NORRIDGEWOCK — Ashlee Clough rolled up the bottoms of her pants Thursday afternoon, pulled off her sneakers and slowly waded into the chilly water of the Sandy River.

She slowly tipped over the cooler she was holding, letting several dozen young salmon — known at that stage of their life as fry — swim into the river.

“Say bye, guys,” said her teacher, Patricia Dunphy. “Bye,” echoed Clough and nine of her Madison Junior High School classmates as they stood on the shore and watched as the fry were released.

Thursday marked the final day of a months-long project for the fifth-graders, who began raising the salmon in February when they were still eggs and have cared for and monitored them since then.

“It’s the last final hurrah,” said Dunphy, a fifth-grade science teacher. “We’ve studied them for the last three months, and now it’s time to release them.”

The project is part of the Atlantic Salmon Federation’s Fish Friends program, an educational program that teaches students about the salmon and how to care for them through hands-on learning.

The students raise the eggs and watch them hatch, monitor the water temperature and remove dead eggs that didn’t hatch. They also learn about the life cycle of the fish, migration, the effects of river pollution and dams on the fish and factors affecting their population.

“It’s really fun getting to interact with (the fish) and see them grow,” said Clough, 11. “It’s just a little bit of work because you have to take the temperature of the water, but it’s pretty easy.”

After three months the students release the fry into local rivers and streams such as the Sandy, which is also the site of a larger Atlantic salmon restoration effort currently run by the Maine Department of Marine Resources. The department stocks 500,000 to 1 million salmon eggs in the Sandy River each year. The students released 84 fry on Thursday.

“It’s great education and outreach for bringing the next generation up to speed on the importance of anadromous fish,” said Paul Christman, a marine scientist for the Maine Department of Marine Resources heading up restoration efforts on the Sandy River.

Salmon have been extinct in the Sandy River since the early 1800s, Christman said. He said their decline has largely been attributed to the construction of the Edwards Dam in Augusta. When the dam was removed in 1999, biologists started Atlantic salmon restoration efforts and have been planting increasing numbers of fish in the river over the last 15 years.

“We’ve been stocking long enough now that we’re actually starting to see adults return,” Christman said. “It’s exciting. There are adults every year that return to the Sandy that were born in the Sandy.”

Still, Atlantic salmon in Maine remain endangered, and they aren’t returning to rivers at a high enough rate to sustain a population.

“There is a great amount of debate as to why we’re losing Atlantic salmon and the exact reasons,” Christman said. “Dams are one of them, predators are another, temperatures. There are a host of problems in fresh water, but as far as we can tell, we’re losing more of our fish at sea then we are in fresh water. Marine survival is a very big problem right now for Atlantic salmon.”

That’s where Dunphy said the Fish Friends program comes in.

“It’s teaching the kids to have an awareness of the animals and things in Maine that need to be protected,” she said. “There are a lot of things to be aware of so that we can preserve them for future generations and they can see the deer, the moose or the salmon.”

Rachel Ohm — 612-2368

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Twitter: @rachel_ohm