By Becca VanArnam, Peggy Harte, Rachel Johnson, Carson Jeffres, and Miranda A. Lowe-Webb
. . .
Spinning Salmon Program
California’s Chinook salmon face all kinds of challenges, from drought and warming to blocked migration routes. But in recent years, scientists have also been tracking a quieter threat: thiamine deficiency. This condition, caused by low levels of vitamin B1 (thiamine), can lead to strange swimming behaviour and high death rates in juvenile salmon.
Since 2020, UC Davis, UC Berkeley, NOAA Fisheries, USGS, USFW, OSU and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife have been working to figure out exactly how thiamine levels affect salmon survival. A big part of that research is finding the effective concentration 50(EC50)—a technical term used to describe the amount of thiamine needed for half of the fall-run juvenile Chinook in the Central Valley to survive (See Figure 3). That kind of data typically comes from the lab, but in this case, some of the most important data is also coming from an unexpected source: high school classrooms.
The Spinning Salmon Program, now starting its fifth year, brings salmon research into schools. Through a partnership co-led by the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences and Center for Community and Citizen Science, 3500+ high school students, across Northern California, have now collected thiamine-related mortality data from classroom tanks with California Central Valley salmon. Using a standardized observation protocol like the one used in thiamine deficiency research labs, students track mortality and behavior throughout the salmon’s early development, helping researchers build a model to understand thiamine deficiency’s lethal and sublethal impacts on salmon. After 10 weeks of classroom observations, students then release the juvenile salmon into the Sacramento or Feather Rivers (Figure 1).
(Want to learn more about the early phases of the program? Check out this earlier post on Spinning Salmon in the Classroom.)
Students Show Up and Speak Up!
Beyond collecting data, the program is about students taking ownership of their science. On May 14, 2025, more than 40 students from eight Solano County schools gathered at a local high school for a Spinning Salmon Student Showcase. They came on a Wednesday night, bringing friends and family, to share their student-led projects.
This was the first-ever Spinning Salmon Showcase, a celebration of both student contributions to science and student voices. As visitors walked through the auditorium, they were met with rows of tables filled with displays, everything from scientific posters, data charts, hand-built models, artwork, and more! A few examples of student work are included below.
Becca VanArnam, a Ph.D. student in the UC Davis School of Education and CCCS graduate student researcher, leveraged the Community and Citizen Science in Conservation Fellowship she received from CCCS to fund the showcase. This wasn’t just an event for students; it was one built with student input. In the weeks leading up to the showcase, Becca visited participating classrooms, asking students what they wanted to share and how they wanted to share it. The event was designed as a chance to hand students the mic, literally and figuratively, and let their voices guide the shape of the celebration. Thanks to a collaborative effort between educators, researchers, and especially the staff and students, the showcase became a vibrant, student-centered space where young people didn’t just present their work, they owned it.
(Want to read a more student-focused story about the showcase? Check out the CCCS blog post here.)
Of course, the primary scientific goal of the Spinning Salmon Program is to better understand thiamine deficiency in salmon. But there’s another critical question that Becca has at the heart of her work: What happens when young people help carry out that science?
As the Spinning Salmon Program continues to grow, the team recognized the importance of adding an educational research component in order to measure its impact on both students and teachers. Becca’s work, funded through a Delta Science Fellowship provided by the Delta Stewardship Council and administered by California Sea Grant, will examine the effectiveness of the Spinning Salmon Program. Through this two-year fellowship, which runs through January 2027, Becca is dedicating time and support to assess the program while also developing and implementing more culturally relevant content. Some questions guiding this piece of the research include the following:
- How do opportunities to collect data, connect with scientists, and present their work at a showcase influence how students see themselves as science learners, or even as future scientists?
- How, if at all, does using participatory science in their classrooms, support teachers teaching practices and/or impact teachers confidence in teaching science?
While our research is ongoing, there are some preliminary patterns emerging from the data:
For students:
- Many students described feeling like they were “doing real science” when collecting and contributing data, and some connected this directly to playing a key role in the thiamine deficiency research and feeling part of a science community.
- Students expressed that hands-on work (collecting data observing salmon) helped them feel more engaged and opened up new ways of participating in science.
