Invasive Pike Simulation Game & Food Web Dynamics

Gym Floor setup: Scattered poker chips or beanbags represent macroinvertebrate food (mayflies, chironomids).

Salmon Fry Players: Must forage food chips from the center and carry them to their home bank.

Pike Players: Start hidden in 'weed beds' (gym mats or boundary squares). Pike cannot move until a salmon enters their visual strike zone, then they unleash a 5-step sprint tag!

After each 3-minute round, the classroom recorder logs:

1. Number of surviving salmon fry.

2. Number of salmon captured by pike.

3. Total food chips successfully collected.

Students see dramatic data trends: as pike numbers increase, salmon survival plummets from 95% down to under 15%!

What happens when pike eat every single salmon, trout, and stickleback in a lake?

The pike don't leave—they turn on each other! Big pike eat medium pike, medium pike eat small pike, until the lake is filled with hundreds of tiny, starving, big-headed 'hammer-handle' pike under 12 inches long.

In Round 4, two student 'TTCD Technicians' enter with soft foam noodles representing suppression gillnets.

By selectively tagging and netting pike while leaving salmon untouched, salmon survival surges back up to 80%, demonstrating that active management works!

Students graph their 4-round survival data in their science binders.

We discuss the real-world responsibility of fishermen, floatplane pilots, and community members to protect clean salmon lakes from non-native species.