admitted she was a little nervous before they began.

"At first I didn't want to touch it at all," she said. "And then all I wanted to do was stick my hand in it."

Berkhahn starts the class talking about some of the fish's anatomy they don't need a knife to view. This includes examining dorsal and anal fins, which help to keep the salmon swimming in an upright position. They also identified the pelvic and pectoral fins, which allow the fish to turn.

Sometimes she said she tells students about an experience she had finding a sockeye below the Fish and Game weir on the Russian River that had been attacked by a bear and was missing its dorsal and a pectoral fin.

Struggling to stay up right, the fish couldn't make it through the weir, but when she netted it and moved it to the calm waters of Lower Russian Lake, the fish swam off, just on its side.

Berkhahn also talks to the students about the protective coat of slime that makes the fish so hard to handle.

That's one of their natural defenses, making them tough to hang onto, as at least one bear found out with the sockeye Berkhahn caught on the Russian.

The slime also helps to cut down on friction as the fish swim, and provides a protective layer against bacterial infection.

The first part the students remove from their specimens is a gill arch. The pinks have eight of them, four on each side.

To give the students an idea of how efficient the gills on the fish are, Berkhahn tried to give them a mental image of how much less oxygen is in water compared to air.

"I give the analogy that the classroom is filled with a million marbles. There would be marbles spilling out the doors and the windows," she said. "If there were 12 colored white, that's how much oxygen is in water."

In this case the rest of the marbles are all water molecules, and the 12 white ones would be the dissolved oxygen present.

Finally, Berkhahn asked the students to try to identify whether their fish were females or males.

Many of the kids recalled what they had leanred at egg takes, where cohos, ready to spawn, showed distinct physical features like hooked noses on the males and fat bellies on the females.

The still silver-colored pinks however, all looked much the same.

With some adult help using the sharp instruments, the kids watched as their specimens were spilt open at the belly.

More than a few were surprised to see their fish was not what they had guessed.

All but one group had males, easily identified by the presence of milt sacks.

Each group had a laminated card with pictures of different organs the students needed to find.

The first up was the liver, which Berkhan described to them would look much like a Jell-O jiggler.

In an activity sort of like a treasure hunt, the groups continued on, finding and removing the heart, digestive track, kidneys and swim bladder.

With each organ, Berkhahn explained a little about its specific function, noting differences and similarities to human anatomy.

While a few of the groups found their specimen's swim bladder still inflated with air, Berkhahn showed the students how the organ worked, having Tiana Faumui inflate it with a straw.

"Don't suck in!" a few in the class yelled as the little bladder filled up.

The groups also removed the eyes from the fish. Berkhahn pointed out how strong the salmon's vision was, and that they could see color, hence the wide variations of patterns used in fishing tackle.

Most of the students have dissected salmon in the past as part of the program.

There were a few new twists this year though, including getting to see the brains of one fish, as well as inflating the swim bladder.

They understood, however, that pulling the fish apart is one way to assess its health, and possibly that of the environment in which it was caught.

"All the organs should be intact," said Miller.

Brenna Eubank made an observation about her group's specimen, saying, "Our fish, we had brown stuff come out of its intestines. It was really disgusting."

Her peers were quick to point out that despite the gross factor, it could have meant the fish was digesting something.

While each group opened up the stomachs of their fish, few found anything that looked like dinner.

The students also made a few observations of their own.

Braden Stigall explained how he noticed his fish had tooth-like spikes on its tongue. As he thought about it with his classmates, he tired to figure out why that might be.

"They swallow their food whole," Eubank pointed out.

Miller carried on her thought, reasoning: "They swallow that food whole so they can get out of that area faster so that they can live longer."

The students were also impressed getting to see the toothy-mawed pike.

Brittany Gillman and Miller said when they looked in one of the predator fish's stomach, they found a lot of "green spinachy looking stuff."

They knew that their pike probably hadn't gone vegetarian, however, as they found a piece of a partially digested fish head in there as well.

The students were quick to note that the pike were invasive, and didn't belong in peninsula waterways.

Berkhahn uses the opportunities such as the dissection and egg-take to talk about appropriate catch and release techniques as well as other sport fishing-related issues like invasives.

The students will learn more about fishing in January when they venture onto Sport Lake outside of Soldotna and try their luck ice fishing.

Dante Petri can be reached at dante.petri@peninsulaclarion.com.