NASELLE – Aramis Turner wiped away the water that had beaded up on his face after emptying net after net of fish into a large tank on the back of a Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife pickup.

“Look at ’em go,” he said as the more then 1,000 juvenile steelhead trout acquainted themselves with their temporary surroundings.

Turner is a resident of the Naselle Youth Camp [NYC], a juvenile offender sentenced to the low-security facility set in a rural area near the town of Naselle. But rather then endless days of classrooms and books, Turner and five others are out amongst the streams and trees learning about aquaculture – how to raise fish – a vocation that may prove useful once released from the facility.

The young men arrived Wednesday morning dressed in dark sweat pants, white t-shirts and rubber boots, flanked by their supervisors for the day’s project; Ken Emo, aquaculture advisor for the school at NYC; Mike Queener from the Department of Fish and Wildlife and Jim Webb of the Juvenile Rehabilitation Administration – which provides security for the camp.

The six residents get right to work, pumping water from one of the three fish pens, or raceways, into the holding tank that will transport the fish up the hill above the camp, to one of the two small lakes on Radar Hill. Emo and the other two men observe while the six students do most of the physical labor involved, offering encouragement and answering questions.

“The program allows for a lot of exploration,” said Emo, who is in his first year teaching aquaculture at NYC. “I think I can do a lot more exploring with different kinds of teaching here in this program than I feel I can in public school. Here we can do more innovative things because of class sizes and because of the facility we’ve got.”

The facility consists of three raceways that can hold about 3,000 fish each, a pump system that redirects water from an adjacent stream through the pens and out the other side, and a lab used for incubating fish eggs.

“It’s kind of a dual-purpose program,” said Emo. “Part of it is certainly educational and part of it actually serves a need in the community.”

Since the 1980s the NYC has been raising fish that have stocked local streams and lakes. Emo said that originally they raised salmon, but for the past several years they have been rearing rainbow trout. Up until this year they would receive brood stock eggs, through a cooperative effort with Fish and Wildlife.

“What happened this year was that they [Department of Fish and Wildlife] didn’t have any rainbow trout to give us so they gave us steelhead,” said Emo of the fish received as fry. “They provide the fish and we provide the facility and the manpower to grow the fish out.”

On the drive up, Webb told the students the story behind the name of the hill – which derives from the radar towers placed and operated on top during the Cold War years.

Many of the residents in the van have never lived outside of an urban environment. Webb said many of the residents had never seen the ocean or handled a live fish. In a perfect example of this, Webb stopped and reversed the vehicle so the young men in the van could take a look at a doe and her fawn hiding near the roadway – another first for most of them.

Once at Snag Lake, one of the two Radar Hill sites that are open for fishing year-round, the team springs back into action – hopping up in the back of the truck, attaching a large-width plastic hose. Once placed on the shore of the small lake, simple gravity is used to push the mostly foot-long trout from the tank, through the hose and into the water.

“Hey, check it out, Dog,” said resident James Taylor to his companion Brandon Sullivan as they manned the front of the hose. Taylor saw one of the fish didn’t make it through the process, floating dead on its side just before them. The two picked up the fish and inspected it closely, probably the first time they had seen a fish like this up close.

“Hey, do you guys want a fish?” Taylor asked an older couple in a small fishing boat, who politely declined.

“It’s certainly not a book-learning kind of class and I think that fits well with the learners,” said Emo of the program. “I think a lot of these are kids that have not necessarily found success in the regular classroom.

“It’s a class that meets their learning needs,” Emo added. “They’re out there, they’re doing stuff, they’re seeing it, they’re touching it, they’re feeling it – rather than just reading about it.”

Depositing fish into the lakes is the culmination of a process that begins in the fall each year at the school. Emo said they released about 3,000 fish on Wednesday, and would release the other 3,000 – they average 6,000 fish per year – in another month or so.

Emo himself, who also teaches a horticulture class at the NYC as well as a natural resources class at Naselle High School, will be taking the summer off, leaving the class in the hands of Webb.

“Keeping the fish fed, keeping the ponds maintained,” said Emo, “summer is more of a maintenance kind of program of keeping everything going.”

Emo said he was looking forward to next fall, when they will probably have eggs to start out with again. “So next year, the fish that we plant at this time will be some that we’ve raised from eggs.”

There are usually six to eight NYC residents in the class each year. “We can all get out there and do the stuff,” Emo said. “There’s no spectators, they’re all actively involved.”

The idea behind the aquaculture program, as well as the other vocational programs at NYC, is to give the kids some hands-on training, as well as school credit. Associate superintendent of the school at NYC, Mary Beth Quarel, said the things they learn at the camp can help them in their lives once they leave.

“They’re going to school, either getting their GED or possibly going for a high school diploma, and also learning vocational skills.”