For Teachers:
- Teachers indicated that participating in the program gave them more confidence in trying community-based or collaborative approaches, especially when supported by scientists.
- Teachers reported that students became more connected to their local watershed and environmental stewardship through the program.
After our first pilot year of education research during the 2023/24 school year, we made intentional changes to strengthen the program: we added more data literacy support, added more opportunities to help students interpret and visualize their observations, and created more support for both classrooms and scientists to connect.
With another year of data collection now complete, the program continues to evolve. More changes are being implemented, and upcoming reports will provide detailed findings that reflect what we are learning along the way.
We are not just asking whether the program works, we are asking how, for who, and why. In addition to better understanding salmon survival, we want to understand how to build meaningful, inclusive science learning experiences that matter for students, for teachers, and for their communities.
If you’d like to support the Spinning Salmon Program, you can learn more about donating to the project here.
About the Author(s)
Becca VanArnam is a PhD student at the School of Education with over six years of experience as an environmental educator, teaching in both classrooms and outdoor settings along the East Coast. Her research examines how youth-focused community and citizen science (YCCS), when combined with culturally sustaining pedagogy, can support emergent bilingual students in developing a sense of belonging in science. She is particularly interested in how these approaches foster students’ science identity by recognizing and building from their linguistic and cultural assets. Becca earned her B.S. in Marine Science & Biology and her B.A. in Spanish from the University of Miami.
Peggy Harte is the Youth Education Program Manager at the UC Davis Center for Community and Citizen Science. A former classroom teacher and elementary science specialist with over 25 years of experience, her expertise centers on supporting formal and informal educators through place-based and community science approaches that advance NGSS implementation, environmental science learning, and student agency. Peggy earned her B.A in Education from Sierra Nevada College and M.Ed. from Nova Southeastern University.
Rachel Johnson is a Translational Ecologist for NOAA Fisheries and the lead of the Salmon Life History Team for the Fisheries Ecology Division and Senior Researcher with the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences. She specializes in applied ecology of freshwater, anadromous and marine fishes. Rachel has 25+ years of experience filling critical data gaps that have been used to better manage water and fisheries resources in California. She has pioneered isotope tools to better understand migration, habitat use, contaminant exposure, and connectivity in fish populations.
Carson Jeffres is a research ecologist with the UC Davis Center for Watershed Science, specializing in better understanding how physical processes and management actions influence aquatic food webs and fish habitat. He has been studying California’s salmon and the habitats within which they live for the past 20+ years.
Miranda Lowe-Webb is a junior specialist at the Center for Watershed Sciences and the project manager for research on thiamine deficiency led by Drs. Jeffres and Johnson. She leads egg thiamine monitoring efforts in Central Valley salmonids and facilitates fish rearing and outreach aspects of the Spinning Salmon program. Her other research uses isotope ecology to understand dietary life histories of Chinook salmon. Miranda earned her B.S. in Evolution, Ecology, and Biodiversity at UC Davis.
Further Reading
Ward, A., & Harte, M. (2025). Students team up with scientists to investigate salmon vitamin deficiencies. Frontiers for Young Minds. https://kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frym.2025.1516184/full
Delta Stewardship Council. (2025). Bridging science and community: Engaging youth in Delta conservation through Spinning Salmon. Delta Science Tracker. https://sciencetracker.deltacouncil.ca.gov/activities/bridging-science-and-community-engaging-youth-delta-conservation-through-spinning-salmon
Gorrell, M. (2025). Statewide Study Taps 3,000 Students for Salmon Research. UC Davis Magazine. https://www.ucdavis.edu/magazine/statewide-study-taps-3000-students-salmon-research
Mantua, N. J., Bell, H., Todgham, A. E., Daniels, M. E., Rinchard, J., Ludwig, J. M., … & Johnson, R. C. (2025). Widespread thiamine deficiency in California salmon linked to an anchovy-dominated marine prey base. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, .https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2426011122
NOAA National Marine Sanctuaries. (2025). High Schoolers Help Federal Biologists Unravel the Mystery of Spinning Salmon. https://sanctuaries.noaa.gov/news/2025/spinning-salmon-mystery.html
Leave a Reply